Hoover fellow Rachel M. McCleary was awarded the 2010 Skystone Ryan Research Prize from the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) for her book Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Organizations and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1939 (Oxford University Press).
Each year, the AFP Research Council awards the Skystone Ryan Prize to the author whose book contributes substantially to the knowledge and understanding of fund-raising or philanthropic behavior.
Global Compassion discusses two recent trends in foreign aid: commercialization of aid to for-profit contractors and the increasing involvement of the military in humanitarian efforts. The book places these two trends within the historical perspective of the professionalization of the field of international relief and development, including how it has gotten to where private voluntary organizations, once the strength of U.S. foreign aid, are now marginalized and devalued for their contributions.
In her book, McCleary recommends a realignment of foreign aid, with private voluntary organizations at the core. Private voluntary organizations represent American democratic values in action because they are accountable to their funders: the American people.
Rachel M. McCleary, in addition to being a Hoover research fellow, is a senior research fellow at the Taubman Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
