Guest Posting By New KP Author: Susan Ross

"When I began doing research for Expanding the Pie, I found it interesting that a Google search for non-governmental organization (NGO)/non-profit-corporate partnerships yielded results that were mostly under the heading of Business-NGO partnerships. This made me wonder if there is a difference in these terms. After many interviews with non-profit and business managers, I concluded that these terms are different, but it is a matter of perspective rather than who leads the partnership. Business-NGO partnerships relate to how businesses select and develop relationships with NGOs. On the other hand, NGO-corporate partnerships encompass a NGO’s strategies for working with corporations.

We live in a changing environment with the development of an interdependent global economic system combined with dramatic technological, communications and scientific advances. Expansion of global trade has improved economic opportunities and living standards for millions, but it has also left many behind as well. It is clear that the “status quo” interventions are not working. The world is now at a critical “tipping point” for effective and sustainable solutions. If actions are not undertaken soon, the effects of key issues, such as climate change, may be irreversible or severely jeopardize our children’s future. Thus, new paradigms are needed to find effective solutions that maximize the strengths of all the sectors—non-profits, businesses, governments, foundations, and academia-- to overcome these challenges.

As a result, partnerships have become all the rage. While partnerships have many benefits, they are hard, time-consuming, messy and often do not produce the desired results. I believe that we can all learn from the successes and challenges of our peers so the book includes 46 case studies that produced ground-breaking approaches that result in benefits for companies, NGOs, governments and the society at large- thus expanding the pie for everyone. In addition, many managers are struggling to develop effective partnerships so the aim of the book is to provide a user-friendly reference with a comprehensive eight-step-decision-making framework to systematically and strategically approach initiating, implementing and evaluating partnerships. It also provides several tools to help managers: manage their existing partnership portfolio; asses if current partnerships are still creating value; design effective partnership agreements; and indicators to evaluate the partnership’s added value." --Susan Ross

Expanding the Pie will release at the end of April and is available to pre-order. The book retails for $24.95. Contact Marketing Associate Jennifer Kern for more information on ordering copies: Jennifer@styluspub.com.

Thank You for Supporting KP at ASA & ARNOVA

Despite a lower attendance rate for both conferences, Kumarian Press received great attention; and we would like to take a moment to thank attendees for coming out to support our endeavors.

We met a variety of individuals at ASA, ranging from your everyday professors to historians, researchers and development workers. We appreciate book ideas, and are working hard to implement these ideas for our readers.

I would also like to thank Lou Picard, author of KP's African Security and the African Command and A Fragile Balance. For two days, he welcomed our guests and signed copies of his two books.
Our trip to ARNOVA was also a hit, where our authors were found meeting and greeting our readers and attendees. Chris Corbett, author of Advancing Nonprofit Stewardship Through Self-Regulation, spoke at the conference, while Susan Ross, Shae Garwood and Jennifer Brinkerhoff promoted their new and upcoming titles.

We are thankful for our readers and their continuing support; and we look forward to seeing them next year at ARNOVA and ASA 2012.

NOTE: ASA and ARNOVA attendees - Do not forget about your post conference discounts. Source code is located on the top right corner of the order form. Valid for one month.

Standing Up For African Security

In the news, yesterday brought along blood-shed and tears in Jos, the Plateau State Capital, between the Muslims and the Christians in Africa, killing at least seven individuals. This attack between the two groups came not long after a clash erupted in the two regions of Nigeria.

"Trouble started when Muslim faithful of the Izala sect in their numbers were trooping to the prayer ground along Rukuba road Jos, to celebrate the Eid el-fitri Sallah and were allegedly challenged by the Christains who accused them of spoiling their Christmas last year by bombing their homes." (Daily Champion)

The situation soon got out of hand, as gun-fire spread. Special military ops took charge and scared away young fighters, leaving at least five dead at the scene.

"It took the combine efforts of members of the STF, members of the state security outfit code name operation rainbow to rescue those trapped at the prayer ground with armoured vehicle as they hurriedly escorted them to safety."

This is not the first time military ops were forced to intervene an out-of-control battle, and it certainly will not be the last. The question to really ask is: Is the military really helping? After all, at least five people were killed.

African Security and the African Command by Kumarian Press discusses this when the editors of the book showcase Bush's AFRICOM project as a way to "better" African security in the midst of war. But, is AFRICOM causing more harm than good? Some would say that placing our troops into Africa has helped Africans, leading toward democracy, freedom and human rights. Others would suggest that the African people are losing their identity and being forced to do things the "American way."

But, like the battle in Nigeria, my opinion stands that without intervention more harm could have been caused. More people could have died, and we need the government to step-in to regulate us. Without the authority, crisis will sweep the nation, and therefore the world.

What do you think we should do to increase national and international security?

It was just another Manic Monday

I doubt anyone truly likes Mondays. After a relaxing weekend - what's to enjoy about waking up at 6:00 A.M., all to stuff a bagel down your throat, throw on some wrinkled clothes and get in the car and rush to work? Mondays - I could do without them.

Do I sound all too bitter? Maybe I am. But first, give me a chance to explain myself. I never minded Mondays. Honestly, not until yesterday when it finally happened...

Yesterday morning carried on without any complaints. I ate breakfast, put on decent clothes, and hopped into my car with a full tank of gas. But, as I cruised down the highway -with only two exits to go, I might add - I couldn't help (a.k.a. didn't have a choice) but to notice the dancing lights behind me. Yes, I finally got my first speeding ticket. I suppose I didn't make a good enough case because the paperwork is waiting for me back home.

Sure, I suppose it's my fault for speeding (or at least getting caught), but I really didn't need that. Money is tight for everyone, and I am no exception. I spent the majority of yesterday disappointed with myself and thought about all of the people who are struggling to make ends meet and would love more money. For me, the State of Virginia will get their money this time; but what if one day I can't make ends meet? And, even though I know I will be fine today, all I could do yesterday was whine and think to myself "Where's my bailout money; and what is Washington, D.C. (my home away from home) really doing to help me in my time of need?"

I know I sound like a Free Market Purist, although I am not trying to sound like one at all. But, in times of desperation, don't we all wonder where or to whom the government's money is going and why we can't, as individuals, get freebies from the government so we will be okay in times of need? It may sound selfish, but money is the necessary-evil that keeps us alive and thriving.

Many wonder where our money is going and how we can obtain aid - especially in times of need. I suppose that we must first find out about aid assistance and then maybe Kumarian Press authors such as Steve Berkman can provide us with some blunt truths and insight into where our money is going. For example, in Berkman's book The World Bank and the Gods of Lending, he shows the mismanagement of aid assistance for programs that were meant to improve industries including healthcare and education as well as improve the status of the poor, but aren't. Berkman also exposes several fraud projects and declares that The World Bank's money is going to programs and thieves that are not deserving.

I don't know, but when I have one of those days when I feel like it couldn't get any worse, I tend to think about those that are struggling to make ends meet and think about what we can do to help those in need, and therefore help eachother. By reading up on finance and the aid industry, I think we can all learn how the aid industry works, where our money is going, and what we can do to help alleviate poverty and control theft. Maybe then we won't have to worry so much about economical issues and focus on more pleasant things.

A Friend’s Dinner with David Harvey and Reflections on Intellectuals, Progressive Publishing and Kumarian Press

At the post office the other day, I met a neighbor who works with the progressive nonprofit Solidago Foundation. She was all excited because she had just come back from New York City where she had dinner with David Harvey. In my opinion, David Harvey should be a household name, but in case his is a new name to you, Harvey is distinguished professor of anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

His numerous books, heavily influenced by Marx and characterized by dialectical engagement with issues of social, political and economic injustice, are required reading for many graduate students in the social sciences. His online course on Volume One of Marx’s Capital is the best guide that I know to unraveling the complexities of this gargantuan and wonderful book.

Back to my friend: She hoped that she could encourage David to help spread the word about progressive organizations such as Solidago. Her comments got me to thinking about whom to enlist in progressive causes and the position of intellectuals (in the Gramscian sense of a distinctive class of individuals: clergy, philosophers, professors and teachers, etc. that engage in intellectual activity as a specific social, political and economic function) in these causes. I have heard David Harvey speak in both formal academic settings where his language (or “discourse,” rather) and argumentation is complex and “informal” gatherings where he communicates the same ideas with an awareness and sympathy to a “non-specialist” audience without condescension or dilution of his arguments and ideas. And he is a wonderful teacher: do watch his video on Marx!

But his books, marvelous and penetrating as they are, can be difficult, reinforcing the Marxian conviction found in Volume One of Capital that there “are no royal roads to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” This is not to denigrate the value or importance of Harvey’s work, but I doubt if many beyond the institutional venues where intellectual activity is commodified and exchanged would have the time and energy to read, say, Harvey’s The Limits of Capital, let alone in conjunction with Marx’s Capital itself!

In these times of economic, environmental and all manner of turmoil and conflict that indeed pose a threat to the very survival of the human race, the role of the intellectual and the role of Kumarian Press as a site for the transformation of intellectual labor into a commodity that both sustains and questions the structures, systems and practices that characterize our era is both paradoxical and critically important. Paradoxical in the sense that Kumarian Press is after all a capitalist business venture that has to be competitive and has to reap continued growth in terms of sales and profits in order to survive and important in the sense that Kumarian, in spite of its imbrications in the contradictions (and perpetuation, albeit slightly) of capitalism, seeks to provide viable alternatives that run counter to the interests and power of dominant groups in society.

One of my favorite passages in a David Harvey book comes early in his Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.

While attending an academic conference on globalization with its tense and frequently hard to follow arguments afflicted by the radical and no doubt chic skepticism of poststructuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism and so on, he sat in on a conference of evangelical Christians that was taking place at his hotel. Harvey was struck by the enthusiasm of the crowd as they listened to the preachers and it was clear that what was happening at the evangelical conference was an “orchestration of emotions and passions rather than of intellect.” But it was an orchestration that was explicitly scored with expressions by the evangelical of foundational beliefs. Harvey wondered what would happen if he returned to the academic conference and spoke of foundational beliefs. He would probably be put out to pasture or seen as a dinosaur. While I believe, as does Harvey, that one should scrutinize all manner of foundational beliefs (including those of the secular Left), his experience with the evangelicals led him to a rather disturbing conclusion: “…when a political group armed with strong and unambiguous foundational beliefs confronts a group of doubting Thomases whose only foundational belief is skepticism towards all foundational beliefs, then it is rather easy to predict who will win.”

The tensions and imperatives of capitalist commerce, the necessity for global social, political and economic change, and encounters with the powerful armed with foundational beliefs: all these are familiar components of work at Kumarian. The bulk of my career at Kumarian has been during the bleak years of the second Bush administration. Talk about foundational beliefs and power! And as the evermore seemingly dysfunctional and rough beast that is the US government slouches towards Bethlehem (and possible default), I ask myself the same questions that I do every day: what is the role of Kumarian Press, what the role of its authors is and how to be “progressive” during periods of intolerance and myopia. I’ll conclude with another of my favorite David Harvey reflections, this one from The Limits of Capital as he gives me a valuable answer to my questions and hope. He writes about the need to project theory “into the fires of political practice” so that “new strategies for the sane reconstruction of society can emerge.” This statement I have emblazoned on my wall as it encapsulates for me the very essence and purpose of Kumarian Press and forms the framework for my editorial strategies. We need sanity now more than ever and Kumarian Press needs authors who can write for wide audiences with a diversity of experiences and knowledge so that the fires of political practice will burn brightly and guide us to, if not a promised land, at least one in which empathy, justice and equity and environmental preservation are primary concerns.