Under contract with United Jewish Communities, the RGK Center is examining the impact of short and long term service programs on the development of Jewish identity among Jewish young people.
About 27,000 University of Texas at Austin undergraduate students performed volunteer service between August 2001 and May 2002 according to a study conducted by the University's Office of Survey Research for the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service. The survey was designed through a collaborative effort of researchers and staff from the RGK Center, Office of Survey Research, Department of Sociology, and University Volunteer Center. The 1,514 respondents were chosen through a random selection of all UT undergraduates enrolled in the spring of 2002.
RGK Center Faculty Fellow Jacqueline Angel has a new book on volunteering entitled Inheritance in Contemporary America: The Social Dimensions of Giving across Generations. In this book, she "tackles the complex legal, policy, and emotional issues that surround bequests and inheritances in an era of increasing longevity, broadening ethnicity, and unraveling social safety nets. Through empirical analyses, case studies, interviews, and anecdotes, Jacqueline L. Angel explains the historical nature of familial giving and how it is changing as the nation's demographics shift.
RGK Center Faculty Fellow Marc Musick has a new book on volunteering entitled Volunteers: A Social Profile. The book brings together the research of Musick and John Wilson (Duke University) and provides an examination of the causes and consequences of volunteering. The book argues that volunteers play a critical role in society; without them, many nonprofit, religious and governmental institutions would simply cease to function.
The information below is a supplement to the fourth issue of the Investigator series.
In this issue of The Investigator, we introduce five different methods for measuring the value of volunteers. In addition to reading the fourth issue of The Investigator, we encourage you to learn more about these methods by browsing through some of the resources we have listed below.
This concise and illuminating book provides a road map to the evolving conceptual and policy terrain of the nonprofit sector. Drawing on prominent economic, political, and sociological explanations of nonprofit activity, Peter Frumkin focuses on four important functions that have come to define nonprofit organizations.
The information below is a supplement to the first issue of the Investigator series.
This series of one-page publications investigates the field of volunteerism, through promoting academic research and providing a bridge from academic research to the hands of practitioners. The series leads the field of volunteerism research by introducing new data sets, exploring characteristics of volunteers, and suggesting fruitful research agendas.
Developed with colleagues from the University of Texas and the University of South Carolina, My Improvement Plan is a valid, reliable, efficient assessment instrument for measuring programs that engage volunteers and national service participants. The tool was created for the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Cultural trusteeship is a subject that fascinates those who wonder about the relationship between power and culture. What compels the wealthy to serve on the boards of fine arts institutions? How do they exercise their influence as trustees, and how does this affect the way arts institutions operate? To find out, Francie Ostrower conducted candid personal interviews with 76 trustees drawn from two opera companies and two art museums in the United States.