THIRD SECTOR NETWORK

Hi all. Welcome to our new online venture. As you can expect, with all of us being PhD students, we have quite a bit on our plates and updates are surely forthcoming. My name is John Ronquillo and I am in my third year at the University of Georgia where I’m a doctoral candidate in the School of Public and International Affairs.

Like many of my colleagues, my interest in nonprofit studies and social entrepreneurship came about through various other channels. Upon graduating with a degree in journalism from Arizona State University, my intention was to go to law school. A close mentor of mine who was on the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at ASU suggested I look into getting an MPA first to boost my chances of getting into a good law school. For this and various other reasons, I followed this advice and after I completed my master’s I had more or less forgotten about law school and was intent on pursuing at PhD While earning my MPA, I had the opportunity to work in some unique capacities such as directing all of the student events for the 2004 Presidential Debate at ASU. From there I worked as a graduate intern in the state and local government relations office at Salt River Project, one of Arizona’s largest electric utilities (and some might say, due to their intricate system of dams, the reason Phoenix is able to exist in it’s current state). After that I worked as a contracted consultant for various organizations before I was hired as the Policy and Research Analyst at the Arizona Association of Counties (AACo), a 501(c)4 organization that represents Arizona’s 15 counties before the Arizona State Legislature. While I loved my time at AACo (and some days still wish I was there) I cut my time short in order to pursue my PhD in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at UGA.

Some might say I can’t make up my mind; I just like to think I’m interested in a lot of different things. When I arrived at Georgia, I had in tow a completely different set of intentions than I have now. While I am very interested in public management, I have also gained a keen interest in contracting, cross-sector collaboration, or partnership between organizations of differing sectors by any other name, which logically exposed me more to the nonprofit and commercial sector. And furthermore, it all made sense to me as nearly all of my previous professional work experience  involved collaborating with partners of a different sector. I have been fortunate enough to use some of these example in my current research.

At this time, I am in the dissertation writing phase of my program, and I will go on the academic job market at some point this year. The topic of my dissertation is on the subject of organizational innovation and how managers of public and nonprofit organizations perceive and value innovation within their respective agencies given a set of environmental and managerial characteristics. I enjoyed presenting this work at conferences in 2009, but will be much more gratified by getting it into a bound book in 2010.

Other research I’m working on includes a project on service learning and volunteerism by students providing free tax services to the public, a comparative study on social enterprise and social innovation initiatives, and a study on accountability measures in cross-sector collaborations.

I look forward to writing on all of these things in the coming months, and also look forward to interesting and spirited dialogue with my colleagues here!

**Cross-posted from johncronquillo.wordpress.com**

This week is going to be action-filled in the best possible way…another academic conference! From November 18 to 21 several of the Third Sector Network’s contributors  will be in Cleveland for the 39th Annual Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Conference. I am very much looking forward to the conference because I always come away with an immense flood of new information. I love the multidisciplinary aspect of the conference; it is simply amazing to see so many people from different parts of the world and in various fields converge in one place for a few days to discuss their common (and sometimes not-so-common) research themes.

The theme for this year’s conference is Philanthropy in Communities: Finding Opportunity in Crisis. It is relevant and timely, and I am really excited to see the research that will be presented. I will be presenting two papers: the first is on managerial perceptions of innovation value in public and nonprofit organizations, and the second will be a case study of the now defunct Arizona 2-1-1 Online program. I’m also excited to be participating in a colloquium entitled “Does Real Action Happen Online?” I’m very eager to hear my colleagues’ response to what I view as a question of ever-increasing importance.

In addition to presenting my research, Lindsey McDougle and I will also be helping with the social media coverage of the conference. I’ll post a few updates on my blog and here at thirdsectornetwork.org. Also joining me in the social media coverage are:

So, even if you can’t join us in Cleveland, we hope you’ll join us online!

Photo courtesy of RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, UT Austin

The month we spent in residence as summer fellows at the RGK Center at the University of Texas at Austin was enlightening and transformative, but we’re all in agreement that we have much unfinished business to address. This blog, we hope, will allow us to continue the discussion.

We are all in agreement that the world is rife with talk and activity of and within the third sector. Our interests are common, but each of us has managed to target something rather unique.

Nonprofit organizations, volunteerism, business associations, public charities, family foundations, art as investment, corporate social responsibility, generation X and Y in the nonprofit workplace, higher education, social enterprise…and the list of topics goes on and on. We are particularly concerned with what makes certain aspects of these topics “nonprofit,” “philanthropic,” or generally socially beneficial. Our common thread is our desire for the development of theory and practice in the third sector, and as our RGK mentor Peter Frumkin put it in his book On Being Nonprofit, the “structural features [that] give these entities a set of unique advantages that position them to perform important societal functions neither government nor the market is able to match.”

However, recent structural changes within some organizations have challenged that ideal…but odds are, one of us is interested in those changes, and we’ll eventually end up discussing it at some point.

We look forward to providing what we hope will be insightful commentary, and we invite you to take part in the discussion.