Category Archives: Impact

Education, Impact, Innovation, Social Sector

35 Years of Nonprofit Management Education

September 1, 2018 Marco Tavanti Leave a comment

Dr. Micheal O’Neill and Dr. Marco Tavanti, past and current MNA Program Directors

In 2018 the Master of Nonprofit Administration (MNA Program) at University of San Francisco celebrated its 35 years of existence since its foundation in 1983 by Dr. Michael O’Neill. The 35th MNA Anniversary Celebration of April 25th featured a panel reflecting on the accomplishments and challenges of nonprofit management education in the 21st Century. This video shares some of the highlights of the events and the valued reflections provided provided by our alumni Jeanne Bell (MNA ’01) and Alexa Cortez Culwell (MNA ’95).

The following are Dr. Marco Tavanti’s opening remarks to the April 25th Anniversary Celebrations

Thank you and welcome to this Panel Discussion and Celebration of the Master of Nonprofit Administration Program Celebration of its 35 Years of Excellence and Social Innovation. We are honored today to have a panel of experts – that will introduce shortly — and that will help us to understand some of the main challenge and opportunities in nonprofit education, community responsibility and capacity development. After an award ceremony we will continue our networking celebrations upstairs in the 5^th floor AGORA where you can meet MNA alumni, friends and students while also viewing MNA Capstone Posters samples and Infographics from the annual Academic Global Immersion Program on Refugee. In the meantime (and to earn your drinks) you should also respond to the survey in front of you. On the table you can also find a card where you can formulate a question you may have for the panelists.

The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, is a Jesuit method for teaching and learning embedded in our current MNA degree. It starts with observing the reality (seen it also through immersions and experiential learning), followed by the analysis (often through multidisciplinary perspectives and mixed methodologies to understand complex and unjust realities of marginalization), and the action into making the world a better place such as the USF slogan (Change the World from Here…). What was known in Latin America as VER, JULGAR, ACTUAR, has been integrated by impact evaluation and contextualization into our local/global and diverse communities. More recently this method included a new dimension CELEBRAR, to celebrate our accomplishments. Our celebration of the 35^th anniversary of the MNA program reflects all these paradigms and invites us to take time to pause, observe, reflect, a celebrate the past and future of nonprofit management education.

In 1983, Dr. Michael O’Neill had the pioneering vision of designing a graduate degree to develop managerial and leadership capacity for nonprofit professionals. The MNA Program was accompanied by the research activities of the Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management (INOM) which followed other academic innovations such as the establishment of Nonprofit Academic Center Council (NACC) in 1981 and the creation of the Association of Voluntary Action Scholars later renamed as Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) in 1971. Dr. Michael O’Neill is known as the father of nonprofit management education (NME) that emerged as a field of study through these and other pioneering activities in which he was deeply involved.

While Dr. Michael O’Neill worked on developing the field of NME in the West Coast University of San Francisco, one of his colleague in the East Coast, Prof. Lester Salamon at the Washington DC Urban Institute (now at John Hopkins University) contributed to understand the scope and structure of the nonprofit sector. Today, nonprofit/nongovernmental/charities/philanthropic and voluntary institutions are major forces for good contributing to almost 6% of the American economy and 1/6 of the labor force in California. Internationally, the third sector institutions include a wider spectrum of organizations including hybrid social enterprises and social innovations solutions for the emerging world social economy. Our MNA students know about these developments and also know that both social and economic impact needs to be equally considered and measured to understand the true value of the sector.

In the last 35 years, the Program has generated 612 alumni in key leadership positions and influential roles for the advancement of the capacity, impact and sustainability of the sector. We are honored today to have with us two of these MNA alumni, Alexa Cortes Culwell (MNA 95), Co-Founder of Open Impact and author of The Giving Code and the Giving Journey and Jeanne Bell (MNA ’01) who served until recently as CEO at Compass Point and now at Nonprofit Quarterly and in our MNA Advisory Board. Jeanne is also a well-known author of Nonprofit Sustainability other publications for the promotion of social impact with sustainable business practices among NPOs.

We are excited to engage in a panel conversation with Michael, Alexa and Jeanne on the past, present and future of nonprofits, its education and its capacity needs for effective leaders and organizations. Who can better represent our voice than one of our current MNA students, Sascha Rosemond (MNA ’19), who currently serves as Development and Donor Relations Assistant at the San Francisco Foundation.

Please join me to welcome Sasha, with Jeanne, Alexa and Michael to these conversations.

Impact, Innovation, Organization, Responsibility, Social Sector

Don’t Kill the Golden Goose: Rethinking Accountability Standards in the Nonprofit Sector

December 14, 2017 kiaharris Leave a comment

Disclaimer: This is not a goose. This is a golden Mandarin Duck; this photo is meant to be visualaid only and not a true representation of a Golden Goose.

Golden·Goose

Noun

The golden goose of TSOs, in many situations, comes to be seen as the state’s only orbest hope in tackling ‘wicked problems’ such as reducing health inequalities (Tenbensel,, Dwyer,J., & Lavoie,J.,2014).

Large-scale migration into the Britain in the 1960s and 70s prompted the development of third-sector organizations to tackle unmet needs of the new populations and communities. Government funders turned to third-sector organizations (TSOs) to provide cheap and effective services to fill gaps.

With government funders providing the capital for TSO work, another issue came to the forefront. “Accountability measures imposed by governments can be debilitating or ‘killing ofthe golden goose” (Tenbenseletal. ,2014). While trying to expand services TSOs are burdened bystringent accountability measures. A conflict arises between government funder’s needs fortransparency and accountability and being mindful that accountability measures can stifle a TSOs impact.

Tenbenseletal. (2014) describes the different “pulls” that TSOs encounter.

Downward Pull-community (members, clients, communityleaders, and other organizations).

Lateral Pull- one another and themselves (staff, volunteers, community board members, andcommunity agencies). with whom they work’

Upward-funders.

Tenbensel et al. (2014) developed a comprehensive framework to address overburdened TSOs.

Donoharm- donotin advertently increase overall accountability measures for TSOs.
‘Best fit’ generation-public managers should play an active role in facilitating environments in which TSO accountability requirements between the points of the triskele are better aligned.
Consideration of collateral impact of accountability measures.
Use triskele as a foundation for conversation between TSOs and all stakeholdersabout accountability.
Triskele framework can be used to assess new or prospective developments that are likely to impact the organization’s accountability environment.

The Triskele framework and knowledge of how accountability measures can impact TSOs is beneficial for nonprofit scholars to have awareness and become advocates for organizations we work with now and in the future.

Action, Advocacy, Impact, Innovation, Justice, Leadership, Responsibility, Social Sector, Women

Social Movements: Seeing Change Through to Fruition with Strategy and Partnerships

December 10, 2017 kiaharris Leave a comment

By Claire Lewis

Earlier this year, I participated in my first protest ever – The Women’s March. I cannot remember who organized it or who invited me to the Facebook event group; I just knew I wanted to make a difference. If raising awareness was the key objective, then we definitely accomplished that goal. According to USA Today, 2.6 individuals across 32 countries participated in this historical march. Celebrities from America Ferrerra to Madonna gave powerful speeches about the importance of women’s rights. News stations across the globe covered this momentous day.

How was such a feat accomplished? The answer is social media. Facebook protest events across various cities and states filled my newsfeed leading up to the day. I witnessed many friends mark they were “interested” or “going” to these events.

However, despite this outpouring of support, there is little to no reform. One of the issues with “social media” marches is the lack of strategy behind the effort. I, like many others, was unclear as to the main purpose or end-goal of the Women’s March. Was it a particular policy change? If so, was it related to sexual harassment, gender inequality in pay, freedom of choice, and/or all of the above?

In order to sustain long-term change in policy and legislation, strategy, goals, and hard work need to be put forth and adhered to. This Ted Talk goes into more detail on the lack of strategy behind online uprisings. As, Zeynep points out, the Civil Rights movement was incredibly successful because there was a well thought out strategy, what she refers to as “slow and sustained” and “painstaking long-term work.” The Civil Rights movement also had specific, tangible goals such as ending segregation and reversing “separate but equal.” Both individuals (ex. MLK) as well as the work of SMO’s led to major change. For example, the NAACP was instrumental in policy change. NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, challenged segregation in the landmark case, Plessy V. Ferguson that later led to Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown Case resulted in large-scale protests such as the March on Washington.

These powerful protests are the reason for both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Clearly, both SMOs and individuals are important in a social movement. So the question is, in our current social media climate, how can we harness the power of these social media inspired protests and actually produce tangible results? To me, this is more important than whether an SMO or an individual creates a protest event on Facebook. I do not care who starts it, I just want to contribute and see change actually happen.

The first step is creation of a strategy. Many SMOs already have strategy and goals built into their programming. For example, the NAACP has various toolkits for social change initiatives. The trick is to connect SMOs to these grassroots movements so that everyone is on the same page.

Below are some ideas I brainstormed that could create movements that are more effective. I assume (and hope) that at least some of these ideas are already in place.

SMOs identifying and working with various grassroots protest planners to create strategies and goals together that can be communicated to the masses
SMOs training leaders to be part of these small grassroots movements and educate groups
SMOs attending various protests as guest speakers and/or handing out information
SMOs collaborating with influential social change leaders such as Michael Moore to ensure a goal is put in place and communicated. He does a great job, but a partnership with an SMO could be even more impactful
SMOs and/or individuals harnessing various media sources to make it clear what the public needs to do in order to achieve the goal (make it easy to do, easy to understand)
SMOs educating the public at various venues on what legislation is related to the current issue, what propositions to watch out for, etc.
SMOs partnering with small grassroots groups to create follow-up sessions after protests
SMOs and/or individuals partnering with schools and universities to provide education on various social issues and legislation to build a pipeline

Our current social media climate has so much potential for enacting real, tangible change. By harnessing the strategies that SMOs already construct and articulating clear goals, we have a chance at influencing policy change. SMOs and individuals can be much more powerful as a team, and I hope there will be more partnerships in the future. I am so proud of the Women’s March and awareness it spread, but I want to see women receive equal pay, a right to choose, and fair trials in the cases of rape and sexual assault. I want to see not just a short-term uprising, but long-term change. The partnership of SMOs and individuals can act as a catalyst to bring reform to fruition.

Ethics, Global, Impact, Innovation, Leadership, Organization, Social Sector, Uncategorized

Using Neutrality to Protect Humanity

December 8, 2017 kiaharris Leave a comment

By Hayley Walker and Valdeir Faria Filho

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are functioning in our global society, some better than others. Some are well-known (CARE, Amnesty International, Red Cross) and use effective marketing techniques, lobbying efforts, and provide programs internationally. Others are small, local organizations that work to make life better for specific groups of people. Regardless, these diverse and varying NGOs have multiple commonalities, though they may not be fully visible on the surface. All, however, embark on missions to protect humanity.

The World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (WANGO) is an international organization that aims to unite NGOs and promote peace and wellbeing across the globe. WANGO offers resources and support to create connections among organizations striving to create a more just, sustainable world for all. As a proponent of networks and collaborations, WANGO sheds light on the synergy that results from global organizations working towards a common goal. With widespread government support, exceptional visionaries, and dedicated donors, WANGO has worked for the past 17 years to encourage NGOs to connect across borders and without boundaries, and to hold steadfast to the following guiding principles (WANGO Code of Ethics):

Responsibility, service, and public mindedness
Cooperation beyond boundaries
Human rights and dignity
Religious freedom
Transparency and accountability
Truthfulness and legality

NGOs, in the broadest sense, cannot be for profit organizations, must be independent of government, must not interfere in domestic state affairs, and must not advocate violence (Kaloudis, 2017). However, there comes a time when disaster relief and humanitarian organizations must interfere—or rather, intervene—in domestic affairs in an effort to protect humanity. Non-governmental organizations are frequently caught in the cross-fire of waring territories, failed states, and desperate civilians, with one goal in mind: to provide relief for those in need.

During times of crisis, NGOs rely deeply on their neutrality to aid them in reaching the most people possible. In accordance with WANGO’s principle of working towards cooperation beyond boundaries, neutrality refers to refraining from taking sides on issues regarding political, cultural, religious affiliation, or other sensitive issues that may result in conflict. That does not mean that NGOs disappear or go into hiding during such conflicts, but rather work harder to serve all affected—regardless of their stance on the issues. Impactful NGOs uphold the policy of not “taking sides,” and this is crucial to the safety of workers, volunteers, donors, and civilians. However, in recent years NGOs have faced difficulty in mitigating suffering as impartial entities, in part due to assumed association with national governments or international organizations (Brechenmacher, 2015). Aid and relief of organizations urge conflicting parties to respect their neutral stance as they provide desperately needed services to civilians, but reality does not always allow provide for this ideal situation. State militaries may claim alliances with NGOs, and rebel forces may see this alliance as a threat to their progress. NGOs, however, frequently default to the emphasizing the value of impartiality in conflict zones and assert their neutral stance to relieve human suffering—a practice that is often debated. In order to reach civilians who may be trapped or displaced deep within war zones and conflict arenas, NGOs must carefully negotiate with opposing parties. They must ensure they remain under enough security to serve, but enough neutrality to relieve the suffering civilians from all sides.

Impact, Innovation, Philanthropy

Salesforce.org Receives the USF California Prize 2016

May 12, 2016 Marco Tavanti 2 Comments

Awarding the 1-1-1 Model

The University of San Francisco is proud to award the 2016 California Prize for Service and the Common Good to Salesforce.org for its commitment to giving back to the community and setting a new standard for integrated corporate philanthropy. When Salesforce was founded in 1999, it transformed corporate philanthropy with the 1-1-1 model, an integrated philanthropy model that donates 1 percent equity, 1 percent product and 1 percent employee time to communities around the world. Today, Salesforce.org carries out Salesforce’s philanthropic mission.

The USF California Prize

Since 2008, the University of San Francisco has awarded the California Prize for Service and the Common Good to an individual or organization, recognizing significant service to the poor and marginalized as well as groundbreaking achievements in pursuit of the common good. The California Prize is USF’s way of rewarding, honoring, and celebrating the work of those who share our commitment to create a more humane, just, and sustainable world.

Salesforce.org… Beyond a Foundation

Salesforce’s philanthropic entities have donated more than $100 million in grants globally since 1999, including $14 million in grants to the San Francisco Unified School District; and Salesforce employees have volunteered more than 1.1 million hours in their local communities. Salesforce.org also powers more than 27,000 nonprofits by offering technology to nonprofits and higher education institutions for free or at a discount.

Transforming Corporate Philanthropy

Extending the power of the 1-1-1 model, Salesforce.org has created a movement of corporate philanthropy with Pledge 1%, resulting in more than 600 companies dedicating employee time, equity, product, or profit back to the community.

“Like the University of San Francisco, Salesforce.org is committed to making the city and the world a better place,” said USF President Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J. “As the university of and for San Francisco, USF shares a commitment with Salesforce.org to educate and to give back for the good of all of society.”

Source: California Prize 2016 | University of San Francisco