Philanthropic organizations contribute to important work that solves complex problems to strengthen communities. Many of these organizations are moving toward engaging in public policy work, in addition to funding programs. This paper raises questions of legitimacy for foundations, as well as issues of transparency and accountability in a pluralistic democracy. Measures of civic health also inform how philanthropic organizations can be accountable to stakeholders. We propose a holistic model for philanthropic accountability that combines elements of transparency and performance accountability, as well as practices associated with the American pluralistic model for democratic accountability. We argue that philanthropic institutions should seek stakeholder and public input when shaping any public policy agenda. This paper suggests a new paradigm, called philanthropic accountability that can be used for legitimacy and democratic governance of private foundations engaged in policy work. The Philanthropic Accountability Model can be empirically tested and used as a governance tool.
Civic engagement and volunteerism in post-communist societies is poor; there are limited traditions of civic activity, and those traditions that have existed have meanings associated with a historical period when free engagement was risky and volunteerism was coerced. Today, in nations like Lithuania, there are efforts underway to reclaim the labels "volunteerism" and "participation" and to craft more civically healthy communities. This paper will address two questions: (1) How has Lithuania's civic health evolved since independence from the Soviet Union? (2) What lessons are in the emergence of a civic and volunteer culture provide for scholars, government and nonprofit officials, and civic leaders interested in moving communities within the United States out of their civic ruts? Underlying the second question is an assumption, which will be argued within the paper, that officials in the United States have more to learn from emergent civic cultures than those emergent cultures do from us, though there are certainly lessons from the United States that may be applicable.
The role of information technology (IT) remains important within the medical community. However, little is known about the extent to which practicing physicians improve practice performance by having and utilizing IT at the national level. The present study, analyzing a national physician survey (n = 4,720), seeks to explore associations of IT availability and utilization with practice performance at the national level. The multivariate regression analysis results suggest that patient information IT functionality upholds physician advantages in annual income but prescription drug IT functionality was reversely linked to annual income. We also found a negative association of patient information IT functionality with patient visit volume. Our study results revealed mixed findings. Not all IT functionalities would offer benefits to practicing physicians. Our data suggest that patient information IT functionality can moderate cost concerns related to IT investment among providers.
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