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Purpose. Examine how religious congregations engage in social entrepreneurship as they strive to meet health-related needs in their communities. Design. Multiple case studies. Setting. Los Angeles County, California. Participants. Purposive sample of 14 congregations representing diverse races/ethnicities (African-American, Latino, and white) and faith traditions (Jewish and various Christian). Method. Congregations were recruited based on screening data and consultation of a community advisory board. In each congregation, researchers conducted interviews with clergy and lay leaders (n = 57); administered a congregational questionnaire; observed health activities, worship services, and neighborhood context; and reviewed archival information. Interviews were analyzed by using a qualitative, code-based approach. Results. Congregations' health-related activities tended to be episodic, small in scale, and local in scope. Trust and social capital played important roles in congregations' health initiatives, providing a safe, confidential environment and leveraging resources from—and for—faith-based and secular organizations in their community networks. Congregations also served as "incubators" for members to engage in social entrepreneurship. Conclusion. Although the small scale of congregations' health initiatives suggest they may not have the capacity to provide the main infrastructure for service provision, congregations can complement the efforts of health and social providers with their unique strengths. Specifically, congregations are distinctive in their ability to identify unmet local needs, and congregations' position in their communities permit them to network in productive ways.

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are an important community-based resource for veterans as they readjust to civilian life. Through interviews with both national-level and smaller, local FBOs, the authors sought to understand better the current and potential roles for FBOs in veteran reintegration. Interviewees suggested that veterans may look to FBOs for support because they offer privacy and confidentiality, two features that may be especially critical when a potential stigma is involved. Some FBOs have also developed a reputation as safe places for veterans, providing supportive, judgment-free environments. FBOs not only help veterans with spiritual matters but address diverse areas of veteran health and wellness, including vocation, education, financial and legal stability, shelter, access to goods and services, mental health, access to health care, physical health, family, and social networks. In some cases, the support is offered to veterans directly; in other instances, the support is indirect, via training individuals to help veterans or educating the public about them. In the process of providing support, FBOs interact with varied organizations, including government entities, private nonprofits, and one another, for training, outreach, referrals, information exchange, obtaining donations, and collaboration. Yet challenges exist, including insufficient connections with chaplains working in different settings and others in the web of support, resource and capacity constraints, lack of awareness of experience with veterans, issues related to religious philosophy or orientation, and characteristics of veterans themselves. To move forward, the authors offer recommendations for policymakers, organizations that interact with FBOs, and FBOs themselves to help FBOs engage fully in the web of reintegration support.

"Many U.S. government agencies rely on nonprofit federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) for independent expertise in systems engineering and integration, study and analysis, and research and development. In this report, the authors discuss insights drawn from academic literature and practitioner guidance that are applicable to the effective oversight, management, and performance assessment of FFRDCs. They identify (1) institutional prerequisites for enabling effective oversight, management, and performance assessment of FFRDCs and (2) operational criteria for running constructive assessment processes. Whereas academics and practitioners have written volumes on internal assessment-when an organization examines its own programs and employees-and commercial acquisitions, they have had comparatively little to say about relationships involving FFRDCs. However, research on performance management systems and related or subsidiary processes, including performance reviews and program evaluation, is broadly applicable to government oversight of and engagement with FFRDCs. Thus, the authors examine a wide range of literature and guidance on performance management and program evaluation, looking for best practices in other potentially analogous and relevant organizational contexts, modifying and supplementing the processes as needed to account for contextual differences and other needs."

This article describes the current policy context for domestic all-hazards risk-informed capabilities-based planning by local military and civilian authorities and provides a framework for a local planning support tool for their use.

"Current cyberspace threats are highly dynamic, complex, and ubiquitous in time and space. Activities to ensure resiliency to adversarial cyber operations throughout the Air Force have organically organized themselves to be somewhat fractionated, with blurred lines of authority and no overall coordinating mechanism to ensure that all related activities are identified, tasked, and implemented and act in concert to achieve enterprise objectives. The authors develop a foundation for better managing efforts to ensure resiliency to adversarial cyber operations at the enterprise level aimed at mission assurance in the Air Force. This structure includes guidance on the allocation of roles and responsibilities for tasks to ensure resiliency to adversarial cyber operations and mechanisms to create a cohesive initiative in which each individual and organization is working toward a common goal. The authors also stress the need for leaders to instill in airmen, civilians, and contractors an understanding that the conflict in cyberspace is ubiquitous in time and space; that operations in cyberspace might be decisive in warfare; that all airmen, civilians, and contractors play a role in ensuring resiliency to adversarial cyber operations; that nothing can be completely secure in cyberspace, which leads to a sense of responsibility to carry on mission(s) in the face of an attack through cyberspace; that connecting one system to another (or to a network) carries potential risks; and that personnel have an obligation to report anomalies in data, nonnominal procedures, and potential cyber incidents."--from the publisher's website

Introduction and Approach -- The Need for Business Acumen, Knowledge of Industry Operations, and Knowledge of Industry Motivation -- Gaps in Knowledge Related to Business Acumen, Industry Operations, and Industry Motivation -- The Use of Training and Development to Address Knowledge Requirements -- Approaches to Gauging the Effectiveness of External Training and Development -- Appendix A: Interview Methodology -- Appendix B: Competency Model and DAU Course Analysis.

For Marine and Family Division (MF) programs and services to remain meaningful, credible, and practical, their effectiveness must be able to be demonstrated. Assessing their offerings will help the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) to surge and contract the portfolio as resources wax and wane. This program evaluation toolkit is designed to help those responsible for implementing MF programs to determine whether those programs are effective-achieving their intended goals-and ultimately to guide efficient use of scarce resources. This toolkit is composed of two interrelated documents: this User's Guide and a set of Microsoft Excel workbooks that correspond to material presented in the User's Guide about collecting and analyzing data. This toolkit is based on the program evaluation literature and program evaluation toolkits produced by other RAND researchers. A review of relevant Marine Corps Orders; discussions with headquarters, branch, and program staff in MF; and reviews of publicly available websites provided additional background for the specific context of MF, USMC. The contents of this toolkit should be of particular interest to MF and staff in the five branches within the scope of this study: Behavioral Health, Family Care, Family Readiness, Personal and Professional Development, and Semper Fit. It may also be of interest to those who manage or oversee similar programs that provide support to service members and their families

"As the Army reduces its end strength, the number of soldiers leaving the Regular Army has increased, raising concerns about unemployment and other transition problems for these veterans. To help improve the Army's transition assistance process, the authors of this report administered civilian occupation surveys to soldiers in selected Army military occupational specialties (MOSs) to assess the level and importance of the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed in these MOSs and to develop better crosswalks between military and civilian occupations. The authors also identified and separately analyzed survey questions associated with soft skills, such as leadership, teamwork, and attention to detail, to assist soldiers with translating their Army experience for civilian employers. The occupation surveys generated a rich database that was used to characterize the KSAs needed by Army soldiers to perform their MOSs, as well as other occupation attributes, such as work activities, work context, and work style. Furthermore, the crosswalks generated from the survey responses identified both a broader range of military-civilian occupation matches and higher-quality matches than existing crosswalks. Based on these results, we recommend that the Army communicate information about these job matches to both soldiers and potential employers and that it expand use of the occupation surveys to develop crosswalks for additional MOSs"--Publisher's description