Holiday Gift Idea: Hauser Fund Supports Bringing Evidence to Policy

Bob Hauser studied economics at the Unersity of Chicago before getting a master’s and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan.

The fund honors Robert M. “Bob” Hauser, recently retired as executive director of DBASSE. He had been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1983, and served as DBASSE’s executive director from 2011 to 2016, following a six-month stint as interim executive director. Before becoming a staffer, he spent 41 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was professor of sociology and founder of the Center for Demography of Health and Aging.

Hauser argued that the end-point of a National Academies’ committee project is not a ‘report’—it is its impact. Impact, in turn, requires sustained and targeted efforts to reach relevant decision-makers, translation of the implications for a variety of different audiences, and facilitating discourse among researchers, policymakers and practitioners. But money isn’t always available for this kind of outreach. The specific goal of the Hauser Fund is to ensure that social science analysis and synthesis has a better chance to guide informed policy decisions across the DBASSE portfolio—national statistics, science education, children’s well-being, criminal justice, environmental change, the implications of aging, among others. A gift from you will help fund targeted policy briefings, articles or op-eds in select media, short videos and other communications products, and special symposia to connect the nation’s leading social and behavioral scientists with decision-makers.

A tax-deductible gift, which will help link knowledge to action by increasing the reach of the social sciences to policy audiences, can be made online here. Or, you can mail a check made payable to the National Academy of Sciences (note Hauser Fund on the memo line) to Office of Development, P.O. Box 936138, Atlanta, GA 31193-6135.

For questions about making a gift, contact Marianne Tropp atmtropp@nas.edu or (202) 334-1342.