A Research Center on Nonprofit & Public Sector Management in the Human Services

Mission Statement


The mission of the Mack Center on Nonprofit and Public Sector Management in the Human Services and the Bay Area Social Services Consortium is to expand the knowledge base of nonprofit and public sector human service organizations by conducting practice research with our agency partners and sharing this knowledge with the practice and scholarly communities.

News

March 1, 2023

How Did Public Institutions Adapt to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

In association with the California Social Work Education Center, BASSC has surveyed responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in selected public institutions and published a report entitled "We Couldn’t Keep Doing Things the Way We’d Done Them": University and County Human Service Agency Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Strategies for the Future. Over the last three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has cha

November 1, 2022

Planning for Adult & Aging Services: Results of Study Published

BASSC has finalized the Bay Area Adult & Aging Services: 2022 Strategic Planning Report, assessing anticipated future needs in adult and aging services in the greater Bay Area. The report incorporates information from an array of sources, including 31 key informant interviews with Bay Area leaders in Adult and Aging Services, county administrative data, and publicly available data sets. Interviews were conducted between March and July 2022.

UC Berkeley Campanile seen through golden gingko leaves

The Mack Center and BASSC

Together, the Mack Center and the Bay Area Social Services Consortium (BASSC) work with our practice and academic partners to define research aims that are responsive to the priorities and capabilities of all stakeholders. Practice partners have an important voice in framing the goals of research, collaborating on data collection strategies and engaging with researchers to interpret findings. We translate research findings into presentations, reports, articles, books, and training materials in order to share them with multiple audiences in the human services.

Human Services Knowledge Foundation Series

Poverty in America

Poverty In America

Current Areas of Research

Identifying, implementing, and evaluating strategies to address staff recruitment and retention challenges.

Identifying and evaluating innovative strategies for integrating care for vulnerable populations involved with multiple service systems. 

Strengthening nonprofit-county contracting relationships to improve service coordination and outcome measurement.

Identifying fiscal management and communication strategies to respond to budget cuts.

Information for Trainers and Educators

Information for Researchers and Policy Analysts

Information for Practitioners and Managers