Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society

For donors, grantmakers, and seasoned philanthropy professionals seeking to be more effective with your giving: Earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy in October when you complete our 6-day hybrid executive education course, Education for Philanthropy Professionals!

Course highlights:

➤ Learn evergreen fundamentals of effective grantmaking from Stanford University philanthropy scholars and a curated group of guest speakers with expertise in philanthropic practice and scholarship.

➤ Session highlights include: The Global View (Melissa Berman), Values in Giving (Carmen Rojas), and Strategy for Social Change (Vera Michalchik).

➤ Cohort size is limited to ensure an in-depth, community-building learning experience with course faculty and peers.

➤ Professionals practicing anywhere worldwide are encouraged to apply.

Learn more and apply now: https://stanford.io/3l4C2ma

Former Digital Civil Society Lab Practitioner Fellows Nicole Ozer and Burcu Kilic have been selected by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy as 2024-25 Technology & Human Rights Fellows.

They will join a cohort dedicated to exploring the theme of “Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy: Who Knows, Who Decides?”

Learn more:

Announcing the Carr Center’s 2024–2025 “Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy” Fellowship Cohort The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy breaks new ground with an international fellowship network dedicated to advancing theory and practice on the urgent question that faces every society:

Digital Civil Society Lab Technology & Racial Equity Practitioner Fellows Kasia Chmielinski, Neema Githere, Yolanda Jinxin Ma, Daniel Maingi, Barbara Ntambirweki, and Jasmine Walker came together this summer to share updates and findings from their fellowship projects to inform and benefit global civil society.

From elevating community voices amid the push for digitalization in Africa to ensuring representation and equity across digital platforms, the fellows’ projects investigate critical issues for digital civil society.

Learn about their work:

DCSL Practitioner Fellows Project Showcase - Stanford PACS Digital Civil Society Lab Technology & Racial Equity Practitioner Fellows share findings from their work to inform and benefit global civil society.

Since 2012, Stanford PACS has partnered with The Philanthropy Lab to provide a Philanthropy for Sustainable Development course to Stanford University students.

Participants learn about the approaches, history, and key debates in philanthropy, and apply their knowledge by collaboratively making a substantial class contribution to one or more select nonprofit organizations, a process that has directed more than $1 million to nonprofits since the course began.

Read takeaways on the course from Vera Michalchik and Micah McElroy, who led the class this spring, and learn about this year's selected grantees, including RefuSHE, icddr,b, and Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.

https://stanford.io/4d3wu5V

From Theory to Action: Empowering Stanford Students with Real-Life Philanthropy Experiences - Stanford PACS Since 2012, Stanford PACS has partnered with The Philanthropy Lab to provide a Philanthropy for Sustainable Development course to Stanford University students of all levels of familiarity with philanthropy. The course, led in 2024 by Vera Michalchik, Director of the Effective Philanthropy Learning I...

Last chance to claim your early-bird discount: Apply by August 1!

For donors, grantmakers, and seasoned philanthropy professionals seeking to be more effective with your giving: Earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy in October when you complete our 6-day hybrid executive education course, Education for Philanthropy Professionals.

Learn more and apply TODAY!
https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/research/effective-philanthropy-learning-initiative/education/pacs-education-for-philanthropy-professionals/

How do strategic and organizations partner with and support the effectiveness of nonprofits?

Learn how to practice good grantmaking from an experienced leader, Lydia Bransten, Executive Director of The Gubbio Project, which provides Sacred Sleep, Breakfast, and Sanctuary Services for people in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy in October when you complete our 6-day hybrid executive education course, Education for Philanthropy Professionals!

Spaces are filling fast! Apply by August 1 to receive the early-bird discount.

https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/research/effective-philanthropy-learning-initiative/education/pacs-education-for-philanthropy-professionals/

Our Faculty Co-Director Robb Willer is among the authors of a new brief from Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence that reviews the current landscape of large language models developed for psychotherapy and proposes a framework for evaluating the readiness of these AI tools for clinical deployment.

Read the brief:

Toward Responsible Development and Evaluation of LLMs in Psychotherapy Policy Brief Image June 13, 2024 Toward Responsible Development and Evaluation of LLMs in Psychotherapy Elizabeth C. Stade, Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, Lyle Ungar, Cody L. Boland, H. Andrew Schwartz, David B. Yaden, João Sedoc, Robert J. DeRubeis, Robb Willer, Jane P. Kim, Johannes C. EichstaedtThis b...

For donors, grantmakers, and seasoned philanthropy professionals seeking to be more effective with your giving: Earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy in October when you complete our 6-day hybrid executive education course, Education for Philanthropy Professionals!

Spaces are filling fast. Apply by August 1 to receive the early-bird discount!

Course highlights:

➤ Learn evergreen fundamentals of effective grantmaking from Stanford University philanthropy scholars and a curated group of guest speakers with expertise in philanthropic practice and scholarship.

➤ Session highlights include: History of Philanthropy (Micah McElroy), Giving Vehicle Issues (Ben Soskis), Philanthropy and Democracy (Emma Saunders-Hastings), and AI and Philanthropy (Rhodri Davies).

➤ Cohort size is limited to ensure an in-depth, community-building learning experience with course faculty and peers.

➤ Professionals practicing anywhere worldwide are encouraged to apply.

Learn more and apply now: https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/research/effective-philanthropy-learning-initiative/education/pacs-education-for-philanthropy-professionals/

“This is a moment of opportunity to rethink grantmaking practices and priorities—and to think about how nonprofits can improve the public good by ensuring the public delivery of public goods.”

Former Stanford PACS Postdoctoral Fellow Claire Dunning wrote in The Nonprofit Quarterly about current philanthropic initiatives to build a “post”-neoliberal economy, examining philanthropy’s historic ties to neoliberalism and the role of private dollars in supporting public goods.

Read:

What Does the “End” of Neoliberalism Mean for the Nonprofit Sector? - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly Philanthropic foundations have played a major role in promoting neoliberal economic frameworks that have dominated the late 20th century. Now, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector are trying to usher in a new economic framework.

"If you don’t have a plan for navigating partisan division, you don’t have a plan for social impact—not a complete one."

Robb Willer, our faculty co-director and director of our Polarization and Social Change Lab, joined the National Governors Association (NGA) Summer Meeting last week to discuss the impacts of the NGA’s campaign, which aimed to elevate solutions to the pressing problems of polarization in the U.S.

Watch Robb's presentation on the campaign’s outcomes: https://bit.ly/46deeUP

Read more about the Summer Meeting and takeaways from the Disagree Better campaign: https://yhoo.it/3SbLDcV

Study Results of Disagree Better Commercials - 2024 NGA Summer Meeting Robb Willer, Director of the Stanford University Polarization and Social Change Lab, shares research confirming that bipartisan Disagree Better ads recorded ...

"In the Strengthening Democracy Challenge — a sweeping effort looking at interventions to protect democracy — researchers found that one of the most effective ways of reducing support for political violence is to challenge partisans' beliefs that those on the other side were OK with violence."

ABC News highlighted research from Faculty Co-Director Robb Willer and our Polarization and Social Change Lab about how to reduce support for political violence, including findings from the Strengthening Democracy Project.

"We find correcting those misperceptions [about out-partisans' support for political violence] can lead people to then report less support for political violence themselves, suggesting that a lot of people's actual support for political violence is retaliatory," Robb shared.

"Willer and his team also found that calls for unity and the upholding of democratic norms from political elites — what we've largely seen in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt — reduce support for violence."

Read the full article via ABC News:

Why it's so hard to measure support for political violence How many Americans support political violence? It's hard to tell.

A new paper by Global Innovation for Impact Lab Co-Director Johanna Mair and co-authors Nathania Chua, Christof Miska, and Günter K. Stahl reviews management literature on the concept of "purpose" over the past two decades, revealing fragmented approaches and perspectives.

Exploring possibilities for integration, the authors identify anchoring themes and conceptual dimensions across the literature to establish the groundwork for a programmatic agenda for future research, aimed to support purpose research as a distinct area of study in management.

Read the article via Academy of Management Annals: https://bit.ly/3LLNCkJ

Purpose in Management Research: Navigating a Complex and Fragmented Area of Study | Academy of Management Annals Management research on “purpose” is dispersed. This is because scholars apply different perspectives on purpose, each associated with distinct approaches to its study. We find that one perspective views purpose as embedded in the business–society context or as embodied within organizations. A ...

Earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy in October when you complete our 6-day hybrid executive education course: Education for Philanthropy Professionals!

Learn evergreen fundamentals of effective grantmaking from Stanford University philanthropy scholars and a curated group of guest speakers with expertise in philanthropic practice and scholarship.

Session highlights: effective multigenerational family ; the powerful wake of collective giving; philanthropy’s role in influencing public policy; and mobilizing capital investments for sustainable impact.

➤ Ideal for mid-career and seasoned philanthropy professionals making grants, or donors wishing to be more strategic with their giving.

➤ Cohort size is limited to ensure an in-depth, community-building learning experience with course faculty and peers.

➤ Professionals practicing anywhere worldwide are encouraged to apply.

Learn more and apply by August 1 to receive the early-bird discount:
https://lnkd.in/g8fNBZMz

The datafication of African agricultural systems is poised to significantly reshape agrarian power relations.

A new paper by Digital Civil Society Lab Practitioner Fellow Barbara Ntambirweki and co-author Matthew Canfield of Universiteit Leiden / Leiden University examines the risks of datafication through a case study of Kenya, a hub for digitalization on the African continent.

The authors advocate for a paradigm shift towards a framework that prioritizes farmers’ rights and fosters participatory data governance, placing farmers at the center of decision-making processes to address underlying power imbalances.

Read via Development: https://bit.ly/464lwKA

Datafying African Agriculture: From Data Governance to Farmers’ Rights - Development This article explores the impact of digital agricultural technologies on African agricultural systems. As we describe, the datafication of African agricultural systems is poised to reshape agrarian power relations significantly. We examine the risks of datafication through a case study of Kenya, a h...

Anushah Hossain, a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab, presented her research on Unicode and OpenType, considering their design principles and implications for index scripts, for a conference hosted last month by the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique.

Watch her presentation: https://anrt-nancy.fr/fr/videos -954270634

Learn more about her work as a historian and ethnographer of the internet: https://www.anushahhossain.org

Anrt – Vidéos Atelier national de recherche typographique

We were honored to by joined by Dame Louise Richardson of the Carnegie Corporation of New York for a discussion on philanthropy and polarization with Robb Willer, our Faculty Co-Director and Director of our Polarization and Social Change Lab.

Together, they discussed the problem of polarization; how philanthropy is supporting efforts to identify and elevate solutions, including through academic research; the potential for reforms and new structures to strengthen and safeguard democracy worldwide; and more.

Thank you to Dame Louise Richardson, our partners at the Cyber Policy Center (at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School), and to everyone who joined us at Stanford University for this insightful conversation. Stay tuned for video highlights!

Learn more about the work of our Polarization and Social Change Lab: https://stanford.io/3IQvnYY

Learn more about the Carnegie Corporation of New York's investments in democracy: https://bit.ly/3zKSYJT

“People probably are exactly right about how polarized their leaders are. They get it very wrong for the general public.”

Robb Willer, Director of our Polarization and Social Change Lab (PaSCL), spoke with TIME about how misperceptions inform affective polarization in the U.S.

Read the piece, including PaSCL research findings on how correcting inaccurate "metaperceptions" can reduce support for partisan violence.

The Polarization Myth The growing evidence that—even heading into this year’s election—Americans are less divided than you may think.

We are pleased to welcome two new Postdoctoral Fellows for the 2024-25 year, Jenessa Williams and Isha Bhallamudi! Jenessa and Isha will work with our Digital Civil Society Lab alongside Principal Investigator Angèle Christin.

With a background in music journalism and a PhD in Media & Communication, Jenessa explores how marginalized groups engage with and influence music communities.

Isha holds a PhD in Sociology and uses collaborative and mixed-methods approaches to study how AI-mediated digital platforms shape work, social life, and wellbeing, with particular attention to gender inequalities in Majority World contexts.

Please join us in welcoming Jenessa and Isha to the Stanford PACS community, and learn more about their work through our "Scholar Spotlight" interviews.

Interview with Jenessa: https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/person/jenessa-williams/

Interview with Isha: https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/person/isha-bhallamudi/

Join us in October and earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy when you complete our 6-day hybrid executive education course: Education for Philanthropy Professionals!

Learn evergreen fundamentals of effective grantmaking from Stanford University philanthropy scholars and many philanthropic leaders. Curriculum highlight: Delve into how trust-based philanthropic approaches live in strategic philanthropic practice.

➤ Ideal for mid-career and seasoned philanthropy professionals making grants, or donors wishing to be more strategic with their giving.

➤ Cohort size is limited to ensure an in-depth, community-building learning experience with course faculty and peers.

➤ Professionals practicing anywhere worldwide are encouraged to apply.

Learn more and apply by August 1 to receive the early-bird discount: https://stanford.io/3l4C2ma

This Thursday, Robb Willer of our Polarization and Social Change Lab will join the National Governors Association (NGA) Summer Meeting to discuss the impacts of the campaign.

Led by Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox, the outgoing chairman of the NGA, the Disagree Better campaign aimed to elevate solutions to the pressing problems of polarization in the U.S.

Learn more about the Summer Meeting: https://www.ksl.com/article/51059076/spencer-cox-matthew-mcconaughey-to-speak-at-us-governors-event-in-salt-lake-city

Learn more about Disagree Better: https://www.nga.org/disagree-better/

Spencer Cox, Matthew McConaughey to speak at US governors event in Salt Lake City Spencer Cox will speak as chairman of the National Governors Association in Salt Lake City next week, along with actor Matthew McConaughey.

Launched by scholars with our Polarization and Social Change Lab, the Structural Democratic Reforms Project wants to hear your ideas for improving America's political systems!

Ranked choice voting, independent redistricting commissions, nonpartisan primaries, a lower voting age—these are just a few examples of the kind of proposed reforms the SDRP team is looking for, with the goal of lifting up strategies for increasing citizens’ influence, expanding voter engagement, and ensuring the integrity of our elections.

Learn more and submit your ideas to be part of this collective effort to strengthen and safeguard American democracy—and stay tuned for a non-partisan conference sharing the results and exploring action steps.

https://www.democratic-reforms.org

Home | SDR Welcome! Help our research team fortify democracy by sharing your innovative solutions. We value collective wisdom and believe your ideas can strengthen democratic resilience. Let's co-create impactful and achievable reforms to improve democratic functioning together!

Drawing on their work with the Data Nutrition Project, Digital Civil Society Lab Practitioner Fellow Kasia Chmielinski delivered a on why AI systems should have "nutrition labels" to ensure the development of fairer, more transparent algorithms.

Watch the talk: https://bit.ly/4cFQTxf

Why AI needs a "nutrition label" What do sandwiches have to do with AI? Data reformist Kasia Chmielinski helps us think about artificial intelligence with a useful food metaphor — and breaks down why AI systems should have "nutrition labels" to ensure the development of fairer, more transparent algorithms.

“The basic rule for AI and democracy is that it amplifies the abilities of all good and bad actors in the system to achieve all the same goals they’ve always had.”

Nate Persily of our Program on Democracy and the Internet participated in a discussion on and the 2024 elections hosted by the GETTING-Plurality Research Network, a project of the Ash Center’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School and Connection Science at the MIT Media Lab.

Watch the discussion: https://bit.ly/4eHaBdQ

Read takeaways from the event: https://bit.ly/4bughVE

AI and the 2024 Elections – Ash Center The GETTING-Plurality Research Network at the Ash Center’s Allen Lab and Connection Science at MIT Media Lab hosted a webinar event focused on “AI and the 2024 Elections”. In this session, we hear from Danielle Allen, Harvard University; Sandy Pentland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a...

“The sweet spot for how academics can help is to find those [research areas] that are both a specific, local problem and have the potential to be generalizable knowledge.”

We spoke with Patricia Bromley, faculty co-director and director of our Global Civil Society and Sustainable Development Lab (GCSSD), about the GCSSD’s recent Civil Society and Sustainability Conference, which gathered scholars as well as civil society leaders to explore the role of civil society in global sustainability efforts and discuss ways that researchers can contribute to innovative solutions.

Read the interview:

Reflections on the Civil Society and Sustainability Conference with Professor Patricia Bromley - Stanford PACS Stanford PACS and civil society leaders. Photo taken by Kathryn Mazie Davis. On June 4-5, the Global Civil Society & Sustainable Development (GCSSD) lab hosted their second annual Civil Society and Sustainability Conference at Stanford University. The conference, led by Stanford PACS’ faculty dire...

Earn your Stanford PACS Certificate of Effective Philanthropy in 2024!

Now accepting applications for our October 2024 6-day hybrid executive education course: Education for Philanthropy Professionals. Enjoy the beautiful Stanford University campus and network with colleagues practicing worldwide for the first three days (October 16-18), followed by three days of remote learning (October 22-24).

Course Highlights

➤ Engage with Stanford philanthropy scholars and philanthropic leaders to deepen your understanding of the sector’s history and current trends.

➤ Learn evergreen fundamentals, including best practices for effective philanthropy and approaches to social change.

➤ Ideal for mid-career and seasoned philanthropy professionals making grants, or donors wishing to be more strategic with their giving.

➤ Cohort size is limited to ensure an in-depth, community-building learning experience with course faculty and peers.

➤ Professionals practicing anywhere worldwide are encouraged to apply.

➤ Early-bird and group discounts offered if you apply by August 1.

Learn more and apply: https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/research/effective-philanthropy-learning-initiative/education/pacs-education-for-philanthropy-professionals/

A new paper by Patricia Bromley, Tom Nachtigal, and Rie Kijima draws on the World Education Reform Database to examine changes in the promissory visions articulated in education reforms around the world.

Analyzing the content of 9,268 reforms from 215 countries from 1970 to 2018, the authors identify a decline in traditional management-focused reforms and a rise in reforms related to data and information. They argue that the rise of data-centric reforms and the retreat from rights-based approaches may be connected, both reflecting and contributing to a broader erosion of the liberal world order.

Read "Data as the New Panacea: Trends in Global Education Reforms, 1970-2018" via a special issue of Comparative Education: https://bit.ly/4c5GzyJ

Data as the new panacea: trends in global education reforms, 1970–2018 This paper investigates changes in the promissory visions articulated in education reforms around the world. We use structural topic modeling to inductively analyze the content of 9,268 reforms fro...

Just a few spots left for our June 20-21 Effective Philanthropy for Advisors Workshop!

Hosted by Stanford PACS in partnership with AiP (International Association of Advisors in Philanthropy), the two-part live webinar will:

➤ Show you how to leverage effective practices and use the Stanford PACS Philanthropy Toolkit to build stronger relationships with your clients and their families

➤ Expand your professional network to a range of other advisors (financial planners, tax and estate attorneys, donor relations officers at foundations, etc.)

➤ Allow you to learn by doing, giving you a chance to develop your own Effective Philanthropy Plan—and earn CFP CE credits while you’re at it!

➤ Offer tailored instruction for , , and

Learn more and register today! https://www.advisorsinphilanthropy.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1828024&group=

Sociologists have long studied the educational incorporation of immigrants and refugees, but most scholarship focuses on questions of access, achievement, attainment, and acculturation.

A new paper by Minju Choi of our Global Civil Society & Sustainable Development Lab and co-author Julia C. Lerch of UC Irvine extends this literature by examining the incorporation of immigrants and refugees in the cultural content of schooling, drawing on a unique dataset spanning 509 textbooks from 80 countries, representing all regions of the world from 1963 to 2011.

Learn what the authors discovered about how textbooks around the world incorporate and discuss immigrants and refugees, via International Sociology:

Portrayal of immigrants and refugees in textbooks worldwide, 1963–2011 - Minju Choi, Julia C Lerch, 2024 Sociologists have long studied the educational incorporation of immigrants and refugees, but most scholarship focuses on questions of access, achievement, attai...

Attention scholars, activists, practitioners, and engaged citizens!

The new Structural Democratic Reforms Project—launched by researchers from our Polarization and Social Change Lab and partners at Dartmouth—seeks your ideas for improving America's political systems.

Submit your ideas, big or small, for:

➤ Increasing citizens’ influence
➤ Facilitating voter participation
➤ Ensuring election integrity and fairness

Learn more and share your ideas here:

Home | SDR Welcome! Help our research team fortify democracy by sharing your innovative solutions. We value collective wisdom and believe your ideas can strengthen democratic resilience. Let's co-create impactful and achievable reforms to improve democratic functioning together!

Last week, we were proud to partner with Project ECHO to host a day of conversation about transforming health care in the Global South.

Moderated by our Executive Director Priya Shanker, the event brought together leaders in health care, global development, philanthropy, and tech with the goal of spurring collective action for immediate and long-term improvements in human health in the Global South.

Featured speakers included Nandan Nilekani, Soumya Swaminathan, Jeffrey Bradach, Wangari Ng'ang'a, Rohini Nilekani, Don Berwick, and Dr. Sanjeev Arora.

Read takeaways from the event via New India Abroad: https://bit.ly/45gtIXR

Learn more about the event here: https://lnkd.in/g_qSBbaJ

Transforming healthcare in the Global South Less than six years remain to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and partnerships, innovation and mobilization of resources are crucial to meeting these goals, said Priya Shanker, executive director, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). Stanford PAC hosted...