Over the holidays,  I had a nuimber of conversations with my brother-in-law about the effectiveness of aid – particularly to the African continent.  While I am no expert on aid effectiveness, I draw your attention to two people who have differing perspectives:  Peter Singer and William Easterly.  I frequent the site Bloggingheads TV and found this video conversation posted on Christmas Eve.   Below are links to some interesting new books on aid and helping the poor in development:

White Man’s Burden

Dead Aid

The Blue Sweater

Measuring Effectiveness in Humanitarian and Development Aid

Looking for a way to rate or find a good nonprofit for your end of the year donation?  A new resource, Philanthropedia is a new interesting website which provides a way of finding a nonprofit which fits your giving needs through expert analysis.  This website also runs a blog which can be found here.

The School for Social Entrepreneurs: Top 10 podcasts for social entrepreneurs.

Charity Navigator is rethinking about how it evaluates nonprofits – this is welcomes news.  I found the below link on a great blog at Harvard Business Publishing.  Read on by clicking the below link:

Charity Navigator Fixes Its Compass – Dan Pallotta – HarvardBusiness.org.

Demand Up 97 Percent in FY 2010 Round of CDFI Program
CDFI Fund Receives 408 Applications Requesting More Than $467 Million

Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) announced today that it received a total of 408 applications for the fiscal year (FY) 2010 round of the CDFI Program, representing a significant increase in demand.  Applicants requested more than $467.4 million in assistance, a 97 percent increase from the $237.7 million requested through the original, pre-Recovery Act application solicitation of the FY 2009 round.

“CDFIs are continuing to deal with the harsh realities of the financial crisis on a day to day basis.  The extraordinary demand we’ve seen in the latest application round of the CDFI Program shows the great need in distressed communities for capital to provide affordable financial products and services,” said CDFI Fund Director Donna Gambrell. “Today’s economy is creating a need for CDFIs to expand their impact as low-income people and communities across the nation continue to bear a disproportionate burden and rely on CDFIs to provide critically needed support.”

The CDFI Fund received 322 applications requesting almost $459 million under the Financial Assistance component and 86 applications requesting over $8.4 million under the Technical Assistance component of the CDFI Program.

The CDFI Fund published a Notice of Funds Availability in the Federal Register on September 23, 2009 announcing that it was making approximately $113 million available for the FY 2010 round, pending Congressional appropriation.  Approximately $20 million of these funds are being targeted to CDFIs that applied under Category I of the application, which is known as Small and Emerging CDFI Assistance – or SECA Applicants.  Approximately $90 million are targeted to CDFIs that applied under Category II of the application, known as Core Applicants.  The remaining $3 million in funds will be awarded to CDFIs that applied for Technical Assistance only.  The deadline for applications was November 18, 2009 and awards will be announced in the summer of 2010.

Applications are currently being evaluated through a merit-based qualitative review to identify those applicants most likely to have the greatest impact in our nation’s most distressed low-income rural and urban communities.  The characteristics of the applicant pool include:

Financial Assistance Component

Overview

322 applicants applied under the Financial Assistance Component – requesting an aggregate total of $458,995,504 with:

• $435,726,392 in Financial Assistance
• $23,269,112 in Technical Assistance

Institution Type

• 245 (76.1 percent) are loan funds
• 45 (14.0 percent) are credit unions
• 23 (7.1 percent) are banks, thrifts or holding companies
• 9 (2.8 percent) are venture capital funds

Primary Geographic Market Served

• Major Urban:  170 (52.8 percent)
• Rural:  87 (27.0 percent)
• Minor Urban:  65 (20.2 percent)

Geographic Distribution

Applications were received from 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Technical Assistance Component

Overview

86 applicants applied for only Technical Assistance requesting an aggregate total of $8,466,949.

Institution Type

• 76 (88.4 percent) are loan funds
• 6 (7.0 percent) are credit unions
• 2 (2.3 percent) are banks, thrifts or holding companies
• 2 (2.3 percent) are venture capital funds

For more information on the CDFI Fund and its programs, please visit www.cdfifund.gov.

I am halfway through the second year of my PhD.  I will be done with my mandatory course work in May will take my comps in May and June. Yikes.  I will complete two more classes after that in order to complete my minor “cognate” and will write my proposal during that time.

I thought I would write a longer post discussing some of the challenges and opportunities in pursuing a hybrid PhD.  As a aside, my PhD program is an intensive hybrid program.  I say this because I wish the program mirrored many of the other hybrid programs.  I venture out to NH once a month for six days.  Residencies are held from September to May.  The student does this for 2 years and take at times 12 credits.  It is a brutal schedule, but the course work gets done.  Many other hybrid programs (I will provide you with a list later on) meet for a several weeks in summer and perhaps one or two times in the winter.  Some meet up to four times a year but for longer sessions.

Many of us in the applied professions (social work, community economic  development, urban planning, etc.) fell into academia.  Some of us did not have our hearts set on teaching and research.  We therefore did not follow the traditional PhD route as one sees in the humanities and arts.  Some social sciences PhD students (political science, sociology, economics) also follow a traditional PhD program and therefore these disciplines do not consider people who are not “traditional students”  and have families who decide to pursue academia later on their careers.

Here are some personal pros for hybrid programs:

1. Keep your job.  Well – can I say more? Medical Insurance and food on the table is important.
2. Improve your teaching.  I find that I am a better teacher because of the research and theory classes.  In addition, working on my dissertation has made me read on a broad scale.  Because of my PhD involves a number of disciplines (development, economics, sociology, planning, social work, etc.)  I am able to see problems from an inter-disciplinary perspective.  My theory classes has given me a deeper foundation which can help to promote deep learning in the classroom.  I now can draw from the grand and middle range theories which permit me to help students to make connections between practice and theory.  I also find that I use Powerpoint less – chalkboard flow charts and mind maps are becoming a major staple in my classes.
3. Engage with people who are practitioners in the field.  I am the only full-time academic in my program.  My fellow PhD slaves are involved local government, international development, nursing and public health.  (This wide range of backgrounds is also due to the nature of community economic development).  Because people are not full-time students and are not in their mid-20s, students have a different level of investment and perspective on their dissertation.  This is also a con – see later.

Cons:

1. Lack of “academic community”.  Because people have many other things that they are trying to juggle, you might not experience the ongoing comradeship and community that traditional PhD students might experience.  This, of course, may not be always the case but support from fellow PhD travelers is so important as you run the marathon.
2. Lack of research assistantships.  Depending on how the program is organized, there may be limited to no research assistantships possibilities for you.
3. Lack of funding.  Because students are not studying full-time they do not have access to research assistantships which allow them to work with professors in the school.  This means that the external funding that this research provides for doctoral programs is missing or not a possibility because students live far from campus.
4. Tuition. Many traditional program pay your tuition – this is not always the case for hybrid programs.
5. Prestige. If you are looking to teach at a Research 1 institution once you have your degree make sure that you do your homework before choosing an hybrid program.  I still think Research 1 institutions do not look kindly on non-traditional PhD programs because at times these programs are less known.

I will post of list of hybrid social work, nonprofit management and public administration PhD programs soon.  Stay tuned.   Comments are welcome!

This was a great post that I found on the Nonprofit Local blog.  It is an excellent set of questions to discuss with your staff or students who are considering a nonprofit career.  Check out the post here.

I just found an excellent podcast from the Craiglist Foundation.  You can subscribe to the podcast on ITunes or as an RSS feed.  You can find out more here.

From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green » Blog Archive » Which governments are best/worst at ending hunger?.