The Nonprofit Sector at a Crossroads: The Case of America

Despite some encouraging trends, America's nonprofit sector stands at a crossroads because of an interrelated series of challenges. Government budget cuts beginning in the early 1980s have eliminated a significant source of nonprofit revenues and created a serious fiscal squeeze for many organizations. Although the sector as a whole managed to replace this lost revenue, it has done so largely through fees and charges that have attracted for-profit businesses into traditional fields of nonprofit action, creating a serious economic challenge to the sector. Simultaneously, important questions have been raised about the effectiveness and accountability of nonprofit organizations, and about what some see as the overprofessionalization and bureaucratization of the sector. All of this has undermined public confidence in the sector and prompted questions about the basic legitimacy of the special tax and legal benefits it enjoys. To cope with these challenges, American nonprofits could usefully undergo a process of renewal that revives the sector's basic values, reconnects it to its citizen base, and creates a better public understanding of its functions and role.     

高校体育经费多渠道来源的研究

运用文献资料法和逻辑分析法等方法分析了社会主义市场经济条件下高校体育所面,临的体育经费不足等主要困惑,阐明对这些困惑所持的态度,并提出了摆脱主要困惑、多渠道筹措体育经费的具体对策。     

The successes and challenges of implementing individualised funding and supports for disabled people: an Irish perspective

‘Individualised funding’, which is rooted in the Independent Living Movement, has formed part of a global paradigm shift in support services for disabled people. Against the backdrop of international experience, a political system aligned with the United Kingdom and emergent critics of individualised funding, this article presents findings from an evaluation of four pilot programmes in Ireland. Exemplified by independent-skills development and community integration, these initiatives have been welcomed as a progressive development beyond traditional service provision, with perceived improvements across a range of organisational, personal, health and social care domains. The article explores the importance of ‘natural supports’ and how overly protective behaviour may unintentionally act as a barrier to full implementation. The findings also indicate that unnecessarily complex systems can lead to individual burn-out. Furthermore, a national resource allocation system working in partnership with existing social care professionals and the wider community is recommended, as is learning from overly simplified, group-based ideologies.     

作为代际剥削手段的彩礼——转型期华北农村彩礼习俗嬗变研究

彩礼是婚姻支付的重要形式,其变迁与农村社会的巨变紧密相关。进入新世纪后,华北农村的彩礼习俗发生了质变,彩礼本来是缔结婚约的标识物,也是代际之间均衡的财富转移方式,现在却变成了代际剥削的手段,子代借此向父代索要高额家庭财富,推动了彩礼数目的暴涨。彩礼性质的嬗变是家庭结构、家计模式和代际关系变迁合力型塑的结果,其中代际关系失衡是根本原因。     

The crowding‐out effect within government funding: Implications for within‐source diversification

The benefits and risks of revenue diversification lead scholars to propose within‐source diversification as a possible compromise. Although this revenue strategy sounds promising, no scholarly attention has been devoted to empirically examining it. This study explores within‐source diversification across government funding, specifically whether nonprofit receipt of support from a major government funder affects support from other government funders. Using a panel dataset of U.S.‐based international development nonprofits from 1995 to 2014, we find that nonprofits with more funding from the major funder are associated with significantly less funding from other funders. This crowding‐out effect weakens as organization size grows. The findings imply that the within‐source diversification strategy might be more desirable for larger organizations with the capacity to manage multiple funding relationships.     

The crisis of local authority funding and its implications for independent living for disabled people in the United Kingdom

The recent financial collapse of Northamptonshire County Council sets a worrying precedent for local authorities in the United Kingdom, and in particular for disabled people who depend on services provided by local authorities, such as Direct Payments for personal assistance, for their daily living needs. While the Northamptonshire situation has been blamed on financial incompetence, we argue that it has deeper roots in austerity policies implemented by Conservative-led governments since 2010 on a national level. We also argue that the placement of responsibility for funding personal assistance services in the hands of local authorities creates a deeply unjust ‘postcode lottery’ for disabled people, and we call for a national right to all services necessary for independent living, regardless of cost.     

中国现行高校学生资助制度的选择与评价

经过较长历史时期的嬗变,中国高校现行的"奖、贷、补、助、减"五位一体学生混合资助制度得以形成,这一制度的确立是和国家财政体制改革及教育公平等理念密不可分的,在发挥重要功能的同时,也存在许多的问题与不足。     

Establishing best practice university research funding strategies using mixed-mode modelling

This paper develops a model representing the university research funding problem under a performance based research funding (PBRF) scheme during the ‘lead-up period’ using a mixed-mode modelling approach (involving soft and hard models) and suggests a solution heuristic. The resultant model facilitates the development of ‘best practice’ strategies to assist in raising the level of research quality and participation, thus placing the university (or academic unit) in the best possible position for facing the final hurdle, the formal research assessment process. This assessment process constitutes the ‘positioning problem’, for which models already exist to assist individual universities to adopt the most favourable strategy. However, the ultimate position of the university depends on the results from the lead-up period. The suggested model facilitates ‘research enhancement’ strategy formulation, evaluation and revision and actively involves the researchers themselves. Benchmarking, an Expert Panel (operating on panel consensus) and subjective strategy impact evaluation are the key tools used. The suggested methodology relies on the knowledge, wisdom and experience of the researchers themselves and will hopefully facilitate the achievement of an academic unit's research goals over the lead-up period preparing them for the ‘positioning problem’. The paper also offers some suggestions as to how to establish and obtain maximum usefulness from the expert panel. Lastly, the suggested solution to the suggested model is user friendly, requiring no more than the use of a spreadsheet.     

When Social Health Insurance Goes Wrong: Lessons from Argentina and Mexico

Social health insurance (SHI) has gained popularity in recent years as a health‐care funding mechanism for developing countries in Latin America and beyond. This is reflected in a number of high‐profile conferences sponsored by international agencies, and a profusion of externally funded reform projects. This article assesses the potential of SHI to provide a sound model of health‐care financing, drawing on the experiences of Argentina and Mexico. It uses four criteria to assess the performance of SHI: coverage, equity, effectiveness and sustainability. The article begins by outlining key principles of SHI and comparing it to other models of health‐care financing. It then gives a comparative overview of four SHI programmes in Argentina and Mexico, before analysing their performance in greater detail. The article finishes by extracting lessons from this comparative analysis, both for the countries studied and for global debates on SHI.     

尼日利亚大学财政体制及财政困境探析

尼日利亚大学财政问题不仅与其高等教育体制相关，也受到尼日利亚经济和社会发展状况的影响。尼日利亚大学的财政管理体制主要表现为分权与集权相结合，而政府投入是尼日利亚大学财政的主要来源。由于尼日利亚经济的不景气和政局的不稳定，政府对教育的财政拨款无法满足大学的发展需求，这导致尼日利亚大学面临严重的财政问题，由此带来了物质设备和基础建设不足、学术项目开展受限、教师缺乏工作积极性等负面影响。