Education
McGowan graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and music theory. In 1999, he received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Minnesota in music theory and composition.
McGowan graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and music theory. In 1999, he received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Minnesota in music theory and composition.
From 1991 to 2006, he was associate professor of music at Saint Catherine University, a Catholic women"s college in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. His experiences at the college are satirized in his 2002 novel Calling Bernadette"s Bluff and the 2010 sequel Good Thunder. In 2006, McGowan resigned his university position to pursue a full-time writing career.
He edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief (2007), a compilation of essays on raising children outside of religion.
Contributors to this volume included Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette, and Julia Sweeney. In 2009, he released a practical companion to Parenting Beyond Belief titled Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief.
Like its predecessor, Raising Freethinkers included contributions from multiple authors, including McGowan himself. August 2014 saw the release of In Faith and in Doubt, the first book on secular/religious mixed marriages.
The Foundation selects five charitable organizations per quarter, one in each of the following cause areas:
Education
Poverty and Health
Human Rights
Natural World
Challenge the Gap (a special category for non-proselytizing religious charities)
Members join the foundation by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, then set up personal profiles to indicate how they would like their contribution distributed among the five categories.
FBB also sponsors over 100 humanist volunteer teams in cities around the United States., a Humanist Service Corps providing global service opportunities for nontheists, and Humanist Disaster Recovery Teams, a program coordinating humanist volunteers to respond on the ground after natural disasters. Noelle George is FBB"s Executive Director and Greta Christina, among others, is on its Board of Directors.
As of November 2014, the members of FBB have raised over $1.75 million for charities worldwide.