Guide Purpose
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This online research guide will help you find sources to complete research for your Making A Difference presentations and signature assignment. From your syllabus:
Making a Difference Presentation and Written Summary:
In order to keep class discussions interesting and to draw in your specific interest, a series of discussions are planned to connect class topics to real-life experience and current news. The purpose of this project is to give you practice preparing and delivering group presentations to an audience on non-profit organizations. Developing effective written and oral presentations are critical skills to develop and are key to success in today's world. Your presentations should be at least 10 minutes long with an additional 5 minutes of student led class discussion. You will be allowed to use index cards with notes and/or newspaper or business magazine articles and slides and/or videos. A 4-5 page written summary of the topic will be due the day of your presentation along with a copy of your presentation.
UNV-101 Signature Assignment:
This is to be an original research paper and presentation on a non-profit selected. This paper is to be word processed, double spaced in APA research format. It must have a bibliography with at least 2 sources, as well as citations in the body. The paper should be divided into the sections noted in the Semester Paper Scoring Rubric which will be discussed in class. This paper will require current information about the non-profit organization researched via Internet, journals and periodicals, newspapers, personal interviews, and annual reports. You must also discuss your thoughts on this non-profit organization in the conclusion and why you think it is successful, and any recommendations you may have for the betterment of the organization.
Finding Sources
You can usually get some background information on your non-profit by searching Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator rates non-profits' effectiveness by evaluating their financial health and transparency, and criteria such as how much of their funding goes to overhead expenses.
To find magazine or journal articles on your non-profit organization, try the library's article search. Go to the library's homepage and click on the articles tab.
This will search the library's EBSCO databases, which have articles in journals and magazines on all topics. Enter your charity's name in the articles search box to see results. The below video shows how to refine your search, find better results, and get citation information.
If you are looking for articles about local organizations, you're not likely to have much luck with the library's article search, which is mostly looking in national and international publications. Try looking in the Newport Daily News and the Providence Journal for articles about organizations based out of Rhode Island. The below video shows how to find articles in both of these publications.
