CompassPoint Nonprofit Services: strengthening the capacities of nonprofits (1971-2008)

CompassPoint Nonprofit Services is a nonprofit organization that delivers cutting-edge research and support services to the nonprofit community. Over its 30-year history, CompassPoint has transitioned from a small management support agency into a nationally-recognized leader in nonprofit capacity building and nonprofit management research. Through its strong internal operations and external connections, the agency has been able to stay current on the multiple challenges facing the local and national nonprofit community. CompassPoint has been a valuable resource for the nonprofit sector as it has struggled to retain its identity over the past 30 years, in relation to political and economic changes that have altered the functioning of the sector as a whole.     

Larkin Street Youth Services: helping kids get off the street for good (1982-2007)

Larkin Street Youth Services is a pioneering nonprofit organization that was established in 1981 to serve the growing urban homeless and runaway youth population. What began as a neighborhood effort has evolved into a $12 million organization over the course of its 25-year history. Larkin Street Youth Services delivers a continuum of services to homeless youth including counseling, housing, education, employment, and HIV services. The agency has received significant local and national attention for the success of its targeted program model and continuum of care services. The history of Larkin Street Youth Services provides an example of the important role of internal operations in an agency's ability to re-invent itself and respond to a larger community need.     

The Unity Council at 40: a pioneering community development and service organization (1967-2007)

The Spanish Speaking Unity Council (Unity Council) is a community development nonprofit organization that was established in 1964, during the civil rights movement, by a group of community members who wanted to ensure the political representation of the Latino community. Over its 45-year history, the Unity Council has grown into a $12 million community development organization that delivers a range of programming, including social services and employment training as well as facilitating the development and support of local businesses, low-income housing, and neighborhood improvement activities. The history of the agency presents the multiple challenges and rewards associated with development in an underserved community and an example of the important role that leadership plays in the growth of a nonprofit.     

BANANAS: providing child care services to a multi-ethnic community

BANANAS, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that has provided child care resource and referral services for over 35 years. BANANAS emerged as a grassroots effort initiated by a group of female volunteers who sought to build a network of women with children who needed childcare. As the organization developed, its leaders recognized and responded to additional needs, including resource and information sharing, workshops and classes, and political advocacy. Beginning as a collective, BANANAS has grown into a multifaceted service delivery and advocacy nonprofit operating with an annual budget of $12 million. This history of the agency reflects the development of a unique community-based effort, its challenges and rewards, and the multiple successes that this pioneering nonprofit has experienced.     

Jewish Family and Children's Services: a pioneering human service organization (1850-2008)

Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, and Sonoma Counties is a pioneering nonprofit human service organization that has delivered services for 157 years. Over the course of its history, the organization has transformed itself from an all-volunteer agency delivering aid to immigrant families during the Gold Rush era to a $30 million nonprofit human service organization offering a full-range of services to adults, children, and families. The history of Jewish Family and Children's Services sheds light on the importance of strong leadership, strategic planning, external relationships, and strong donor support.     

Career Planning in Spain: Do Fixed-term Contracts Delay Marriage and Parenthood?

The aim of this paper is to find an empirical connection between the striking increase in the use of fixed-term contracts in Spain and the observed delay in the age at marriage and maternity. Using the eight waves of individual information from the European Household Panel for Spain, we find that for men, the decision whether to get married is strongly negatively affected by holding unstable contracts or not working, relative to when an indefinite contract is held. However, for women, results suggest that holding fixed-term contracts is not a deterrent for the decision whether to get married. With respect to the decision of whether to enter into parenthood, results indicate that for all childless women, either with no partner, holding fixed-term contracts delays entry into motherhood relative to the holding of indefinite contracts. The discouragement effect is stronger for women with no partner, though.JEL classification: D1, J1     

Gender as contradiction: From dichotomies to diversity in natural resource extraction

Given the varied nature of resource dependent communities, the gendered experiences of women and men may vary in unexpected and contradictory ways. Building on a review and critique of existing theoretical approaches and studies of US and Canadian extractive resource communities in both the feminist and rural social science literature, we provide an analytical approach to engage with gender in the context of these dramatic changes. Our framework, which integrates key insights from recent feminist theorizing, summarizes emergent constructions of masculinity and femininity in a given context by emphasizing the possible contradictions along three broad lines: material, material-discursive, and discursive.     

"Couples as Partners and Parents over Children's Early Years"

We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine how couple relationship quality and parental engagement are linked over children's early years-when they are infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Our sample included 1,630 couples that were coresident over years 1 to 3 and 1,376 couples that were coresident over years 3 to 5 (1,196 over both periods). Overall, we found that better relationship quality predicted greater parental engagement for both mothers and fathers-especially in the infant to toddler years; in contrast, we found little evidence that parental engagement predicted future relationship quality. Married and cohabiting couples were generally similar in how relationship quality and parenting were linked.     

Police interviews with vulnerable people alleging sexual assault: Probing inconsistency and questioning conduct

Reporting sexual assault to the authorities is fraught with difficulties, and these are compounded when the complainant is hindered by an intellectual disability (ID). In a study of 19 U.K. police interviews with complainants with ID alleging sexual assault and rape, we found that most interviewing officers on occasion pursued lines of questioning which not only probed inconsistencies (which is mandated by their guidelines), but implicitly questioned complainants’ conduct (which is not). We detail two main conversational practices which imply disbelief and disapproval of the complainants’ accounts and behaviour, and whose pragmatic entailments may pose problems for complainants with ID. Such practices probably emerge from interviewers’ foreshadowing of the challenges likely to be made in court by defence counsel. As a policy recommendation, we suggest providing early explanation for the motivation for such questioning, and avoiding certain question formats (especially how come you did X? and why didn't you do Y?).     

Gender,Contraceptive Attitudes,and Condom Use in Adolescent Romantic Relationships: A Dyadic Approach

Although sexual risk behavior occurs in a dyadic context, most studies of adolescent sexual behavior focus on individuals. This study uses couple data (N = 488 couples) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how partners' contraceptive attitudes correlate over time and whether male or female partners' attitudes are better predictors of condom use. Net of their own prior attitudes, partners' prior attitudes predicted both male and female adolescents' Wave 2 attitudes. This association was stronger for female than for male adolescents, suggesting that female attitudes were influenced more by males' prior attitudes than vice versa. When entered together, only male adolescents' attitudes predicted dyadic condom use. Findings suggest that male partners may have greater influence on adolescent contraceptive decisions and that prevention programs should emphasize the relational context of sexual behavior.