Mission Impossible?: Measuring Success in Nonprofit Organizations

The difficulty of measuring performance in the nonprofit sector has long been recognized. This article begins with a case study detailing how one organization, The Nature Conservancy, tackled the challenge of moving beyond measuring activity to measuring mission impact. After several false starts, the Conservancy developed a model for measuring success, divided into three broad areas: impact, activity, and capacity. The article then presents data from interviews with leaders of thirty other leading nonprofits, who reveal how their organizations measure performance in these three areas. It concludes with some lessons learned about performance measurement in the nonprofit sector.     

Do High School Gifted Programs Lead to Later-in-Life Success?

This paper investigates the effects of participation in gifted education programs, and offers several contributions to existing research. First, this paper studies the effects of high school programs, as opposed to the more commonly-studied elementary and middle school versions. Second, this paper considers impacts of gifted programs on later-in-life socioeconomic success, including college graduation and eventual employment, as opposed to short-run standardized test outcomes. Third, this paper uses sibling fixed effects, coupled with a recently-proposed decomposition method, as an identification approach. The main conclusion is that gifted programs tend to include students who possess traits that already correlate with later-in-life success. After controlling for those traits, gifted programs, per se, show little statistical relationship to later-in-life outcomes.     

Do Children's Behavior Problems Limit Poor Women's Labor Market Success?

Economically disadvantaged mothers face numerous barriers to stable, quality employment opportunities. One barrier that has received limited attention in previous research is having a child with significant psychological or behavioral problems. Using a representative sample of low‐income mothers and early adolescent children from the Three‐City Study (N = 717), we assessed whether adolescents' behavior problems prospectively predicted mothers' employment status, consistency, and quality. Lagged random‐effects regression models suggested that adolescents' psychological distress and delinquency inhibited the labor market success of disadvantaged mothers, although school problems were related to greater work effort among mothers. Links between labor market success and both psychological distress and delinquency differed across mothers with male and female adolescents.     

Changing Behaviours,Improving Outcomes? Governing Healthy Lifestyles Through Social Marketing

Recent public health policy and practice in the UK and beyond has promoted behavioural and lifestyle change as key methods for health improvement and the reduction of inequalities. These methods contrast with more upstream and structural interventions intended to address environmental and material determinants of health. A current exemplar of this approach is the use of social marketing. These changes represent a shift from the social to the individual as the target of public health interventions and raise a number of critical questions for health social scientists concerned not only with health improvement but also equity and social justice. Further, they can be identified as part of broader social and economic shifts that posit the individual as responsible for the management of their own bodies and selves in late modern societies characterised by ‘government at a distance’ and the repeal of welfare. This paper offers a review of shifting paradigms of public health and considers the implications of newer modes of health governance such as social marketing and their role as a modern form of health governance.     

The Secret of Ma Junren's Success

IN the past,athletes from African nations Or Western countries dominated track and field competitions.But now,a Chinese team known as"Ma'S army,"has stirred a whirlwind.Ma Junren is the     

Calligrapher Credits Grandmother With His Success

DESPITE his youth, Cao Yong, a member of Chinese Calligraphers's Association, is a highly skilled calligrapher who has spent many years studying the works of artists both ancient and contemporary. Cao, who is in his early 30s, says he believes that the art of calligraphy depends on excellent national traditions and con-     

Make This Column a Success!

"Editorial Mailbox" is a small but indispensable column in our magazine—Women of China. It offers our readers a forum in which to contribute their own ideas and views and letters from readers connect us to our friends all over the world. But the success of this column depends on the participation of our readers!     

Blinded by the Spite? Path Model of Political Attitudes,Selectivity, and Social Media

Despite fears that selective exposure and selective avoidance could deepen polarization and negatively affect the democratic process, few studies have directly studied this phenomenon. This study explores whether selective exposure and avoidance to blogs, social network sites, and Twitter directly influence confidence in Congress and the president or more indirectly through polarization. This study suggests that fears of selective exposure, selective avoidance, and polarization infecting the democratic process appear overstated. First, polarization was positively related to confidence in Congress and the president. Second, selective exposure to social media sites strengthens confidence in the president and in Congress. Twitter boosts confidence in Congress. Third, selective avoidance had a negative influence on other measures, which suggests people seek both information that challenges their views as well as ones that supports them. Finally, selective exposure and avoidance proved weak indicators of polarization. Instead, strength of partisanship is the stronger predictor of confidence in Congress and the president.     

Grooming for Success? The Impact of Adolescent Society on Early Intergenerational Social Mobility

The attainment of initial status in adult society involves a series of transfers between distinct systems of adolescent stratification. The social and cultural resources of the childhood family may be converted into status within informal adolescent society and within the formal school system. In turn, family resources and status accrued during adolescence influence educational attainment and income in early adulthood. In this article, the outlines of these processes are specified in a structural model and tested in a nationally representative 12-year follow-up sample of high school sophomores in the United States. The findings in general support the validity of the model for White, Black, and Hispanic males and females.     

Magicians Succeed Through Hard Efforts

ONE day during the winter of 1992, the sound of gongs and drums of Beijing opera echoed in the Central Hall of the International Magic Exchange in Los Angeles, California. More than a hundred first class magicians from different countries gathered there to enjoy a performance by two Chinese magicians. The two were Qin Mingxiao and Yao Jinfen, a husband and wife team. Qin stood on the stage and smiled. He wore a Qing Dynasty sapphire blue robe with dragon patterns embroidered in gold thread. Holding a peach in his hand, he asked the audience, "Do you know what country 'Three Immortals Return to the Cave' comes from or how long ago?" Various answers came from the     

Shared Reality and Grounded Feelings During Courtship: Do They Matter for Marital Success?

This study provides evidence that newlywed pairs who have a shared and well‐grounded understanding of their courtship are better able to establish unions that endure. Using a sample of 168 couples, the authors found that marriages were more likely to survive when courting partners (a) loved each other to a similar degree, (b) depicted the probability of marriage and changes in the likelihood of marriage in a corresponding fashion over the course of their courtship, and (c) portrayed the courtship as escalating from a low (25%) to a high (75%) probability of marriage as spanning a comparable period of time. The durability of marriages was reflected, as well, in how solidly courting partners' feelings for each other were interwoven with their courtship experiences. More specifically, courtship difficulties were not as associated with weakened feelings of love or with heightened feelings of ambivalence among couples who later divorced as compared to those who stayed married.     

Progress in Social and Educational Inquiry Through Case Study: Generalization or Explanation?

Although much of the most productive research in applied social science is case-based, there is still concern about the restricted utility of such research because of its limited power to offer generalizable findings. Such concern has contributed to a recent trend in policy-making circles—particularly those in education—to prefer experimentally orientated research for insights on policy. The argument is made here that concerns about generalization are exaggerated and that the focus upon them has allowed an evasion of issues about quality of explanation coming from different forms of social inquiry design. After discussing these generalization-based issues I proceed to define case study as an inquiry form, outlining its most significant ingredients and I offer a review of case study inquiries in education which exemplify its capacity for offering credible new insights on the questions being posed.     

The Seventh National Games—Success!

THE Seventh National Games held in Beijing in September 1993 was a great success. Its scale was unprecedented in Chinese sports history. Forty-five teams from provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, the People's Liberation Army and athletics associations competed. All together over 6,000 athletes took part in 43 events. The tough competition brought magnificent results. Four world records were set, 21 broken and 3 equalled,     

Folk Festival Fosters Communication Through Art

CHINA'S Third International Folk Art Festival recently convened in Beijing, Dalian, Shenzhen and Huizhou, where folk artists from 15 countries performed at the opening ceremony. An art festival of this kind is held every two years. The first and the second international folk art festivals were convened in 1990 and in 1992 respectively, sponsored by the Confederation Society of China's Literature and Art. Compared with the former two art festivals, the dance     

Wife Supports Husband Through Hard Times

IN 1946 I got to know Wei Shuwan, who is now my wife, through a friend. Back then I was a mechanic for Central Aviation in Kunming, Yunnan Province, and Shuwan was working at the Baihong Photo Studio in the same city. Shuwan was a gentle, kind young woman who was from Fujian Province like myself. We liked each other and got married in April of the same year. In March     

State Versus Civil Society? A Non-Binary Model of Domination Through the Example of Israel

Through the Israeli case, the article questions the validity of the Western liberal model according to which (civil) society and state are two separate entities, the state ostensibly existing outside the society and imposing its will on it. Covering five distinct historical periods, from the beginning of the century until the present, and utilizing Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, the article surveys one of Israel's core myths, if not the core itself, that of the pioneer ( halutz ). The result exposes an intriguing system of domination, which is based on intensive activity and responsiveness of the population, and on a blurred distinction between the rulers and the ruled, between objects and subjects, and between state and society. Because of the existence of this system of domination it is difficult to talk about Israel in terms of a despotic state; hence also the obstacle to the constitution of a civil society in Israel. For this is effectively a hegemonic system of domination, which repels all social change by its ability to absorb any innovation and shape its meaning.