The Center for Civil Society in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA was established in 2002 as a research center focused on civil society, nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and social enterprise. Situated across the School’s three academic departments of Public Policy, Urban Planning, and Social Welfare, the Center has, over the past decade, developed graduate curricula, served as a convening center for scholars, practitioners, and students, and has produced an array of studies and publications, including an annual State of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Sector report and survey that has become a trusted source of data and analysis for the regional nonprofit community.

Under the leadership of UCLA School of Public Affairs Dean Frank Gilliam, acting director Bill Parent, executive director Jocelyn Guihama, and the research oversight of Social Welfare Professor Zeke Hasenfeld, the primary focus of the Center’s work is to be a catalyst in developing innovative research and public engagement initiatives on the challenges and opportunities facing urban civil society, in Los Angeles and beyond, in the next decade.

Building on the foundation established by founding director Helmut Anheier, who is now dean of the Hertie School of Governance in Germany and then-dean Barbara Nelson,  Dean Gilliam has also connected the Center of Civil Society to the mission of the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships, a campus-wide initiative that bridged the UCLA faculty community and the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles.  The Center for Civil Society is also deeply engaged is a series of Dean Gilliam’s social justice initiatives designed to develop learning opportunities and curriculum across the School’s three departments and in the community.

This reorganization of the Center for Civil Society has provided the opportunity to align the center’s work more closely with what UCLA Chancellor Gene Block refers to as, “scholarship that represents our highest aspirations in community engagement,” and the belief that “UCLA can have its greatest impact by focusing its expertise from across the campus to comprehensively address the problems that plague Los Angeles.”

The primary direction of the Center’s work in the coming years will be research and teaching on local and regional issues pertaining to Los Angeles nonprofits and the current financial crisis, with particular attention to issues of social justice, equality, and access.  As much as Los Angeles can be viewed as a social laboratory for the challenges facing growing, very diverse, stratified urban areas, we anticipate that our approaches to research, our methodologies, and our examples of engagement will be valuable across state, national, and international boundaries.