Philanthropy for women’s and girls’ causes is a growing area of interest among donors and fundraisers. However, beyond foundation giving, limited research has been conducted to understand who gives to women’s and girls’ issues and donors’ motivations for such support. Using the frameworks of collective identity and the social identification theory of care, we conducted a sequential mixed-methods study in the United States to investigate donors’ characteristics and experiences. Through a national survey, we find that women are more likely to give to women’s and girls’ causes and that age and income are the most significant determinants of this giving. In focus groups, donors report giving to women’s and girls’ causes based on three motivational themes: personal experiences of gender inequality, a belief that supporting women’s rights is beneficial for society, and the perceived effectiveness of nonprofit organizations, largely supporting the social identification theory of giving.

Understanding the role of local resources in enabling or constraining the development of entrepreneurial activities in urban communities holds important implications for community placed-based initiatives led by urban universities. This article analyzes the societal and interpersonal factors that affect the outcomes of an entrepreneurship center created in 2016, in partnership with an urban university within a low-income community adjacent to campus. The center was created to address the needs of local residents wanting to launch new businesses, as well as supporting small business owners in the neighborhood who desire to grow their businesses and capitalize on the neighborhood’s proximity to large city anchors. The study uses a mixed research design to understand, through the voice of residents and local business owners, the potential of the center as a catalyst for local entrepreneurship and inclusion, and proposes ways in which community resources can be used to bolster entrepreneurial success. Results reveal the need to strengthen local entrepreneurs’ social capital and social competences in order to promote access to financial and business resources. Local businesses must be used as significant assets to build upon in order to strengthen entrepreneurial capacities and cultivate community attitudes towards entrepreneurship.

Two different community-engaged groups in Indianapolis, Indiana recommended trauma-responsive school communities to address barriers to student learning. Before merging their work, both groups represented collaborations of university academics; K-12 educators; dental, mental, and basic health providers; service organizations; youth development specialists; and public school parents. The conclusions from their work were clear: address the social/ emotional and mental health, trauma and violence, chronic absenteeism, and social media distractions of students or fail to impact learning and youth development success. Central to the conclusions was the collaborative nature of the community-engaged studies, input from the field, and survey respondent discussions and analysis of what the findings really meant. A culminating report, Closing the Gap between School & Community Partnerships: An assessment of schools in Indianapolis, recommends adopting whole-child approaches, strength-based family engagement, community school models, and increased public school funding to address the barriers identified from survey responses of 354 educators throughout the city of Indianapolis. This paper focuses on how the collaborative, community-engaged process led to the report findings and recommendations.

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Mitchell, De Lange and Moletsane (2017) discuss the use of participatory visual research (PVR) to give voice to those involved in research and particularly to create opportunities for social change. Social change is characterized in different ways “new conversations and dialogues, altered perspectives of participants to take action, policy debates, and actual policy development” (p.16). The book intends to shift the conversation on PVR “towards outcomes and the ever-present question “What difference does it make?” (p.3). Both the ways social change is portrayed in the book, and the positioning that researchers, research participants, the community and policy makers take as audiences reflecting on the visual productions, are crucial to understand how PVR can stimulate social transformations.