- Phone:
- (812) 855-6948
- Email:
- fulton@indiana.edu
- Website:
- https://blogs.iu.edu/fulton
- Room Number:
- 419
- Areas of Interest:
- Nonprofit Organizations and Management ,
- Leadership ,
- Social Movements ,
- Advocacy, Diversity, Quantitative Methods
Education
- Ph.D., Duke University
- A.M., University of Chicago
- B.S., University of California, Berkeley
Courses
- Managing Diversity (also on Apple Podcasts)
- Nonprofit Management and Leadership (also on Apple Podcasts)
- Statistics for the Social Sciences (also on Apple Podcasts)
- Introduction to Quantitative Analysis
- Research Methods
Biography
Brad Fulton is an expert on the social, political, and economic impact of community-based organizations. He directs the National Study of Community Organizing—a multi-level study that examines the causes and consequences of racial, socioeconomic, and religious diversity within grassroots advocacy organizations. Fulton co-leads the Observing Civic Engagement project—a field study that uses an innovative data collection technique, known as systematic social observation, to analyze the internal dynamics of organizations. He is also the co-director of the National Study of Congregations’ Economic Practices—a multimethod study that analyzes how religious congregations receive, manage, and spend their financial resources. To fund his research projects, Fulton has obtained $5.4 million in external funding.
Among Fulton’s publications are the award-winning book A Shared Future (University of Chicago Press), a chapter in Woody Powell’s Nonprofit Sector Research Handbook, and articles published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, NVSQ, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, and Voluntas. Fulton’s research has received 15 national awards from academic associations spanning six disciplines and is regularly covered by major media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press.
Fulton also developed, edited, and published three semester-long online courses: Diversity and Inequality, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, and Statistics for the Social Sciences. His lectures have been played over 50,000 times by people from 118 different countries. Relative to equivalent courses on Apple Podcasts, they are among the highest rated and most reviewed.
Fulton earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University. He also holds a master’s in social science from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s in industrial engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Fulton joined O’Neill as an assistant professor in 2015, and he is an editorial board member for the journals Social Service Review and Sociology of Religion, a faculty affiliate of IU’s Network Science Institute, and an Inclusive America Project Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Highlights
- American Sociological Association | Section Article Award, 2021
- Nonprofit Management and Leadership | Editors’ Prize for Best Article, 2021
- Aspen Institute | Inclusive America Project Fellow, 2021
- OVPR Social Sciences Research Funding Program | $40,000 (Co-PI), 2020
- AmeriCorps | Research Grant $436,439 (Co-PI), 2017-19
- ARNOVA | Dugan Research Award on Philanthropic Impact, 2018
- Lilly Endowment Inc. | Research Grant $2,996,185 (Co-PI), 2018
- Lilly Endowment Inc. | Research Grant $1,670,000 (Co-PI), 2017
- ARNOVA | Outstanding Book Award in Nonprofit Research, 2016
- ARNOVA | President’s Award for Nonprofit Research, 2013
In the News
- “Being Diverse is Not Enough” – Chronicle of Philanthropy, Dec. 17, 2021
- “Churches Helping People Get Food” – Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2021
- “Americans are in a Mental Health Crisis” – Salon, Oct. 7, 2021
- “As Organized Religion Shrinks” – Washington Post, Oct. 23, 2020
- “Nonprofit Racial Equity” – Nonprofit Quarterly, Jan. 13, 2020
- “‘President Pence’s Impact on the 2020 Race” – S.F. Chronicle, Nov. 3, 2019
- “Questions about Bezos’ $2 Billion Fund” – CNBC Tech, Sept. 16, 2018
- “Trump’s Church Politics Idea Has Wide Reach” – NY Times, Feb. 7, 2017
Selected Works
- “Engaging Differences: How Socially Diverse Organizations Can Mobilize Their Resources More Effectively,”Social Forces (2021)
- “Bridging and Bonding: Disentangling Two Mechanisms Underlying the Diversity-Performance Relationship,”Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2021)
- “Organizing Together: Identifying Benefits and Drawbacks of Community-Labor Coalitions for Community Organizing Efforts,” (with M. Doussard) Social Service Review (2020)
- “Representative Group Styles: How Ally Immigrant Rights Organizations Promote Immigrant Involvement,” (with G. Yukich and R. L. Wood), Social Problems, (2020)
- “Critical Standpoint: Leaders of Color Advancing Racial Equality in Predominantly White Organizations,” (with M. Oyakawa and R. L. Wood), Nonprofit Management & Leadership, (2019)
- “Organizations and Survey Research: Implementing Response Enhancing Strategies and Conducting Nonresponse Analyses,” Sociological Methods & Research, (2018)
- “Fostering Muslim Civic Engagement through Faith-Based Community Organizing,” Journal on Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society, 1:43-73 (2017)
- “Trends in Addressing Social Needs: A Longitudinal Study of Congregation-Based Service Provision and Political Participation,” Religions 7:51-67 (2016).
- A Shared Future: Faith-Based Organizing for Racial Equity and Ethical Democracy, (with R.L. Wood), University of Chicago Press (2015)
- “The Role of Bridging Cultural Practices in Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Civic Organizations,” (with R. Braunstein and R.L. Wood), American Sociological Review 79:705-25 (2014)