Megan E. Tompkins-Stange

Megan E. Tompkins-Stange is an Assistant Professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. Her research focuses on institutional change in U.S. public education, the management of nonprofit organizations, and the role of philanthropy and civil society within public policy.

In her book, "Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence" (Harvard Education Press, 2016), she draws on interviews with 60 foundation insiders and education leaders to compare how four major private funders of K-12 education - the Gates, Broad, Kellogg and Ford Foundations - engage in advocacy and policy-related activities. She contrasts how these foundations' strategies are an outgrowth of distinct organizational values, and reflects on how these differences impact both education practice and broader democratic society.

In other work, she has analyzed the role of "new" foundations in supporting the rise of entrepreneurial approaches within contemporary K-12 education reform, including foundations' involvement in creating and diffusing charter school management organizations in the U.S. She is currently engaged in a W.T. Grant Foundation-funded project, with Sarah Reckhow, on how advocacy research funded by philanthropic foundations shapes policy debates on teacher quality, as well as two projects centered in Detroit - one examining how being labeled Priority under No Child Left Behind impacted principals and teachers in Detroit's public schools, and one that analyzes a foundation's efforts to ensure transparency for its grant recipients in the context of its early childhood education investments.

Dr. Tompkins-Stange's research has been published in journals and books including Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, The New Education Philanthropy (Harvard Education Press, 2015) and How Institutions Matter (Emerald Publishing Limited, 2016).

At the Ford School, she teaches courses on managing nonprofit organizations, values and ethics in public policy, qualitative methods, and the role of philanthropy within the public sphere. She is also faculty co-director of the Nonprofit and Public Management Center.

Dr. Tompkins-Stange received her Ph.D. in Organization Studies and Education Policy from Stanford University in 2013, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband and two daughters.