“The University and the Kennedy School are committed to the nonprofit sector,” said David Ellwood, dean of Harvard Kennedy School where the Hauser Center is based. “In every country of the world, nonprofits are inventing new solutions to the toughest problems of our day and giving expression to the values and views of their communities.  The Hauser Center under Chris Stone’s direction will be an invaluable resource for nonprofit leaders, and we will continue working to engage those leaders more deeply with the University.”

Stone brings to the Hauser Center 20 years of experience creating and leading more than a half-dozen nonprofit organizations in the United States and internationally.  He came to the Kennedy School in 2005 as the Guggenheim professor of the practice of criminal justice. Prior to that, from 1994 to 2004, he served as director of the Vera Institute of Justice, one of the world’s premier nonprofit organizations dedicated to justice reform.

Stone has helped establish nonprofit organizations in New York and Los Angeles as well as in Europe and South Africa. While at Vera, he co-taught seminars on building nonprofit organizations at New York University Law School and helped create the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship in Nonprofit Law in partnership with NYU’s National Center on Philanthropy and the Law.

Under Stone, the Hauser Center will focus specifically on strengthening the links between Harvard scholars and leaders of significant nonprofit organizations in specific domains. The first five domains will be: arts, media, and cultural institutions; international humanitarian organizations; justice and human rights organizations; nonprofits in China; and charitable foundations.

“In its first decade, the Hauser Center has sponsored some of the most creative and important work on nonprofit governance and accountability, the role of religion in public life, community mobilization, nonprofit finance, and transnational organizations,” said Stone. “Our challenge is to get this work into the hands of more nonprofit leaders who can apply the lessons, and then craft a forward research agenda in partnership with them. We’re going to start with the leaders in these five domains.”

The Hauser Center will launch its work in the five domains through a seminar series this spring on the future of the nonprofit sector.

“We want to engage the most thoughtful leaders in each domain with scholars on Harvard’s faculty,” said Stone. “I hope this look into the future will prove valuable for the sector and excite interest, not only among students and faculty here at Harvard but also among the staff, boards, and constituencies of nonprofits everywhere.”

Kicking off the seminar series will be a presentation March 3 by Peter Gelb, the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, who will speak about the challenges of integrating a new artistic vision with an innovative financial vision for the Met.  V. Kasturi Rangan of the Harvard Business School will respond to Gelb’s presentation.  Later seminars will examine the role of international NGOs in world politics, the role of nonprofits in worker protection globally, and the contribution of transnational philanthropy to poverty reduction in developing countries.

Stone will continue to chair the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management as he takes on his new duties at the Hauser Center.

“I’ve had a dual career for 30 years, ever since starting law school,” Stone explained. “I’ve always worked simultaneously on building better nonprofit workplaces and improving the administration of justice. The Hauser Center will let me bring these two ambitions together. It’s important to me that nonprofits pursuing justice and human rights will be one of the five domains on which the Hauser Center will focus.”

The Hauser Center is Harvard’s university-wide center for the study of nonprofit organizations.  It was established in 1997 with a lead gift from Rita and Gus Hauser.

Stone succeeds Mark Moore, Hauser professor of nonprofit organizations, who served as the Center’s founding faculty director and will continue as faculty chair of the Hauser Center. Aviva Luz Argote, formerly senior program director at the Coro New York Leadership Center and currently manager of special projects in the Office of the President and Provost at Harvard University, will join the Hauser Center as executive director in late February, completing the new leadership team.