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Reflections on the Civil Society and Sustainability Conference with Professor Patricia Bromley

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 director Patricia Bromley and Associate Director of Research and Scholar Programs Lisa […]

Breaking the Language Barrier on Digital Rights in Africa

Nanjala Nyabola is an independent writer and researcher based in Nairobi, Kenya who is currently part of Stanford PACS’s Digital Civil Society Lab and Center for Comparative Studies for Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) Practitioner Fellowship. This interview is edited for length and clarity. Can you give us the context for the Kiswahili Digital Rights Project, for […]

Can Philanthropy Help Humans Be Better at Being Human?

Senior Fellow at the Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative at Stanford PACS, Jump/Scale advisor, and Humanity in Action, Terreform ONE, and RNR Foundation board member Heather Newberry Lord’s journey into philanthropy — a world, she says, not unlike the Land of Oz — began in a serendipitous moment in the Reed College library. Lord’s story can both set […]

Nonprofits Need To Balance Professionalization And Formalization With Trust And Community Building

Patricia Bromley is an Associate Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of Sociology at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) at Stanford University. Her work spans a range of fields, including comparative education, organization theory, the sociology of education, and public administration and policy. At the GSE, Bromley teaches courses related to nonprofits and global […]

Actionable Steps to Diversify Funding for Social Change

I started my social innovation career when I co-founded The Family Van, a mobile health clinic in Boston, in response to unconscionable health disparities experienced by Black mothers and babies in the shadows of one of the world’s best medical systems. In those early days, my co-founder Nancy Oriol and I blended our medical and […]

February 24, 2021

This week, organized groups took deliberate and premeditated action to invalidate the legal process for selecting a U.S. President. They were incited and supported by the executive branch to overthrow the legislative branch’s rightful role; the executive branch also appears to have delayed protection for members of Congress. A number of people were killed; and […]

January 11, 2021

Learning From the Present

November 17, 2020 Correction: The data cited in this article were preliminary. Notably, data on turnout and support from the Navajo nation, from a November 6 report, have been significantly adjusted downward to account for the dispersion of Navajo citizens in rural and urban areas, the number of Whites living in precincts that include Navajo […]

December 13, 2020

The most vulnerable nonprofits will be critical when communities rebound

By: Nick Sherefkin, a Ph.D. fellow at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University; and Christof Brandtner, a postdoctoral fellow at the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Both are members of the […]

December 9, 2020

Reimagining Philanthropy Series, Part 5

Lucy Bernholz wrote a five-part series for The Chronicle of Philanthropy exploring what’s next for foundations and nonprofits. What Now? The Philanthropic Future Our Democracy Needs by Lucy Bernholz, September 22, 2020 November … Two-and-a-half years … Never … Each of these is a prediction I’ve read in reputable national newspapers about when the pandemic will end. The most […]

December 7, 2020

Reimagining Philanthropy Series, Part 4

Lucy Bernholz wrote a five-part series for The Chronicle of Philanthropy exploring what’s next for foundations and nonprofits. Digital Dependence Has Obliterated the Notion of Nonprofit Independence by Lucy Bernholz, September 15, 2020 Nonprofits, foundations, political organizers, street protestors, and each of us as individuals are dependent on the digital world. We rely on hardware, software, and digital networks […]

December 7, 2020

Reflections on the Civil Society and Sustainability Conference with Professor Patricia Bromley

We Are Not Divided