ARNOVA: Fund for our Economic Future
David Abbott, CEO of the George Gund Foundation spoke during Thursday evening's plenary session about the Fund for our Economic Future, a collaboration of over 70 philanthropists & organizations in Northeastern Ohio created to revitalize businesses and bring new jobs to the region. This collaboration has been going on since 2004 and has raised over $90mil.David's speech was inspiring and honest. He spoke about how the fund is working balance its collaboration efforts and mission fulfillment of of supporting business growth, talent development, and inclusion activities. D

ARNOVA: The state of nonprofit education
I spent most of Thursday and Friday of the ARNOVA conference in the "Blossom" room for all the nonprofit education focused sessions.Since I'm studying what impact and use experiential learning components (e.g. applied projects, internships, practicums, capstones) have on nonprofit organizations, I enjoyed learning about what other nonprofit education scholars are studying in the field. Here's a synopsis:Melissa Gaeke from the University of Southern California assessed what types of civic engagement and activities that students do on campus. They she surveyed students participating in these civic activities t

Take-Away Points from Colloquy: “Challenges of Developing New Theory in Nonprofit and Voluntary Ac
Guest Blog post from Taylor Peyton Roberts, University of San Diego.Chair: Margaret HarrisPresenters:Jeff Brudney, Bob Donmoyer, Angela Eikenberry, Paul Kabalo, Lucas Meijs, Laurie Paarlberg, Jo Anne Schneider, Nidhi SrinivasAlthough this session was so rich with discussion that it would be impossible for me to do it justice in a blog, the meeting was such a thought-provoking treat that I have been inspired to collectively summarize some key highlights:• In nonprofit research, borrowing from theories of other disciplines requires accurately interpreting the languages of those disciplines.• There is great value in adopting a pluralist

2009 ARNOVA-Goers: Meet Your Wordle.
Guest Blog post from Taylor Peyton Roberts, University of San Diego.If you haven’t already spent enough time perusing ARNOVA’s 38th Annual Conference Program today, here’s a colorful twist on the program’s content.For those of you who are not familiar with Wordle, it is an online application that allows users to transform text into word cloud graphics. In the final product, the most frequently-appearing words are largest in size. I couldn’t resist the temptation to discover the Wordle-flavor of ARNOVA’s detailed conference program this year. Check out the snazzy result!

ARNOVA: What’s in a name? Involving the community in research.
Tonight during the teaching section workshop we learned about Research Service Learning that was defined as “a collaborative teaching and learning strategy designed to promote academic enhancement, personal growth, civic learning, and the development of research capacities. Students render meaningful service—which include research activities—in community settings that present them with experiences related to academic material” (Clayton & Metelsky, 2009 Arnova Handout).Many people may know this type of research by a different name “Participatory Action Research.” This type of research is different than traditional research and involves community m