The Investment Returns of Nonprofit Organizations,Part I

Nonprofit charities and foundations hold endowments and many other kinds of investments. How do these investments perform? Some high‐profile nonprofit endowments, including those of colleges and universities, have been studied previously. This study is the first, to our knowledge, that looks at a large number of the diverse types of nonprofits. We investigate the determinants of investment performance using a large panel data set culled from the 990 forms that nonprofits must file annually with the IRS. In this first part of our article, we discuss our approach and the challenges of using these data to infer investment returns. The IRS data, though less than perfect, yield valuable measures of the investment returns of nonprofits. They reveal that some charities consistently do better in their investment returns than do others.     

College Health as a Partner in the Care of Pediatric Cancer Survivors

Abstract

Objective: This study reviews an initiative to educate providers on pediatric cancer survivor care and to establish a cancer survivor registry in a college health center. Participants: Participants were University of Georgia (UGA) college health providers. Methods: Providers attended lectures on survivor care and were encouraged to register on Cancer SurvivorLink. Changes in provider familiarity and practice were measured using baseline and follow-up surveys. A survivor registry was created using health entrance forms and medical records abstraction. Results: Twenty-four providers registered on SurvivorLink, and 16 completed both surveys. Familiarity with survivor care (p = .003) and a survivor health care plan (p = .016) increased. Likelihood to deliver survivor care increased (p = .01). UGA follows 95 survivors; 71 diagnosed at < 21 years. Among survivors diagnosed at < 21 years, 91% reported their diagnosis on entrance forms. Conclusions: Through education and optimization of health informatics, college health centers can identify and provide survivor care to this medically vulnerable population.     

Multicultural education: the state of play from an Australian perspective

This article reports on the first comprehensive survey of public school teachers in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) around issues of multicultural and English as Second Language (ESL) education. While there is substantial literature on multicultural education – what it should and shouldn’t be – there is much that is left unexplored in research in the area, not least of which is the characteristics of the teaching labour force. In this article, we ‘take stock’ of multicultural education, not by engaging with philosophical debates about multiculturalism as an ethical or policy practice, but as an auditing of what exists in the name of multicultural education. Drawing on a sample of over 5000 respondents, the article documents the changing cultural profile of the profession and highlights gaps in pre-service training and professional learning of teachers in terms of meeting the needs of Australia’s increasingly culturally and linguistically complex school populations.     

The dramaturgical society: A macro-analytic approach to dramaturgical analysis

While the writings of Erving Goffman have illuminated the dramaturgical components of face-to-face interaction, the task of developing a thoroughgoing substantive and theoretical explication of the dramaturgical society remains. This paper explores the utility of a dramaturgical analysis at the macrosocietal level. The character of a dramaturgical society is discussed in the first section. The origins of a critical dramaturgy are presented in the next section. The conditions of social organization which give birth to a dramaturgical society are set forth in the next sections, and the utility of dramaturgy for a self-directed society are weighed in the final section. This paper was prepared with the assistance of Jeanne Boland, New Zealand.     

The Investment Returns of Nonprofit Organizations,Part II

We continue our examination of the investment performance of nonprofit charities and foundations. This analysis tests hypotheses about what types of organizations do better. Our motivating intuition is that nonprofits with greater focus on investment performance will secure higher returns. Our hypotheses are tested by regressing the rate of return for each organization on various characteristics. As expected, nonprofits whose primary business is predominantly financial, such as insurance providers and pension or retirement funds, consistently earn higher returns. The data also support our hypotheses that larger nonprofits, older nonprofits, and private foundations will tend to outperform. The evidence is mixed as to whether nonprofits that pay higher executive salaries or spend more on management earn higher returns.     

Gender,family negotiations and academic success of young Moroccan women in Spain

This article examines the lives of pioneering young women from Morocco, the first to enjoy educational and social success in Catalonia, by analyzing the family negotiations entered into during this process. The study is based on the life stories of these young Moroccan women and on ideas that emerge from discussion groups involving the women themselves and experts in education and other fields. We report that the young women perceive a certain degree of flexibility on the part of their families in their intra-family relations and the model of woman they are prepared to accept. However, our study also provides evidence of the fact that their success is associated with a constant process of negotiation, the women having to exercise their agency above and beyond their parental expectations and control, leaving them in a position of solitude.