School of Planning, Public Policy and Management

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/16

The Department of Planning, Public Policy & Management is home to a diverse array of faculty research, participatory learning, and community assistance programs.

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Browsing School of Planning, Public Policy and Management by Author "Irvin, Renee A."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Collaboration vs. Competition in the Third Sector
    (2008-12-24) Irvin, Renee A.
    This article delineates a framework for judging the usefulness of collaborative strategy in the nonprofit/nongovernmental sector. Popular among academicians as well as grant makers, collaboration among nonprofit organizations is often proposed as the dominant strategy for curing many of the sector's resource problems. However, competition is also prevalent in the nonprofit sector, as free entry encourages the nonprofit entrepreneur to form a new nonprofit to meet a perceived community need. Ignoring the influence of competitive forces while promoting preferred collaborative strategies can lead to recommendations for the third sector that are ambitious and wellintentioned, yet impractical. Primarily theoretical in scope, this article is intended to inform grant makers and those at the policy making level how to determine the best situations to encourage collaboration in the sector, and when, surprisingly, to favor single-organization grant making.
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    Definition and Management of Endowment
    (2010) Irvin, Renee A.
    Endowment, in the vernacular, can refer to any asset of substance that allows a person, organization or country to excel in their pursuits of business or leisure. For example, economists specializing in international trade describe a country as having an “endowment” of abundant land for agricultural crops. A man or woman can be described as “well-endowed”, but this implies a topic more risque than a generous trust fund or accumulated retirement savings. Nonprofit sector “endowment” is analogous to a savings account. Organizations may have endowments of other types of assets (a beautiful campus, historic facilities, etc.), but their financial endowment is our primary focus.
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    How Slogans Curate Public Opinion: Hard Lessons from Lakoff and the Linguists
    (Public Integrity, 2018) Irvin, Renee A.
    Many a policy scholar has viewed election results with bewilderment: How can so many people persistently vote against their self-interest? In an attempt to at least partially address this conundrum, this article introduces persuasion techniques that can render good research and evidence largely irrelevant in the court of public opinion. By using U.S. debates about taxation and economic inequality as the linguistic setting of interest, the study illustrates the mechanics of curating public opinion at both ends of the political spectrum. Solutions to economic inequality are complex, yet public opinion can turn toward or away from a proposed policy reform when a few reductive key words distill complexity down to a convincing message: the micronarrative. Critically examining the broad narrative arc of the policy process is not enough; one must also examine the social construction occurring when word choice is used as persuasive weaponry in the selling of policy reform. The study finishes with a research agenda and a provocation for researchers regarding their role in policy reform. Should academicians remain behind the research curtain, or should they actively critique or even guide the narrative selling of their research?
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    The Oregon Guide to Private Fund Raising for Local Governments
    (2004-06) Irvin, Renee A.; Carr, Patrick Joseph, 1978-
    Nonprofit organizations thrive on the altruism of citizens, and actively court donors for major gifts. Yet individual gifts to government agencies are often unexpected, sporadic, and initiated by the donor. This article introduces the phenomenon of private giving to local governments and tests hypotheses regarding the expected forms of giving to public agencies. Results indicate that philanthropy is and will likely remain a minor and highly variable source of revenue, making it an ill‐suited replacement for broad‐based tax revenue. However, deliberate government efforts to provide a suitable environment for private donations appear to succeed in attracting more gifts per capita.