Understanding major gift donors

The Seven Faces of Philanthropy: A New Approach to Cultivating Major Donors, by Russ Alan Prince and Karen Maru File. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994. 247 pp., $27.95 cloth. Why the Wealthy Give: The Culture of Elite Philanthropy, by Francie Ostrower. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. 190 pp., $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Use and Usability of Assisted Living Facilities for the Elderly: An Observation Study in Gothenburg Sweden

To meet the demographic development, measures were initiated by the Swedish government entailing changed conditions for municipal eldercare, such as assisted living. Participant observation is used to study the daily use of common spaces in 14 assisted living units in Gothenburg. The results show examples where the current use diverges from the intended use and suggest diverging objectives and conflicts of use. The observations indicate that the degree of usability is determined by the physical environment itself in some cases, by the users and by changes in use in other cases, and by a combination of both in some cases.     

Beyond Munchausen by Proxy: A Proposed Conceptualization for Cases of Recurring,Unsubstantiated Sexual Abuse Allegations

In the emerging literature, cases involving recurring, unsubstantiated allegations of child sexual abuse have generally been categorized as Munchausen by proxy. Recent scholars have recommended restricting the label to the original conceptualization, involving purposeful deception motivated by psychological needs for medical attention. This leaves many cases unclassified that do not fit the Munchausen by proxy criteria, involve significant risks to the child, and ultimately fall outside of existing structures for Child Protective Services/legal intervention. This paper presents a reconceptualization of such cases, proposing to label them “recurring sexual abuse allegation” cases. Defining the set of cases more clearly can aid child protection workers in their management and encourage research on prevalence, consequences to children, treatment strategies, and needed legal reforms.     

Predictive models for annual fundraising and major gift fundraising

For most nonprofit organizations, the selection process for determining the best individual prospects for capital campaigns or annual fund drives are ad hoc and intuitive. Our research provides two statistical models developed from the alumni database at Northwestern University for both major gifts and annual fund prospects. One model predicts which individuals will give $100,000 or more over three years, the other, $1,000 or more. Our work provides a means of more efficiently selecting fundraising prospects. In our analysis, we combine geo-demographic data with the internal data typically found in alumni databases. A metric is presented to test the viability of the models when compared to single-criterion models. We show that past giving is the strongest single factor in predicting future giving. However, full models provide superior overall results.     

The Social Construction of the Midlife Crisis: A Case Study in the Temporalities of Identity

This paper examines the emergence, reification, and dissemination of the "midlife crisis" from a sociology of knowledge perspective. Two decades of articles on the subject from both professional and mass media sources (n = 233) are content analyzed. Upon elaborating the various biological, psychological, and social psychological theories of this biographical phenomenon, we address such questions as how different disciplines portray the event, what patterns of interdisciplinary citations there are, and how these professional depictions lead into the mass media. The results suggest longitudinal declines in the frequency of reductionist explanations from the biological and psychiatric paradigms and increasing attention given to the interplay between social dynamics and personality structures. From this, a new sociocultural theory is posited, one portraying this subjective experience deriving not simply from age, but from external social temporalities. Specifically, we consider the particular cohort that most midlife research is based upon as well as the particular historical period when it reached middle age.     

Listening Otherwise: The Voice of Ethics

The issues of response and responsibility are woven into the center of dialogic ethics (Levinas, 1996, 1998, 1999; Schrag, 1986 Schrag, C. O. 1986. Communicative praxis and the space of subjectivity, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.  [Google Scholar]; Hyde, 2001, 2006), yet quietly embedded persists a hidden but presupposed prior action-that of listening-about which the philosophy of dialogue falls, ironically, silent. The idea of the response as related to ideas of reply, answer, and reaction as well as its etymological derivation from the Latin spondere ‘to pledge’ (promise, offer, sacrifice) stresses only the speaking of an ethical actor. The act of listening is itself concealed and rendered invisible. This paper suggests that the answer to the ethical call of conscience is not a speaking, but a listening. It is, moreover, a listening otherwise that suspends the willfulness of self and fore-knowledge in order to receive the singularities of the alterity of the other. To say that ethics arises from listening is thus to subordinate speaking to a kind of listening that speaks—a listening that is awakened and attuned to the sounds of difference rather than to the sounds of sameness. Thus it's rarely a question of whether or not the voice of ethics speaks, for the voice is always speaking. The question is whether we are listening.     

The role of international human resource in leading a company from a domestic to a global corporate culture

One of the biggest challenges facing HR is to help a company move from a domestic corporate orientation to working in a global business environment. Using the international human resource department as an example of where this transformation must occur first, the global paradigm shift is explored from the theoretical (international human resource management models) and practical (global HR competencies) perspectives. The discussion is supplemented with a cross-cultural HR development plan necessary to accomplish this cultural transformation.