About Us

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.

History

The Mack Center was established in 2006 with funding from the Mack family, to focus on support for nonprofit human service organizations, subsequently broadening its scope to incorporate public sector human service organizations. The Bay Area Social Services Consortium (BASSC) was founded in 1987, as an agency-university-foundation partnership that promotes social service research, training, and policy development.

Approach to Research

The work of the Mack Center and BASSC is grounded in practice-based research, in which we emphasize practitioner input into the knowledge generation process. This work involves sustained collaboration among researchers and practice partners to develop research agendas, design and implement studies, co-construct the interpretation of research findings, and translate findings into policy agendas, program reforms and training curricula. We collaborate with affiliated academic researchers as well as regional human service organizations, including members of the Bay Area Network of Nonprofit Human Service agencies (BANNHSA), established in 2006 to support collaborative research and training programs.