Voluntarism, Community Life, and the American Ethic
Voluntarism, Community Life, and the American Ethic

Author: Robert S. Ogilvie

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2004-06-18

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780253110206

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"This is a major contribution to the literature on social participation and voluntary action. It is the first systematic ethnographic study I know that treats volunteers and the institutions they create." -- John Van Til, author of Growing Civil Society "Students and faculty interested in the issue of homelessness will find the book instructive... Recommended." -- Choice Why do people volunteer, and what motivates them to stick with it? How do local organizations create community? How does voluntary participation foster moral development in volunteers to create a better citizenry? In this fascinating study of volunteers at the Partnership for the Homeless in New York City, Robert S. Ogilvie provides bold and engaging answers to these questions. He describes how volunteer programs such as the Partnership generate ethical development in and among participants and how the Partnership's volunteers have made it such a continued success since the early 1980s. Ogilvie's examination of voluntarism suggests that the American ethic is essential for sustaining community life and to the future well-being of a democratic society.

Gifts of Time and Money
Gifts of Time and Money

Author: Arthur C. Brooks

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2005-06-03

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0742581667

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Policymakers, civic leaders, and scholars have increasingly focused their attention over the last decade-and-a-half on the importance of voluntary participation in civil society. From George H. W. Bush's Thousand Points of Light to Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps to George W. Bush's faith-based initiatives, it is undeniable that communities are looking to increase their levels of charity and voluntarism in the provision of public goods and services. What mobilizes giving and volunteering? What are the characteristics of communities that are engaged, and those that are not? What can policymakers and nonprofit managers do to change the current landscape in places with low levels of participation? These are the questions this edited collection addresses. It is the first book specifically dedicated to community giving and volunteering efforts with a best practices element. Published in cooperation with the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University.

Giving Circles
Giving Circles

Author: Angela M. Eikenberry

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2009-06-29

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 0253220858

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Describes giving circles and how they work to meet social needs and solve community problems and examines the role of philanthropy in democratic society.

Wealth and the Will of God
Wealth and the Will of God

Author: Paul G. Schervish

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010-03-22

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 025322148X

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Wealth and the Will of God looks at some of the spiritual resources of the Christian tradition that can aid serious reflection on wealth and giving. Beginning with Aristotle—who is crucial for understanding later Christian thought—the book discusses Aquinas, Ignatius, Luther, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. Though the ideas vary greatly, the chapters are organized to facilitate comparisons among these thinkers on issues of ultimate purposes or aspirations of human life; on the penultimate purposes of love, charity, friendship, and care; on the resources available to human beings in this life; and finally on ways to connect and implement in practice our identified resources with our ultimate ends.

Good Intentions
Good Intentions

Author: David H. Smith

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 9780253345318

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Besides helpful editorial material, this work includes ten papers that were presented in a seminar sponsored by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana Univ. (part of the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ. Indianapolis). All of the essays address philanthropy--its definition, relationships, motives, forms, history, and precepts. Amy Kass discusses what philanthropy meant to Booker T. Washington: largely education in black self-help. What it meant to Jane Addams, Paul Pribbenow explains, is the common work of citizens. Secular standards for the morality of philanthropy are the subject of essays by Patricia Werhane and Paul Schervish, and by David Craig in the best of the essays. Religious standards for the moral aspects of philanthropy are the subject of essays by Elliot Dorff (Jewish), Philip Turner (Protestant), and John Langan (Catholic). David Hammack provides a fascinating history of American nonprofit organizations. The final essay by William Sullivan gives readers reason to worry because American inequality is increasing at the same time that effective, democratically based philanthropy is decreasing. Those who can learn much from this book include not only philanthropic givers and takers, such as foundation executives, college administrators, and church leaders, but also moral philosophers, theologians, and government officials. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. General Readers; Lower-division Undergraduates; Upper-division Undergraduates; Graduate Students; Researchers/Faculty; Professionals/Practitioners. Reviewed by J. M. Betz.

Giving Well, Doing Good
Giving Well, Doing Good

Author: Amy A. Kass

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2008-01-11

Total Pages: 1042

ISBN-13: 0253219558

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This anthology explores the enterprise of philanthropy—assumptions, aspirations, and achievements. It brings together key texts that can provide guidance to current and prospective donors, trustees and professional staff of foundations, and leaders of nonprofit organizations. Organized thematically, these texts seek to illuminate fundamental questions about the idea and practice of philanthropy, to promote more thoughtful discussion about practical issues facing the philanthropic sector, and to point a way toward a philanthropic practice that is more responsible, more effective, and more civic-spirited. Amy A. Kass has selected readings from sources that range from the classics to the contemporary, from foundational statements on philanthropy to reflections on key issues of novelists and poets. Each illuminates some aspect of philanthropy. The book is arranged according to themes: goals and intentions; gifts, donors, and recipients; grants, grantors, grantees; bequests and legacies; effectiveness; accountability; and leadership.

Making Volunteers
Making Volunteers

Author: Nina Eliasoph

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0691162077

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An inside look at how community service organizations really work Volunteering improves inner character, builds community, cures poverty, and prevents crime. We've all heard this kind of empowerment talk from nonprofit and government-sponsored civic programs. But what do these programs really accomplish? In Making Volunteers, Nina Eliasoph offers an in-depth, humorous, wrenching, and at times uplifting look inside youth and adult civic programs. She reveals an urgent need for policy reforms in order to improve these organizations and shows that while volunteers learn important lessons, they are not always the lessons that empowerment programs aim to teach. With short-term funding and a dizzy mix of mandates from multiple sponsors, community programs develop a complex web of intimacy, governance, and civic life. Eliasoph describes the at-risk youth served by such programs, the college-bound volunteers who hope to feel selfless inspiration and plump up their resumés, and what happens when the two groups are expected to bond instantly through short-term projects. She looks at adult "plug-in" volunteers who, working in after-school programs and limited by time, hope to become like beloved aunties to youth. Eliasoph indicates that adult volunteers can provide grassroots support but they can also undermine the family-like warmth created by paid organizers. Exploring contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of empowerment programs and the bureaucratic hurdles that volunteers learn to navigate, the book demonstrates that empowerment projects work best with less precarious funding, more careful planning, and mandatory training, reflection, and long-term commitments from volunteers. Based on participant research inside civic and community organizations, Making Volunteers illustrates what these programs can and cannot achieve, and how to make them more effective.

To Export Progress
To Export Progress

Author: Daniel C. Levy

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2005-06-15

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9780253111401

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"An immensely valuable and detailed analysis of foreign, mainly American, assistance to Latin American higher education, To Export Progress provides an understanding of the 'what' and the 'why' of foreign aid to a key sector. This book will be a classic in its field." -- Philip G. Altbach, Monan Professor of Higher Education, Boston College "Professor Daniel C. Levy, a leading authority in the field of higher education and the nonprofit sector in Latin America, once again has opened an otherwise neglected field through his carefully researched and reported study of philanthropic support for university reform in the region. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, documentary evidence, interviews, and first hand experience with the actors and agencies involved, To Export Progress illuminates the vision and ideals inspiring international agencies, as much as the realities they confronted in deciding on grants and loans policy, from the 1960s to the 1980s. The book is strongly recommended for scholars and students of international education, for Latin American experts, and for philanthropic managers and educational administrators in the developing world." -- Jorge Balan, Senior Program Officer for Higher Education, The Ford Foundation. In this study of the attempts to export the modern Western university, its ideas, and its form to the Third World, Daniel C. Levy examines the development assistance provided by the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Inter-American Development Bank and their relations with local partners in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Levy considers the funders, how they selected partners, which countries and institutions were favored, and to what effect. Based on meticulous research and careful analysis, the book provides a detailed look at philanthropic assistance to the region during the era of modernization and development in Latin America.