PhilanTopic

Weekend Link Roundup (March 23-24, 2013)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Black Male Achievement

On the GuideStar blog, Zeina Fayyaz, manager of the Social Innovation Forum and Social Innovation Accelerator at Root Cause, announces a call for applications to the 2013-14 Black Male Achievement Social Innovation Accelerator. Modeled after the Social Innovation Forum, the accelerator program will provide, over twelve months, capacity-building and coaching support totaling more than $150,000 to five BMA Innovators, along with opportunities to network with funders and the chance to become a national leader in the field of black male achievement.

Higher Education

Is student debt the new subprime? Writing on the Demos blog, Thomas Hedges thinks it may be. "Education itself, which many considered a right thirty years ago, has become a market product," writes Hedges. "University presidents are, in the end, fundraisers, soliciting large donations and encouraging students to take out loans that will take decades to pay back. The costs of tuition, which are cleverly obscured for low-income students, slam students years after they graduate, once they realize what paying off, say, $30,000 in student debt means." As one 30-year-old woman with $120,000 in student loans tells Hedges: "The grim truth is that universities and student loans are no longer creating the American dream, they are destroying it, one wide-eyed dreamer at a time.”

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Arabella Advisors blog, Cynthia Muller, director of the firm's impact investing practice, is encouraged by signs that the strategy is gaining traction.

On his Gift Hub blog, Phil Cubeta shares an "open" letter addressed to venture philanthropy pioneer and Leap of Reason author Mario Marino. Writes Cubeta:

I work with financial people. When they learn they can keep clients from giving money out from under management by selling them a feel good story about a “social venture portfolio,” the social economy will shift from nonprofits to for-profits. What will be lost are the local, small, inept organizations that formed you. Like the parish. That is, unless we show respect for these informal orgs and love them back as they loved us, when we were weak

And Mario responds.

"Debates in the private sector have devolved into an existential struggle between two camps: one which believes that privacy is dead and profit is king, and one which fears that any reuse of data beyond the original purpose for which it was collected is a potential threat to privacy and civil liberties," writes Robert Kirkpatrick, director of the UN's Global Pulse initiative, on the Harvard Business Review blog. "[Our] goal is to insert a third pole into this discussion: Big Data is a raw public good, and we must work together to find ways to harness it for massive social impact, both safely and responsibly. For this to happen, data philanthropy has to become a private sector priority."

Nonprofit Management

Nonprofits need to lose their fear of failure, writes Ashley Good, founder and CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada's Fail Forward project, on the Idealist.org blog, "because almost everything we do has elements of both success and failure." To get beyond that fear, Good suggests six strategies designed to "encourage communication about failures, support collaborative learning, and break down much of the fear associated with taking action."

Charity Navigator's Sandra Miniutti defends the charity evaluator's recent decision to factor out joint cost allocations from program expenses and allocate them to fundraising costs. As a result of the change, sixty-six charities in the CN database now have lower ratings, leading one of the nonprofits to compare CN to the hall monitor from the animated South Park series. Writes Miniutti:

[A]re we offended to be called the "mean-looking hall monitor from South Park?" No, we can take it. This type of response is in the nature of what happens when you make judgments and rate organizations....But what really concerns us is that wasting time calling us names doesn't change anything. Where is the outrage in the sector with regards to excessive joint cost allocations? Where are the charities that refrain from this practice? They should be standing up and demanding that other charities change their ways....

Philanthropy

To mark the centennial of the Rockefeller Foundation, the the Rockefeller Archive Center has created a Web site to tell the story of the foundation’s first hundred years. The site includes an overview of the foundation's work by subject area; a sampling of internal reports and memoranda, correspondence about Rockefeller Foundation projects, excerpts from board meeting dockets and entries from the diaries of foundation staff members; and an interactive map to help visitors to the site navigate the material. Nicely done!

Social Media

Social Media for Social Good author Heather Mansfield shares five types of tweets nonprofits should avoid sending. The list includes: 1) truncated automated tweets from Facebook; 2) automated tweets announcing new photos posted on Facebook; 3) tweets with too many hashtags; 4) poorly formatted tweets; and 5) tweets with semicolons (who knew?).

Best-selling author Seth Godin suggests that we create a standard for online communicating that encourages fairness and generosity. "Online communities are quick to form, but they're just as quick to fade, to become less open and to become less trusting because sometimes we have a cultural orientation toward taking, not giving," writes Godin. "We forget to feed the network first, to take care of those we care about."

Women & Girls

On the Huffington Post, veteran journalist Evelyn Leopold recaps the UN's recent Commission on the Status of Women conference, which concluded with all UN member states agreeing to a code that condemns violence against women and girls.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a good week!

-- The Editors

What We Value

(Mark Rosenman is an emeritus professor at the Union Institute & University and directs Caring to Change, an initiative that seeks to improve how foundations serve the public. In his last post, he wrote about accountability -- or the lack thereof -- in government, business, and the nonprofit sector.)

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for government-provided student financial aid to somehow be tied to the value of the education which it helps underwrite. While it's an interesting idea, it presents a challenge not only to institutions of higher education, but to every nonprofit organization in the country. Put simply, who gets to measure the value of any charitable program? Who gets to stipulate their purposes and assess their performance and the outcomes they deliver?

Although such data are not readily available, we know that the White House believes that how well a particular college or university's graduates do in the job market after graduation ought to be a part of a "college scorecard." We also know that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who gave the Republican rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address, feels even more strongly about the idea and has joined with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to push The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, which requires colleges and universities to provide detailed information to prospective students about how much one can expect to make in any given field post-graduation.

Given the state of the economy and students' understandable concerns about their futures, that makes a lot of sense, practically and politically. But should that be the principal measure of the value of higher education? When did we decide that the value of an associate's, bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree should be quantified and measured in vocational education terms? And who decided it?

Most of us can agree that the purpose and function of higher education is to do more than just develop the knowledge and skills needed for graduates to achieve economic success. We look to our colleges and universities to build character and cultivate moral judgment, to teach students about their responsibilities as citizens of our democracy and engage them in community life, to help develop the kind of open-minded and empathetic individuals we all want as neighbors and fellow citizens. In short, higher education is about more than vocational education, even when it's in preparation for an elite profession.

Yes, higher education has a role in making the American Dream a reality, and it is essential to our notions of meritocracy and upward mobility. Most of us take to heart the assertion that a college degree is the surest path out of poverty and into a life better than those of our parents. Yet as the New York Times noted a number of years ago, "At the most selective private universities across the country, more fathers [sic] of freshmen are doctors than are hourly workers, teachers, clergy members, farmers or members of the military -- combined."

As President Obama himself suggested in his 2012 State of the Union address, we know colleges and universities are failing to level the economic playing field for a majority of Americans. Indeed, according to a College Board study, students with high college-entrance exam scores from low-income families are less likely to complete college than those with lower scores from more affluent families. The Education Trust also found that only five of some twelve hundred institutions of higher education in the U.S. were doing a good job of serving low-income students who matriculated.

Does the administration's "college scorecard" even begin to capture what it means to prepare young men and women for productive, meaningful lives? And shouldn't it also reflect whether and how well each college and university is advancing economic equity in society?

Such shortcomings in reflecting organizations' purposes and functions can be seen across the nonprofit sector. In the rush to assess performance, measure outcomes, and be more "accountable" to donors and funders, vital elements of many nonprofits' missions are given short shrift. This despite the fact that charitable groups often seek (and are expected) to provide goods or services in situations -- health care, education, land conservation, and so on -- where the market has failed.

Nonprofits also often work to avert problems before they require remedial intervention and to build individual capacity and community vitality so that fewer government- and charitably-funded services are needed in the long run. They contribute to the strengthening of our democracy and to increased civic and social capital. They inform the development of better policy and public program implementation, resulting in a better quality of life for all of us.

Alas, these kinds of things often are unacknowledged, let alone measured, when assessing the value of services provided by nonprofits. And because of these omissions, they increasingly are ignored by politicians, funders, and others who are keeping score, sometimes even by nonprofits themselves.

This must change. As a society, we tend to make economic calculations in very short timeframes -- daily, quarterly, annually. Maybe it's because we're Americans, always on the move, but we have little patience for long-term investments that favor the common good over narrowly defined short-term payouts. But unless and until the full scope of nonprofits' value to society is included in our assessment and evaluation schemes, all but the most basic functions of the sector will be discounted and marginalized.

From higher education to medical research, daycare and recreational opportunities to culture and the arts, all will be subject to a brutal economic calculus: Is the "commodity" produced by the organization worth the cost? Were we to pursue such a path, broader social benefits and the common good eventually would fade from practice and our collective value system.

Which brings me back to where I started. How do we assess the value of higher education? Do the schemes floating around the White House and Congress even consider what it means to develop good citizens and good neighbors? How do we assign value to the splendid wonder of someone pulling him or herself out of poverty compared to someone who benefits from a stable family structure, unlimited resources, and powerful economic and social networks?

What is the worth to society of a strong, evidence-based belief in the validity and legitimacy of the American Dream? Doesn't that benefit all of us?

If we care about such things -- as foundations, individual donors, and government must -- we need to accord them the value they deserve and make sure that any college or nonprofit scorecard goes beyond individual profit to include measures of broad social benefit. Failure to build that into our calculus will make us all poorer over the long term.

-- Mark Rosenman

Newsmaker: Shawn Dove, Campaign Manager, Campaign for Black Male Achievement, Open Society Foundations

In October, the Open Society Foundations and the Foundation Center released a report, Where Do We Go From Here? Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys  (40 pages, PDF), which found, among other things, that philanthropic support for African-American men and boys has risen steadily over the past decade, from $10 million in 2003 to $29 million in 2010. At a time when nearly every major indicator of economic, social, and physical well-being shows that African-American males do not have access to the opportunities they need to thrive, the philanthropic sector is working to address this critical need on two fronts: by supporting organizations in the "black male achievement field" and by spotlighting the fact that more needs to be done to tackle racial and economic inequality in America.

In the foreward to the report, Shawn Dove, manager of the OSF-based Campaign for Black Male Achievement, noted that former Open Society board member Lani Guinier has long argued that African-American males are not unlike "canaries in the coalmine," in that their socioeconomic plight foreshadows many negative trends that eventually will affect the broader society. That explains why, for many, the well-being of African-American men and boys is not a "black issue." It is, as Dove said when we spoke to him recently, "an American issue." Moreover, he added, "[g]rantmakers should not enter th[e] field with the expectation that they can parachute in and save the day....We need to look at what's working, and to spread the word about what success looks like."

After more than twenty years working in the fields of youth development, education, and community building, including stints as a director of a Beacon School in Harlem, as creative communities director for the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, and as vice president for MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, Dove joined OSF in 2008. PND spoke with him in November, shortly after the release of the report.

Philanthropy News Digest: We've been told that America in 2012 is a post-racial society. Is it?

Shawn Dove: I guess that depends on one's definition and interpretation of "post-racial." If one's definition is a society in which there are no racial disparities when it comes to opportunity, access, and equity, I would say, "Not so much." In 2012, America aspires to be post-racial. But judging by the wealth gap, ethnic and racial disparities in access to high-quality education, and the number of people of color in the House and Senate, I'd say we still have some work to do.

PND: Countless studies and papers have outlined the many root causes of racial inequality in America. If the causes are clear, why do large portions of the African-American community continue to be adversely affected by disparities in education, health care, and employment?

SD: You know, that is the billion-dollar question. Two of our grantee partners, the American Values Institute and the Opportunity Agenda, have done extensive research on implicit bias in America, and what their research revealed was that far too many people hold unconscious racial prejudices that affect their decision making when interacting with races other than their own. So while retail sales managers, for example, will say they don't have racist attitudes or are not prejudiced, they'll also resist putting people of color, specifically African-American males, in roles that have direct contact with customers.

Americans of all ethnicities still have an exceedingly difficult time having honest conversations about race. There are a number of organizations and leaders who are organizing people to have discussions about racial disparities in our society, but a lot of work still needs to be done to change the behaviors that perpetuate inequality in this country.

In 2013, a film called American Promise will premiere and lift up the issue of black male achievement, offering all of us an opportunity to have an honest conversation about race and education in America. The film provides a rare look into the lives of two middle class black families as they navigate the ups and downs of parenting and educating their sons. With support from Open Society, the Ford Foundation, and the Fledgling Fund, as well as other partners, a national outreach campaign is being developed to empower boys, their parents, and educators to help close the black male achievement gap and deal with racial disparities.

PND: As journalist Gary Younge noted in a Nation article last year, the economic gap between black and white has grown since President Obama took office. What advice would you give the president as he prepares for his second term?

SD: We need to be clear about what the president inherited when he was elected in 2008, and how long it will actually take to turn things around, especially when the political process for moving legislation is fraught with partisan obstacles at every turn. Back then, the American economy was in free fall, and by the time Obama took office in January 2009, the economy was in a certified crisis. The president had to take certain measures to avert a full-out depression. Yet even with those steps, the country could not avoid the layoffs and high unemployment that followed -- something that affected all ethnicities and racial groups but hit African Americans the hardest.

Now that Obama has been re-elected and the economy is slowly recovering from the collapse of the housing bubble, we need a plan to lower the poverty rate and help raise low-income families into the middle class. We need policies and solutions that are systemic and sustainable and will endure past 2016. The administration also should develop more partnerships with the private sector to ensure that young people are developing employable skills, and it needs to focus on how education can help people become first-generation members of the middle class.

PND: According to Where Do We Go From Here?, foundation funding for African-American men and boys started to pick up after 2006. To what do you attribute the increase?

SD: Fearless leadership and innovation in the philanthropic sector. Data across issues that have been disaggregated by race and gender. And any number of leaders who have pushed strategies and formed coalitions around targeted solutions designed to improve the life outcomes of African-American men and boys.

PND: Have efforts like the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Philanthropy's Promise campaign helped to raise awareness of needs in the African-American community?

SD: The answer is a resounding yes. But, you know, even before philanthropy became more organized and coordinated around the issue, we were seeing greater investment in research and communications strategies to elevate the issue. Here at Open Society, our aim with the Campaign for Black Male Achievement was to keep the issue front and center in the public discourse, because we felt that if it dropped out of the conversation and if solutions were not identified and amplified, other things would wind up distracting us from addressing it. I think the same can be said of the Promise initiative, which in June, a year after its launch, had doubled the number of its partners to a hundred and twenty-five, representing nearly $3.4 billion in giving. These campaigns help shine a light on the needs of an underserved and underrepresented population, and how we are working to meet those needs.

PND: Tell us about the Campaign for Black Male Achievement. How did it come about? And how did you become involved?

SD: I would say an impassioned conversation inside philanthropy was ignited after an article titled "Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn" appeared on the front page of the New York Times in 2006. The article highlighted the many disparities and inequities confronting African-American men: indeed, at a time when the economy was booming and the nation's top earners were gaining significant wealth, African-American men were falling further and further behind. Well, the article ignited a conversation at OSF among staff who felt that an organization that prided itself on supporting a more democratic, fair, and just society and on empowering the most marginalized individuals in society to become agents in their own empowerment should be at the forefront of this issue. As I later learned, there was debate about whether the foundation should launch a campaign specifically targeting support for African-American men and boys, with some staff making a strong case that the foundation already was engaged in the issue through its investments in reform of the criminal justice system. But it eventually became clear to everyone that this was an opportunity to more directly address the causes of the "prison pipeline."

At the same time that discussion was happening, I was publishing a community newspaper called Proud Poppa for African-American Fathers and leading a youth ministry at my church. Prior to that, I had worked with Geoffrey Canada at the Harlem Children's Zone. After the foundation decided to launch the campaign, a number of people encouraged me to apply for the position of campaign manager. Eventually, I did, and that's how I got involved.

The campaign, which launched in 2008, was originally supposed to be a three-year initiative. But about eighteen months into it, OSF founder George Soros and the foundation's board decided to get rid of the term limits and, based on our early work, increased our budget. I think that decision helped other philanthropic institutions to better understand the severity of the problem and the foundation's deep commitment to addressing it over the long haul.

PND: Has the campaign had an impact? And how do you measure that?

SD: Well, that's the other billion-dollar question. Four years ago, when the campaign was launched, there was no clearly defined field of black male achievement -- or it wasn't acknowledged in the way it is today by researchers, policy advocates, practitioners, and funders. In that way, we have been successful beyond measure. Today there is a movement and a field of black male achievement. To achieve this in four years speaks to the commitment among organizations, individuals, and communities who are seeking to find solutions to the problems plaguing black men and boys. But while there's been a breakthrough on both the national and local level in terms of awareness and activity around the issue, the verdict is still out on how and whether the field is creating impact on a national scale. There is anecdotal evidence that it is, but that's the main reason why my colleagues and I argue that philanthropy needs a sustained commitment to this work.

Through its Boys and Young Men of Color initiative, for example, the California Endowment has helped to introduce a number of bills in California around school discipline and dropout/pushout rates; four of which have passed. The endowment also is helping to reduce the number of African-American boys engaged in the juvenile justice system. Elsewhere, the Knight Foundation re-launched an effort called Black Male Engagement that supports African-American males in their communities. The unique thing about the Knight initiative is that the foundation acknowledges -- correctly, in my view -- that the problem isn't with African-American men and boys, the problem is rooted in the system and the society in which African-American men and boys grow up. And so the initiative seeks to recognize and elevate the work of "regular" guys who are already adding value and contributing to their respective communities.

Open Society, in partnership with Echoing Green, also launched a Black Male Achievement Fellowship, to identify innovative social entrepreneurs who are focusing on ways to sustain black male achievement across a number of issue areas and a Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, a national membership organization that we believe will be the engine that sustains this work over the long haul. We've already seen a tremendous response to the institute after its official launch during our Innovation and Impact Forum for Black Male Achievement. To date, over four hundred organizations across the country have been identified and expressed a sincere commitment to join efforts designed to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys.

Ultimately, however, it is important that we acknowledge that this is a generational issue that will require a long-term commitment. The challenges that prevent black male achievement come out of decades and centuries of systemic injustices. So to expect that after four years of a campaign we would reverse these trends is reflective of the general state of philanthropy, which often will focus on a hot or popular issue of the moment but, after a few years, will move on to the next pressing issue. If we hope to truly measure impact and see change we must commit for the long term.

PND: Even as some of the biggest foundations are stepping up their support for African-American men and boys, the sector continues to wrestle with its own diversity challenges, including the relative lack of minority representation on foundation boards or in foundation leadership positions. Is that an issue of there not being enough qualified minority candidates for these positions? And if so, what can foundations do to help boost the size of the applicant pool?

SD: It's definitely not an issue of there not being enough qualified candidates for these positions. Anyone who states that is not looking hard enough -- there are fellowships, internships, more aggressive recruiting tactics, and even affinity groups out there that can help organizations find qualified people of color to fill open positions. I do think we are seeing an increase in the diversity of leadership, but we have a long way to go to get where we need to be, especially when we closely examine diversity data at the trustee and CEO level.

PND: Given President Obama's re-election, are you at all encouraged by general trends in society with respect to African Americans, particularly men and boys?

SD: Oh, yes, I'm an eternal optimist. As you know, our recent Innovation and Impact Forum brought together leaders from every sector who are focused on the issue, including folks from New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's Young Men's Initiative as well as Cities United, an effort led by Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu to galvanize municipal leaders to respond to the unacceptably high number of violent deaths of African-American men in cities nationwide. The issue has definitely gained traction at the municipal level, and I feel optimistic about the pace of our progress.

But as we look more closely at how we measure impact and promote what works, I am concerned about the sustainability of our efforts. There are groups doing phenomenal work, and they need continued support. What America really needs is something like a corporation for Black Male Achievement that would allow an endowed philanthropic social enterprise to really lean into this issue and create lasting change.

PND: What would you say to your colleagues in other foundations about the importance of this issue?

SD: Well, I would say that this is not a "black issue," it is an American issue that has a negative impact on all of us. I would ask them to focus on assets and not deficits. Grantmakers should not enter this field with the expectation that they can parachute in and save the day. I truly believe that the answers to the challenges African-American men and boys are facing reside in the hearts, minds, and hands of African-American men and boys. It's this whole idea of the power of positive deviance. We need to look at what's working, and to spread the word about what success looks like.

I would encourage my colleagues who ask "Why an explicit focus on African-American men and boys?" to look at the data. Once they do, I believe they will join us and the many other foundations working to build and strengthen the African-American community. I would also challenge my colleagues to think about how we can increase public-private collaboration around this issue, and about being in this for the long haul. We're not going to create lasting change with a three- or five-year campaign, or by launching another initiative. The philanthropic community needs to give this issue the time and support it requires.

Lastly, I would share a quote from one of my colleagues, John Jackson, CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. In a speech he delivered at a recent grantmakers for education conference in New York City, John said, "Programs are progress, and we need progress. But policy is power." And with that, I would like to encourage my colleagues to invest in advocacy and policy change, not just programs. We are dealing with systemic and structural barriers that I believe can only be addressed and solved through policy reform.

-- Regina Mahone

Most Popular PhilanTopic Posts (October 2012)

Here in Manhattan, things post-Sandy are slooowly getting back to normal. For tens of thousands of people in Queens, Staten Island, and New Jersey, "normal" will never be the same. Our thoughts and prayers are with all who lost loved ones. For everyone else, these were the most popular posts on PhilanTopic in October:

• Walking the Talk: Philanthropy 'Does' Big Data (Brad Smith)
• Preparing Students for College and Careers (Jessica Pliska)
• Of Fire Trucks, Obama, Romney and Philanthropy (Brad Smith)
• On 'Networked Nonprofits' and Measurement: A 'Flip' Chat With Beth Kanter (Regina Mahone)
• Hurricane Sandy Resource Page (Mitch Nauffts)

What have you read/watched/listened to lately that you liked?

Young Black Males and the Urgency of Now

(John H. Jackson is president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, a grantmaking public charity that works to develop and strengthen a broad-based movement to achieve fully resourced quality public education. Before joining Schott, Jackson served as the NAACP's chief policy officer and national director of education and, during the Clinton administration, as senior policy advisor in the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.)

In April 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King reminded the country that "We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now....Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity....Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late'." Forty-five years later, after reviewing the data on graduation rates for black and Latino males and in the spirit of Dr. King’s warning, the Schott Foundation for Public Education titled the 2012 edition of its biennial fifty-state report on public education and black males The Urgency of Now.

The report indicates that nationally 52 percent of black males, 58 percent of Latino males, and 78 percent of white males graduate from high school in four years. To place this data in context, it is predicted that nearly two-thirds of all new jobs will require some college education -- yet just over half of black male students complete high school. And the graduation gap has closed only three percentage points in the last decade. At the current rate of progress, it would take nearly fifty years for black males in the United States to graduate at the same rate as their white male peers.

For decades, community leaders and policy makers have celebrated the victories of those who beat the odds while too often ignoring the fact that the odds are still overwhelmingly stacked against nearly half our nation's black males. The data in the report are not chance facts of life; they are the results, if we are totally honest, of the willful neglect of decision-makers at all levels, from governors to legislators, from mayors to boards of education.

Let me be clear. I am highlighting these sobering statistics not merely to be critical of past actions, but to draw attention to the fact that much more in the way of providing systemic supports for young black males needs to be done.

The Schott Foundation firmly believes that all students can achieve when given a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. And philanthropy can help change the trajectory for students whom the system is failing. While it should not, and does not have the capacity to, replace local, state, and federal agencies in providing every student with equal access to educational opportunity, philanthropy can and must play a leading role in investing resources in advocacy; in ensuring that public resources are appropriately leveraged and equitably distributed; and in helping to sustain grassroots organizations working to forge a public and political consensus around giving every child an opportunity to learn.

Perhaps uniquely, foundations, especially regional foundations, can convene grassroots organizers, elected officials, educators, administrators, and community members to spotlight educational disparities in their states and communities. They can support the research needed to persuade state legislatures to equalize funding across districts. And they can act to buttress the public resolve needed to end discriminatory practices in schools, in the criminal justice system, and in our tax code.

It is time for a supports-centered reform agenda focused on providing every student with equal access to the resources they need to succeed, including high-quality extended learning time, early education, and challenging personalized educational plans for every child that is performing a year or more below grade level. We also must do more to recruit and retain effective teachers, particularly in high-need classrooms; implement college and career preparatory curricula in underresourced schools; and end "push out" tactics such as the routine and discriminatory use of out-of-school suspensions, as well as the practice of "locking out" black students from selective high schools and gifted and talented and Advanced Placement programs.

The Urgency of Now calls for the adoption of "game-changer" narratives and policy proposals. Setting standards and supporting existing programs are not game-changers. For our children and nation to win the education race, all students must be able to compete on a level playing field, with access to the resources and student-centered learning approaches they need to succeed, regardless of their starting point. Philanthropy can and must do more to make that a reality. And its commitment to the issue must be sustained. As Shawn Dove, director of the Open Society Foundation's Campaign for Black Male Achievement says, "Philanthropy can't seek to solve generational problems within one grant cycle." Foundations must provide unrestricted grants that enable the organizational capacity building needed to sustain advocacy work until the problem is fixed. And we need more systems-focused work -- work like the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Grade Level Reading Campaign, the Ford Foundation's Time to Succeed Coalition, and the Lumina Foundation's Goal 2025 Campaign.

We all know that the way out of poverty runs through the schoolhouse door, but today for too many black students those doors only serve as a barrier. Here at the Schott Foundation, it is our hope that philanthropy, the media, policy makers, and advocates will not only take notice of the alarming data in The Urgency of Now, but will seek to integrate the proposals offered in the report to provide every student with the critical resources they need to succeed in school and in life. Before it's too late.

-- John Jackson

Preparing Students for College and Careers

(Jessica Pliska is the founder and executive director of The Opportunity Network, an intensive, six-year program designed to equal the playing field for high-achieving underserved high school and college students on the road to college and career success.)

The son of a mail courier and a homemaker, Eric Santiago is the first generation in his family to go to college. He grew up in a low-income family in the Fordham section of the Bronx. When his acceptance letter to Columbia University arrived, Eric made history, becoming the first student from his high school to ever gain admission to the Ivy League.

At Columbia, Eric was unprepared for the academic rigor. "I didn't even know what office hours were, let alone how to use them," he remembers. Assigned The Odyssey in freshman English, he found that many of his classmates had already read it -- in sixth grade. He learned to hold his own with students from tony prep schools who wore designer clothing to class while his blue jeans were stapled together. In his last semester, a financial aid snafu almost prevented him from registering for classes. Less resilient students drop out in the face of similar challenges.

Eric negotiated these situations, graduated in May, and recently landed his first job. But this makes him unusual -- only 10 percent of low-income students graduate college. This number is even more staggering when you consider how many more low-income students are starting college.

It's easy to blame academic unpreparedness or lack of financial resources, both critical issues. But according to a recent study by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, "even after taking their demographic backgrounds, enrollment characteristics, and academic preparation into consideration, low-income and first-generation students are still at greater risk of failure" – an indication that "the problem is as much the result of [their] experiences during college as it is attributable to the experiences they have before they enroll." Indeed, while a student's academic or financial problems may seem trivial, the smallest of mishaps can spiral into debilitating problems, no matter how much the student wants to succeed.

That's why, in addition to academic preparation and financial aid, these students need a set of skills not taught in urban public schools, skills like problem-solving and self-advocacy. They need to build professional networks, cultivate mentors, and learn to manage the diversity of their new environments. Sounds simple, right? It isn't.

But it is only by teaching these skills that we will move beyond an episodic approach to education reform in which educators, funders, and policy makers focus sequentially on reducing high school dropout rates, then on improving college access, and finally on boosting college completion rates. Because, let's remember: College is not the final destination.

We need to prepare students with the skills they need not only for educational success but also for achieving their end goals -- including productive and rewarding careers.

That's why innovative new initiatives are working to ensure both college and career success. The Opportunity Network levels the playing field for high-achieving underserved high school and college students by creating access for them to career opportunities, professional networks, and competitive colleges. Our students have a 100 percent college graduation rate within six years, and 85 percent within four.

At the Opportunity Network, we make a six-year investment in our students' success. From the summer after a high school student's sophomore year through college graduation, Opportunity Network students receive comprehensive training in our "Career Fluency" curriculum, which includes career content, professional etiquette, college access and transition, and networks and social capital. That last piece ensures that they graduate with an extraordinary early network of influential people across a broad spectrum of industries.

To prepare for the transition to college, high school seniors go through an experiential college transition curriculum filled with problem scenarios in which they experience the frustrations and fears they are likely to encounter in college and work with their peers to find solutions to those problems. So when they feel that frustration, fear, or isolation on campus, they are able to recognize and work through it, rather than shut down and allow the problem to escalate beyond solution.

Many foundations are overhauling their strategies to figure out the best way to transition from support for college access to college and career success. Here are some approaches they should consider:

Expose students to the college environment as early as possible so they build self-confidence. Help them navigate a mock college campus. Have them learn through trial and error that a problem with their college credits is not handled at the credit union, or to ask the bursar's office for help if their registration is blocked because their government grant "hasn't come through," rather than miss three weeks of class waiting for a check to come in.

Relationships, and the social capital they create, can be game-changers. Eighty percent of job seekers find their jobs through a "hidden job market" —i.e., word of mouth. We need to help students at the high school level cultivate skills to create, sustain, and leverage personal and professional networks, and it starts with summer jobs or internships. Make no mistake: Learning how to build a network is a critical asset in college, one that students can use to find people to join a study group, pursue summer internships, or simply ask for help when they need it.

Encourage engagement and build communities on campus, both of which correlate to college success. Low-income students can feel disoriented at elite colleges and universities. They may feel uncomfortable making friends and getting involved in campus activities. We force our students to confront stereotypes of all kinds. We examine, discuss, and debate issues of race and class on campus, and the curriculum design spurs those conversations to be intense and personal, just as they will be on campus.

This approach requires educators to build the skills that young people need not only for college completion but also for career success. If funders invest in programs that teach students to solve real-world problems, build communities and social capital, and gain the confidence to advocate for themselves, many more low-income students like Eric will graduate and move on to rewarding careers.

And where is Eric today? He's the college success program assistant at the Opportunity Network, where he advises students on how to manage the transition to college.

-- Jessica Pliska

Romney, Ryan, and Charity

(Mark Rosenman, a Washington-based scholar-activist and director of Caring to Change, a D.C.-based effort to promote foundation grantmaking for the common good, is a frequent contributor to PhilanTopic. In his last post, he argued that nonprofits are missing from critical policy debates.)

With the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate, Mitt Romney has changed the stakes of the 2012 presidential race. Well beyond Republican versus Democrat, the question now before Americans is who we are as a nation and a people. Over the next four years, we must make decisions about public responsibility for the common good, about what we expect of government, and of what we expect of one another. The nonprofit and philanthropic sectors cannot afford to ignore this debate.

Developed by the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee and already passed by the House of Representatives, the so-called "Ryan Plan" would have an immediate impact on many nonprofits, especially those serving low- and moderate-income people. Ultimately, however, it would affect each and every area of government support for charitable causes.

Indeed, after announcing Ryan as his running mate, candidate Romney issued a statement trying to distance himself from the plan, even though previously he had described it as "marvelous" and said he was "on the same page" as Ryan in terms of budget priorities. Charities are prohibited involvement in electoral politics, but helping to shape a public discussion about policy and our values as a nation is essential; nonprofit and foundation leaders must declare which page they are on.

Before we take a closer look at the unfolding debate, let me point out that Mitt Romney has himself already proposed similar policies. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concludes, for example, that Romney's detail-deprived proposal for tax reform would give the wealthiest Americans a significant tax cut while imposing tax increases on the remaining 95 percent of Americans.

This parallels Ryan's proposed budget, which would reduce tax revenues by $4 trillion over ten years -- and even more than that in the future. Those breaks, in turn, would save million-dollar-a-year earners an additional $265,000 annually on top of the $129,000 they'll get to keep if the Bush tax cuts are extended for everyone.

What's more, despite its draconian spending cuts and self-justifying rhetoric, the Ryan Plan will actually increase the deficit by $3.1 trillion between now and 2022, according to the House Budget Committee's own projections. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) goes further and says the plan, if adopted, wouldn't balance the federal budget until 2040.

What kind of cuts am I talking about? Let's start with Medicare. The Ryan Plan calls for the program to eventually be turned into a voucher-style subsidy that would result in individuals having to buy more expensive medical insurance in the private market. The CBO analysis suggests that the typical Medicare beneficiary would face an additional $6,400 in annual costs by 2022, although Rep. Ryan has tried to tweak his plan since CBO's analysis was made public.

Furthermore, according to the same analysis, the Ryan Plan raises the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, creating a two-year gap when Americans wouldn't have access to either Medicare or the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. What would these changes portend for already over-stretched charities and foundations working to support and assist this growing population?

Although the cuts in the Ryan Plan go even further, the plan's most pernicious aspect involves its assault on programs serving low-income people at a time when poverty rate in America is estimated to have climbed to 15.7 percent -- or about 47 million Americans -- the highest level since 1965. Indeed, more than 60 percent of the budget cuts in the Ryan Plan -- at least $3.3 trillion -- comes from government and nonprofit programs serving the poor and those at risk of falling from the ranks of the middle class. Not counting the Medicare cuts, over $2.4 trillion of the total would be sliced from funding for health initiatives for low- and moderate-income people, while the food stamp program would be cut to the tune of $134 billion, denying assistance to between eight and ten million food-insecure people.

Moreover, cuts in low-income programs for education, training, employment, and social services are estimated to total more than $463 billion, while discretionary programs in the same areas are targeted for an additional $291 billion in cuts. Consider what it would mean, for instance, to gut the Pell Grant program and deny low- and moderate-income students desperately needed tuition at a time when higher education is increasingly promoted as the route to economic self-sufficiency.

Beyond Medicare and safety-net programs, the Ryan Plan wreaks havoc in most other areas of concern to charities and the larger public. Agriculture and food safety, the environment, highways and transportation, medical and scientific research -- all are on the chopping block, as are veterans' programs, water infrastructure, national parks, border patrol, law enforcement, and initiatives in every area of government except national security. In fact, according to the CBO, if the Ryan Plan is implemented, spending by the federal government would essentially be reduced to Social Security, health care, and defense by 2050.

In the aggregate, nonprofit organizations depend on government for about a third of their annual revenue. Foundations cannot and will not make up for these missing dollars. And individual giving, especially from individuals whose own economic circumstances increasingly are precarious, isn’t going to fill in for a government that withdraws from most of its long-recognized responsibilities.

That is exactly the possibility, however, that confronts charities and foundations today. Radical policy promoted by "Republican Social Darwinists," as Robert Reich has characterized Ryan and his supporters, cannot remain unchallenged by nonprofit organizations and those who support them.

But what can charities and foundations do? First, their leaders must speak forcefully about the essential role of government in their areas of programmatic concern. While they may be concerned about a backlash, especially from their wealthier supporters, there is a great deal of polling data to suggest that nonprofit leaders can expect to find a supportive audience on many of these tax and funding issues. A factual presentation on the Ryan Plan joined to an invocation of shared American values is likely to bring even more support for the policy positions supported by charities.

Second, charities and foundations, regardless of their mission, must invest in voter registration, voter education, and get-out-the-vote campaigns focused on their constituencies, volunteers, staff, and members of their larger communities. Such activities are permissible under law (see www.nonprofitvote.org), and they are critical to helping people understand the fundamental issues and what is at stake in this election.

In 2012, Americans will do more than elect a president, a vice president, a House of Representatives, and one third of the Senate. They will determine whether or not we believe in shared responsibility for ourselves and each other. Charities and foundations that choose to sit on the sidelines have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

-- Mark Rosenman

(Long) Weekend Link Roundup (May 26-27, 2012)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Advocacy

According to Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks, the real reason Invisible Children's "Covering the Night" event in support of its KONY 2012 campaign "fizzled" is because young people have short attention spans. "Fizzling is a hazard of anything you do that's aimed at people under 30," writes Brooks. "Actually, it's more than a hazard. It's a virtual certainty." Do you agree?

Communications/Marketing

Heather Mansfield, author of Social Media for Social Good and the Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog, shares a list of "must-read" reports on the state of nonprofit communications and marketing, online fundraising, and technology.

Corporate Philanthropy

On the Knight Blog, the Knight Foundation’s Elizabeth Miller introduces the Civic 100, a "new national initiative to survey, rank, and recognize corporations that demonstrate leadership and investment in civic engagement." The initiative, writes Miller, is "taking a scientific approach to measuring and evaluating corporate civic engagement" based on companies' leadership commitments, ability to leverage partnerships, and employee engagement efforts. The first "Civic 100" will be issued in November.

Health

In an interview with global health nonprofit PSI's Abel Irena, Saul Morris, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation discusses the progress made to date in global child health and the next steps toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Higher Education

Now that Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg officially is a billionaire, Brazen Careerist columnist Danny Rubin says it's time for the founder of the world's largest social networking site to give back to the young professionals who, through their participation and crucial feedback, kept "the site rolling in its ...formative stages." Zuckerberg could do that, writes Rubin, by designing, "with his old pals...an online program that helps [recent college grads] pay down [their] student debt in constructive ways." Actually, we think he might be on to something.

Philanthropy

In the second of what is projected to be a series of six blog posts, Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan argues that what the world needs today is "a clarifying -- not a blurring -- of what differentiates the sectors." Writes Buchanan:

While it may be the case that some "hybrid" organizations will do tremendous social good, and while it is a historical fact that many companies have had very positive social impact, the rush to embrace boundary-blurring denies the reality that many crucial objectives cannot be accomplished while generating a financial return.

***

[Indeed,] the laudable push for companies to do more to create positive impact on tough social problems while also pursuing profit should not obscure the need for a strong, independent sector of organizations that are required to think about only mission, not profit. Same caveat, too, with learning across sectors. There is much to learn, in both directions -- nonprofits from companies, companies from nonprofits. But that does not mean we should seek to erase the boundaries or deny the differences in context that require our attention if we are to be effective....

On the Bolder Advocacy blog, Sue Hoechstetter commends the almost ninety individuals who have signed the Giving Pledge but urges mega-wealthy donors and major private foundations to do more to solicit input from the public. "Foundations are wonderful institutions, but like others, have their own individual needs and interests," writes Hoechstetter. "Incorporating more public input into decisions will help foundations be more collaborative and thoughtful in their grantmaking. This is especially true for...foundations [that] will benefit from the infusion of billions and billions of new dollars thanks to the Giving Pledge."

There are a number of "givens" when working in professional philanthropy, writes Bill Somerville, executive director of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. They include:

• Be willing to venture, to take risks, but don't gamble.
• If something fails, it is a learning experience.
• Get out of the office, do on-site visits.
• Hunt for and find outstanding people and fund them.
• Take the initiative, don't wait; make things happen.
• Exercise modesty in your work.
• Build trust by being transparent about what you do and how you do it.

For the complete list, visit NCRP's Keeping a Close Eye blog.

Social Media

Last but not least, CAMFED USA's Kate Kilbourne, in a guest post on Beth's blog, says that after testing a couple of campaigns on the social image-pinning" site Pininterest, she has decided "the platform, at least at this stage, is a better tool for raising awareness than funds."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- The Editors

Weekend Link Roundup (April 21-22, 2012)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Civil Society

In the Encyclopaedia of Informal Education, writer, activist, and sometime PhilanTopic contributor Michael Edwards bemoans the lack of clarity around the term civil society and attempts to restore some precision to the debate over its meaning. In the process, he reminds us that "Recognizing that civil society does indeed mean different things to different people is one of the keys to moving forward, because it moves us beyond false universals and entrenched thinking."

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares four trends, including the growing popularity of peer networks, likely to shake up nonprofit marketing. "People listen to each other more than us, so we need to stop viewing social media as another form of getting our message out," writes Andresen. "Its primary value is that it allows other people to get the message out, for us."

Entrepreneurship

On the Kauffman Foundation's Growthology log, Dane Stangler looks at the evolution of entrepreneurship and how the very definition of the word entrepreneur has broadened over the years. Writes Stangler: "In its original use by Jean-Baptiste Say, it was someone who undertook economic activities and capitalized on arbitrage opportunities. Joseph Schumpeter ushered in the modern way in which people typically use the term by equating it with newness -- new products, services, combinations, business models, etc. Israel Kirzner saw entrepreneurs as those who targeted and eliminated disequilibria in the economy (for Schumpeter, entrepreneurs created those disequilibria)." Today, however, "the word has come to be so overused as to potentially lose a great deal of meaning...."

Environment

In a guest post on the Knight Blog, Shannon Dosemagen, director of community engagement at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, a 2011 Knight News Challenge winner, explains how the decision by Google to license community-created aerial maps from the lab's archive could lead to better policy and replace commercial and government data as a recognized representation of sites of civic and environmental concern.

Higher Education

The New York Times' Room for Debate series takes up the question of whether wealthy colleges deserve their tax breaks, with contributions from economist Sandy Baum; Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation; the American Entreprise Institute's Frederick Hess; Barbara Gitenstein, president of the College of New Jersey; Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute; Osamudia James, an associate professor of law at the University of Miami; and Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

International Affairs/Development

About.com's Joanne Fritz reminds readers who are thinking about doing a little "voluntourism" this summer to use common sense and follow these tips from the Center for Responsible Travel.

Philanthropy

On his Inside Philanthropy blog, Todd Cohen offers his take on some of the investment strategies that have emerged in recent years to scale up or expand proven nonprofit programs.

Regulation/Oversight

Idealist researcher/blogger Putnam Barber reminds nonprofit organizations, many of which do not have to file their Form 990s until May 15, to make sure they have answers to three important questions:

• When is our filing deadline?
• What do we need to know to be sure we stay current with all the rules and regulations?
• Who is going to file our Form 990-N?

Social Entrepreneurship

Over at Dowser, J. Gregory Dees, a professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and creator of the first course in social entrepreneurship in the U.S., challenges New York Times' columnist David Brooks' characterization of social entrepreneurship as something young people do to "avoid political participation and...[tackle the] 'corruption, venality, and disorder head-on'." Writes Dees:

Social entrepreneurs do not discourage political participation -- they invent new mechanisms for achieving the public good. Quite often solutions to problems require not just mobilizing political support but actually demonstrating how to solve problems that have confounded others.... Social entrepreneurs serve as society"s "learning laboratory," developing, testing, and refining new approaches to problems in ways that government agencies, with all their budgetary, bureaucratic, legislative, jurisdictional, and political constraints cannot do. These innovators represent the kind of decentralized problem solving that Nobel laureate Douglass North identifies as essential for any society to achieve what he calls "adaptive efficiency," the ability to adjust and thrive in the face of new challenges and shifting problems....

Social Media

On her blog, Allison Fine weighs in on the value of a Facebook "like." Writes Fine:

The notion of creating a direct equation of how much it cost to get one person to like a Facebook page and how much that person bought or gave as a result might satisfy the bean counters, but misses the larger point of why social media are so much more powerful than broadcast media. If you’re just looking for one, or ten, or one hundred thousand stand alone customers or donors, then there is no extra value in using social media. You could have just sent out a direct mail piece for that. The value in using social media is that every person, every like, comes with their own network that can be activated in an instant, and at no additional cost, for the organization. And that value, the value of having an army of your most ardent fans, affects far more than the development department....

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Mark Hager, associate professor of nonprofit studies at Arizona State University's School of Community Resources and Development, explains how students in his Theory and Practice of Philanthropy course are using Glasspockets indicators to evaluate private foundations and "reflect critically on the value of transparency and how well the Glass Pockets assessment captures the concept." In the coming weeks, Hager will share thoughts from the student who "presented the most interesting observations about foundations, transparency, and the 'Who Has Glass Pockets' indicators." Stay tuned.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- The Editors

This Week in PubHub: Minorities and Higher Education

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that examine the role of racial/ethnic disparities in wealth, health, and educational attainment and how those factors are linked and reinforce one another.)

Diverging Pathways: How Wealth Shapes Opportunity for Children (16 pages, PDF), a report from the Insight Center for Community Economic Development included in my last post, cites 2007 data showing that 69 percent of Latino and 71 percent of African-American households are income-poor, while 40 percent (for both groups) are asset-poor. The report argues that without the financial resources to pay for high-quality early childhood education or college, children in these households face a future of limited opportunity. This week in PubHub, we're featuring four reports that focus on trends in college enrollment among students of color, as well as the role of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs).

According to Hispanic College Enrollment Spikes, Narrowing Gaps With Other Groups (30 pages, PDF), a report from the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of Latino students between the ages of 18 and 24 enrolled in two- or four-year colleges jumped 24 percent in 2010. That compares favorably with modest increases of 5.2 percent and 5.4 percent for African Americans and Asian Americans, and a decline of 4 percent (due in part to demographic trends) among white students. Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the report also found that 44 percent of Latino high school graduates attended college in 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all college students in that age group, and that while college enrollment among Latinos is up significantly in recent years, completion rates remain low, at 13 percent, among 25- to 29-year-olds.

Raising college completion rates among Latino students is the focus of Roadmap for Ensuring America's Future by Increasing Latino College Completion (20 pages, PDF), a report from Excelencia in Education. Given demographic trends, the report notes, Latinos will have to earn 5.5 million college degrees to close racial/ethnic gaps and meet the nation's degree attainment goal by 2020. To that end, the report's authors recommend that communities develop partnerships between school districts and institutions of higher education to improve college readiness and participation rates; that colleges guarantee need-based aid for qualified students; and that states track data on equity and success in degree attainment. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the Lumina Foundation for Education, the report calls on the federal government to support capacity-building efforts at established and emerging Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) to strengthen educational quality as a way to boost degree attainment.

According to the reports, college enrollment among African Americans and Latinos reached record highs in 2010, with just over half of Latino undergraduates enrolled at HSIs. Indeed, Students Speak! -- Understanding the Value of HBCUs From Student Perspectives (39 pages, PDF), a report from the UNCF Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, notes that while HBCUs account for only 4 percent of all four-year institutions in the U.S., they graduate 21 percent of all African Americans with a bachelor's degree. According to the report, the decision to attend an HBCU is influenced by many factors, including the perception that they provide a welcoming, supportive environment and a measure of cultural empowerment. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the report suggests that students who feel connected to and supported by their institutions, both academically and socially, are more likely to stay in school, and that student-faculty interaction is a key factor in raising retention and graduation rates.

The Lumina Foundation for Education has been working with HBCUs, HSIs, tribal colleges and universities, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions to boost degree attainment. The Role of Minority-Serving Institutions in National College Completion Goals (9 pages, PDF), a report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy, describes Lumina's MSI Models of Success program, which aims to build capacity for data collection and analysis, foster a collective advocacy voice on behalf of minority-serving institutions, strengthen policy and practice related to developmental education, and raise completion rates, especially among men of color.

How do you think we should be addressing racial/ethnic disparities in educational attainment? Do you know of any promising initiatives to raise retention rates among students of color at non-MSIs, or best practices for boosting college completion rates at the community level? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

And don't forget to visit PubHub, where you can browse more than two hundred and sixty reports on topics related to minorities.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Weekend Link Roundup (February 4-5, 2012)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector...

African Americans

BlackGivesBack's Tracey Webb gives a shout out to The Root, which earlier this week unveiled its 2012 list of Young Futurists -- African Americans under the age of 22 who are "not only achievers but also innovators in the worlds of green innovation, science and technology, arts and culture, social activism, and business enterprise."

Civil Society

"[Is there] a textbook definition of the common good?" asks Steven Fajon, a Case Foundation intern, in a guest post on the Social Citizens blog. The question occurred to Fajon after panelist Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, in an Independent Sector webinar titled "What the Heck Is the Common Good Anyway?" explained that the purpose of the question was to initiate a dialogue between communities in need. For his part, Fajon remains unconvinced. "[I]n the end," he writes, "the idea of the common good doesn't need to be an exact science –- it simply has to strike up a debate, just like it did in my mind."

Communications/Marketing

Has any public charity had a worse week, communcations-wise, than the one Komen for the Cure had this week? For a complete rundown of the missteps made by the Dallas-based organization as it tried to explain its decision to de-fund grantee Planned Parenthood, badly fumbled its response when the Internet erupted in outrage, then reversed itself a day later, see Kivi Leroux Miller's post on the "accidental rebranding" of Komen.

Global Health

On his Humanosphere blog, Tom Paulson shares a Twitter map made by Marc Smith, founder of the Social Media Research Foundation, that seems to show the global health community -- at least the portion of it "active" on Twitter -- to be fairly insular and uncommunicative. "It's mostly just an echoing of the Gates Foundation," says Smith. "There's not a lot of response, or engagement. Basically, it looks like people preaching to the choir." For his part, Paulson suggests the problem isn't so much Twitter or social media as it is "the passive...and sometimes simplistic nature of the narrative within the global health and development community itself. This is a community," Paulson adds,

devoted to -- and advertising itself as -- doing good. Humanitarians, in my experience, are exceptionally uncomfortable when forced to talk about things going bad. It also doesn't help with fund-raising, of course. But it's reality, and reality makes for better stories.

Health

In a post on the Breast Cancer Action blog, BCA executive director Karuna Jaggar writes: "The sad truth is that Komen’s willingness to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, while a victory for women who rely on those resources, will not end the epidemic....Not while Komen overemphasizes the value of mammography -- mammography will never stop cancer before it starts. Not while pinkwashing remains the status quo, and not while Komen allows companies to put pink ribbons on their carcinogenic products. Not while metastatic disease, which is what kills women, gets only 2% of research dollars in this country...."

Higher Education

The Nonprofit Quarterly's Rick Cohen takes a closer look at the tax-exempt sector's "1 percent" -- elite universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford whose endowments, on average, racked up gains of 19 percent in fiscal year 2011.

International Aid/Development

In the first two installments of a four-part series here on PhilanTopic, Demos senior fellow Michael Edwards uses the paper he wrote on the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored Bellagio Initiative to explore the relevance of "well-being" as a lens in development work and some of the lessons philanthropy can learn from that work. Coming up next: the role of metrics in that conversation.

On the White Courtesy Telephone blog, Greater New Orleans Foundation president and CEO Albert Ruesga weighs in on a disturbing article in the New York Times that exposed the unsafe working conditions at an Apple supplier in China. "It's not a given that being poor means having to work extremely hard in unsafe conditions to make very little,” writes Ruesga. “Fixing this in your supply chain needs to take priority over an on-time delivery of iPhones to eager consumers....”

Nonprofit Blogosphere

Hosting this month's Nonprofit Blog Carnival, Getting Attention's Nancy Schwartz shares a selection of posts that highlight the dreams of our fellow nonprofit bloggers.

Philanthropy

In a video reposted on the Humanosphere blog, Melinda Gates explains the purpose of the Gates Foundation's new visitor center in Seattle.

In the text of a speech reprinted on the Philanthropy Daily site, William Schambra, the director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, offers a typically provocative take on the difference between liberal and conservative philanthropy. "Granted, every progressive foundation has in mind a particular social ill or injustice it seeks to remedy, whether environmental degradation or poverty or racial inequity," writes Schambra. "But what do all these add up to?

Very seldom do liberal foundations tell us explicitly what their overriding political philosophy is, or how they understand the basic character of the American political order, and what’s worth preserving and what needs changing.

Instead, if you add up the range of specific problems on the agenda of liberal philanthropy, we’re left with a pretty depressing view of America -- an America beset by a wide range of social ills and injustices that desperately require philanthropic interventions of all sorts.

By contrast, conservative philanthropy tends to see beneath the problems America may be experiencing -- many of which are of course quite serious -- [and sees] a profoundly decent and good political order.

And the vision is to understand and preserve that order, the American regime of liberal democracy, in the face of powerful intellectual forces that have pulled us away from that commitment....

Social Enterprise

Is the social enterprise bubble about to burst? In an attempt to answer that question, the folks at GOOD asked half a dozen social entrepreneurs working in Africa what they think is driving the hype, where the sector is going, and what advice they have for those just starting off.

Social Media

And in a guest post on Beth’s Blog, Levi Strauss Foundation executive director Daniel Jae-Won Lee looks at how some human rights organizations are using social media to engage underserved communities on the issues that affect them. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California developed MiACLU.org, an online Spanish-language platform that's designed to educate and engage Latinos in the region about immigration issues.

That's it for this week. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org!

-- The Editors

Inequality

(Mark Rosenman, a nonprofit sector activist and scholar, directs Caring to Change, an effort in Washington that seeks to promote foundation grantmaking for the common good. In his last post, he challenged the notion that more nonprofit organizations necessarily translates into greater social good.)

Although the public and a few elected leaders increasingly are focused on growing economic inequality in America, the topic isn't receiving much attention from charities and nonprofits. This in spite of the fact that the sector itself is characterized by a similar inequality.

That silence is surprising for a couple of reasons. Today's yawning inequality exacerbates the problems many people face as well as their need to turn to charities for assistance. It also directly affects the help they're able to receive; as a general rule, the larger a nonprofit organization's budget, the less likely it is to provide the kind of assistance needed by low-income Americans and those falling toward poverty. Wealthier charities tend to cater to wealthier Americans, and as the rich get richer, inequality -- in society and the nonprofit world -- grows.

Let's look at some statistics about growing inequality in the country and then explore what it means for Americans and the nonprofit organizations that serve them. Since 1979, after-tax income for the top 1 percent has more than doubled, even as it fell for middle-class and lower-income Americans. The top 5 percent of households in the United States now hold more than 60 percent of the wealth. The imbalance is even greater in the nonprofit sector, where the top 2.5 percent of charities that report data to the IRS control more than 50 percent of the wealth and account for over 60 percent of annual revenues.

Three types of exempt organizations -- hospitals, primary healthcare facilities, and institutions of higher education -- make up the top tier of the sector. Compare their finances with those of human service groups, which comprise more than a third of all exempt organizations but account for only 13 percent of its annual revenues (including government funding, fees-for-service and other income, and donations) and 11 percent of its assets.

It gets worse. This is the first recession on record in which the median income of working-age people was lower as the economy "recovered" than it was before the economy tanked. The wealthy, of course, continue to do well. Much the same is true for charities, as larger, more prosperous organizations see modest growth in contributions while many smaller nonprofits struggle to survive.

Higher education is a perfect example. The recession officially ended in the summer of 2009, and giving to higher education rose about 3.5 percent in 2010. Compare that to giving to the human services sector, which declined 1.5 percent in spite of contributions for disaster relief and recovery efforts in Haiti and elsewhere.

That's a problem, in part, because giving to higher educational institutions contributes to inequality. Consider the top two hundred or so colleges, where only 15 percent of students come from the bottom half of the income-distribution pyramid and 67 percent come from the top quartile. At most institutions, moreover, financial assistance for low- and moderate-income students has failed to keep pace with increases in tuition and related costs. And this as the increasingly large salaries paid many university presidents makes them "1-percenters."

Indeed, retiring Amherst College president Anthony Marx recently observed that "we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution." While having a college degree remains important to getting, or at least holding on to, a good job with benefits and some security, it also helps to legitimate inequality by seeming to validate a college education as a sure-fire route to meritocratic success.

But is it? According to a College Board study using Department of Education data, students with high test scores from low-income families were less likely to complete college than those with low scores from affluent families. And an Education Trust study of almost twelve hundred four-year colleges found that only five institutions (that's a number, not a percentage) were doing a good job serving low-income students.

The problem isn't confined to higher education. Nonprofit hospitals -- a category that includes some of the best hospitals in the country -- often fail to adequately serve those in greatest need while handing out executive compensation packages that would make a banker blush. In 2009, two-thirds of the nonprofit hospitals in the country dedicated less than 2 percent of their total expenditures for "charity care" -- i.e., medical care for the poor and indigent -- while only 7 percent directed more than 5 percent to such care. And this during a severe economic downturn in which health-related crises put countless numbers of low- and moderate-income people at grave economic risk.

I'm not suggesting that nonprofit organizations at the top of the income pyramid completely fail to provide beneficial services to society at large. They do. But with their elite reputational status and considerable economic wherewithal, they could do much more. The same is true of foundations.

Human service groups and community-based organizations often are the most helpful to people on the short end of the inequality stick. In addition to the direct services they provide, community-based organizations frequently advocate for and organize around the plight of the downwardly mobile and financially insecure. Yet, faced with ongoing budget cuts and flat or declining contributions, they are among the organizations that are most strapped financially as we head into an even more challenging future.

Notwithstanding the recent assertions of various Republican presidential candidates, it's not "class warfare" or "the politics of envy" to acknowledge -- and want to address -- growing economic inequality. On the contrary, it's a gross disservice to the nation to downplay its existence and assert that we can fix the problem by giving more tax breaks to the wealthy or by further deregulating corporations. As my kids would say, been there, done that. Acknowledging the divide between the haves and have-nots is an important step -- we can't solve the problem unless we are willing to speak frankly.

In short, nonprofit and foundation leaders need to talk more forcefully and publicly about economic inequality in America -- and do more to address it in both their programs and their own operations. They can start by countering the myths and obfuscation that characterize too much of today's political discourse. It's time we united, as a sector, to help people understand and act on their shared interests and better serve the common good.

-- Mark Rosenman

Wikipedia Goes to College

(Laura Cronin is a regular contributor to PhilanTopic. In her last post, she chatted with Karen Brown, vice president of programs at the Fairfield County Community Foundation, about the foundation's capacity-building efforts.)

Since 2003, the Wikimedia Foundation has been quietly going about the business of operating the fifth most visited site on the Internet without trumpeting its own story as one of the most successful volunteer organizations in the world.

With 20 million volunteer-authored articles in over 282 languages, the foundation has taken the old-fashioned volunteer effort online and achieved a scale for Wikipedia, its biggest and most successful project, that few people in traditional nonprofit circles would dare to imagine. For those in the sector focused on impact, the numbers are impressive. According to a Pew survey, 53 percent of adult American Internet users visit Wikipedia regularly, and the site boasts more than 400 million user visits a month (the strategic plan calls for topping one billion in 2012). Let's face it, is there any other nonprofit organization in the world that can help you find Lady Gaga's real name (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ) or tell you how to properly categorize Pluto within seconds of firing up your smartphone?

While the Wikimedia Foundation has grown in recent years, it is still primarily a volunteer enterprise. Headquartered in San Francisco, the 501(c)(3) organization has only 73 full-time employees and, despite a very sophisticated technology infrastructure, an annual operating budget of under $30 million. To maintain and improve its financial position, the foundation has become more aggressive this year about raising additional funds. Like its volunteer efforts, these initial forays into the world of fundraising have been models of efficiency and innovation. Indeed, the foundation's first online fundraiser last year netted some $15 million in just fifty days.

Growing and diversifying its cadre of volunteers is now a top priority for the foundation. In theory, anyone in the world can edit a Wikipedia page. In practice, the barriers to becoming a successful volunteer (or "Wikipedian") are rather high. The editing protocols require technical skills and practice. And in order to make a lasting contribution, subject-area expertise and excellent language skills are needed as well.

With an eye to ensuring that more people become successful volunteers –- especially more women and people from the global South -- the foundation piloted its first Public Policy Initiative during the 2010-11 academic year on thirty-two university campuses across the United States. The project engaged university students and faculty in an effort to explore how volunteers could improve and increase the number of English-language articles on Wikipedia. Working with teams on campus, the foundation developed lesson plans and training materials that make it possible for faculty to incorporate the creation of high-quality entries into the curriculum. The foundation also provided the services of "campus ambassadors," who mentored students interested in becoming first-time Wikipedians. Veteran Wikipedians from the online community were instrumental in breaking down technical barriers and guiding students as they learned editing protocols and developed their online writing skills.

One notable success involved the work of a student at Georgetown University who had an interest in Egyptian politics and edited a page on the National Democratic Party of Egypt just months before the Arab Spring uprising in Cairo. There had been little information in English on the site about the group and its complex history, and as the uprising played out (eventually leading to the overthrow of the Mubarak government) there was considerable interest in the new content from English-language readers. In fact, the page soon was netting five thousand views a day and eventually began to be updated by people with direct knowledge of the subject on a regular basis.

Clearly, research, writing, and media literacy are all skills that students can sharpen by turning a college term paper into a Wikipedia entry. Indeed, during the Public Policy Initiative faculty conducted research on how this approach might improve student learning and shared it with the foundation. According to Frank Schulenburg, a veteran Wikipedian and director of the initiative:

The U.S. pilot was extremely successful in providing students an authentic learning experience and increasing the quality of articles on Wikipedia. We're excited to continue expanding the Wikipedia Education Program in the United States as well as in other countries, where students can improve content on Wikipedia in their native language.

With this new campus-based program as a launch pad for its outreach work globally, the Wikipedia Foundation is positioning itself to maintain and extend its position as a leading mobilizer of volunteer energies in the nonprofit sector -- and on campus. And that's something for which we can all be thankful.

-- Laura Cronin

This Week in PubHub: College Access and Success

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that explore ways to strengthen teacher preparation programs.)

Much of the discussion about boosting the number of college graduates in the U.S. seems to focus on preparing students for college-level academics and expanding access to postsecondary education through community colleges. But many students who do go to college ultimately drop out without obtaining a degree -- especially those from low-income families. This week in PubHub, we're highlighting four reports that examine college access and success, with a focus on affordability, academic supports, and employment outcomes.

Instead of increasing opportunities for economically disadvantaged students, current tuition tax credits, deductions, and financial aid policies are more likely to benefit middle- and upper-income students, a new report from the Education Trust argues. Funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education, the report, Priced Out: How the Wrong Financial-Aid Policies Hurt Low-Income Students (20 pages, PDF), found that as a result of regressive federal, state, and institutional policies, low-income students are often expected to pay more than their middle-income peers as a percentage of family income. Indeed, out of nearly twelve hundred four-year colleges and universities, only five enrolled low-income students at rates as high as the national average, expected those students to pay no more than middle-income students as a percentage of family income, and had a graduation rate of at least 50 percent. With only 8 percent of youth from the lowest-income quartile earning a bachelor's degree by age twenty-four (compared with 82 percent from the highest-income quartile), any reforms to financial aid policies, the authors argue, must give priority to helping low-income students, removing technical barriers to accessing financial assistance, and ensuring enough support to raise completion rates.

Cost is not the only obstacle for low-income students looking to attend and graduate from college. While nearly half of all undergraduates begin their college career at a more affordable community college, only a third of them earn a degree or certificate within six years. The MDRC report Opening Doors to Student Success: A Synthesis of Findings From an Evaluation at Six Community Colleges (12 pages, PDF) highlights lessons learned from the Opening Doors Demonstration program, which is designed to raise college completion rates through learning communities and targeted student services such as academic counseling as well as performance-based scholarships. According to the report, the scholarships helped low-income parents enroll as full-time students and earn more credits, while enhanced counseling and freshmen learning communities resulted in modest improvements in academic performance and second-term registration. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the report calls for further innovations in developmental education and financial aid reform.

Racial/ethnic disparities in college completion and transfer rates also are commonplace. According to Divided We Fail: Improving Completion and Closing Racial Gaps in California's Community Colleges (20 pages, PDF), a report from the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at CSU Sacramento, about 75 percent of African-American and 80 percent of Latino/Hispanic community college students fail to earn a certificate or degree or transfer to a four-year college or university within six years. The authors offer a model for increasing overall completion rates and reducing racial/ethnic gaps that involves analyzing and reporting student achievement data and implementing best practices based on those findings. Funded by the Campaign for College Opportunity and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the report points out that strengthening community colleges is essential to raising educational attainment among the Latino/Hispanic population, whose share of California's working-age population is projected to reach 50 percent by 2040.

The Lumina Foundation for Education report The Degree Qualifications Profile (34 pages, PDF) examines college success from the perspective of the economic and societal value of the degrees students earn. The report proposes a qualifications framework that would define degree "quality" and improve capacity throughout the postsecondary education system to ensure that students learn the things they need to know. The profile includes benchmarks for applied learning, intellectual skills, specialized knowledge, broad integrative knowledge, and civic learning at the associate, bachelor's, and master's degree levels and across all fields of specialization. Such a framework, the authors argue, would provide a common vocabulary for sharing best practices, as well as a foundation for better public understanding of institutions of higher education and more reliable measures of accountability.

Care to weigh in on efforts to expand college access and improve rates of success? Do you know of any practices or policies that are helping students from low-income families and communities of color not only gain access to higher education but also succeed in college? What aspects of the debate are missing or being overlooked? Use the comments section to share your thoughts.

And be sure to visit PubHub, where you can browse more than seven hundred reports on education-related topics.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Q&A With Aaron Dorfman, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy was created thirty-five years ago to encourage foundations to do more to address public needs that were then -- and often still are -- underfunded. The organization works to promote philanthropy that serves the public good, is responsive to people and communities with the least wealth and opportunity, and is held accountable to the highest standards of integrity and openness.

Aaron Dorfman has served as executive director of NCRP since 2007. Prior to joining the organization, he worked for fifteen years as a community organizer, spearheading grassroots campaigns to improve public education, expand public transportation for low-income residents, and improve access to affordable housing.

Recently, PND spoke with Dorfman about the public education crisis in America, how foundation support of nonprofit advocacy has changed in recent years, and the likelihood of new legislation affecting nonprofits and the nonprofit sector.

Philanthropy News Digest: Confronting Systematic Inequity in Education, a recent NCRP report written by Kevin Welner, a professor of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Amy Farley, a doctoral candidate at CU's School of Education, argues that the American public education system is in crisis and that foundations working in the education space are likely to have the greatest impact if they focus on marginalized populations. That's difficult, expensive work. How much of an education funder's grantmaking budget should be devoted to educational equity and access efforts?

Aaron Dorfman: I agree it's difficult and expensive work. And I think most education funders are in it for the long haul and want to see long-term, sustainable results. But there's no right way to determine how much of a particular funder's portfolio should be devoted to these kinds of efforts. At the end of the day, it has a lot to do with the comfort level of trustees when it comes to funding advocacy and focusing on long-term change versus achieving short-term results. One of the points we were trying to raise in the report is that, on the whole, there is far too little funding for efforts that confront systemic inequity in education. So I would encourage each foundation to think about its own long-term goals and how the high-impact strategies offered in the report might help them achieve those goals.

PND: In the report, NCRP recommends that foundations consider allocating at least 50 percent of their grant dollars for the benefit of marginalized communities. At the time of the report's publication, I believe you noted that roughly 11 percent of foundations in the U.S. were meeting that goal.

AD: That's right. The 11 percent figure was based on the thousand or so foundations in the Foundation Center's database that have given an average of a million dollars or more for education. Our analysis also found that only about 2 percent of foundations were allocating 25 percent or more of their grant dollars for advocacy efforts, another recommendation in the report. Again, we did not intend for the recommendations to be inflexible benchmarks -- obviously, what individual foundations can and are willing to do varies a great deal. The point is to encourage funders to have a serious discussion, at the board and staff levels, about whether or not they are devoting enough of their portfolio for the explicit benefit of underserved groups and whether they are investing enough in strategies with the potential to produce long-term systemic change. We think if funders do that, it will lead to positive change.

PND: Education reform has been a major theme of the Obama administration. Is the administration doing enough to address educational equity and access issues in low-income communities? And how would you rate its efforts to work collaboratively with foundations and nonprofits to advance educational reform?

AD: Well, the Obama administration has taken a good first step, in that it recognizes the serious and ongoing education needs in our nation's most vulnerable communities. However, it hasn't really made a meaningful attempt to break the cycle of systemic inequity or address the power imbalances we talked about in the report. Its approach has been more one of promoting favored solutions rather than focusing on policies that enhance the political voice of those most likely to be affected by reform. A focus on these kinds of participatory issues is very different than, say, devolving power to individual parents through school choice, which tends to leave schools in low-income neighborhood stuck in a cycle of decline. So, while I think the administration has done some things well, I would be more impressed if it recognized the importance of supporting active, engaged constituencies willing to fight the systemic inequities that exist in the system.

PND: How is the shift in the balance of power in Congress likely to affect nonprofits and the nonprofit sector? And how does NCRP plan to insert itself into that conversation?

AD: It's clear to me from recent events that discussions about deficit reduction are going to include changes to or elimination of the charitable deduction. I think we'll hear a lot of talk about that in 2011 -- indeed, my guess is that that will be the number-one policy issue affecting the nonprofit sector in the new Congress. And we're working on establishing a position with respect to that. We've always felt that it is important to incentivize charitable giving, and we would be open to changes in the current system that actually improve the regulatory framework for giving.

PND: Nonprofit advocacy and the need to support it is a huge concern of NCRP's. How would you rate the work of foundations in terms of advancing advocacy over the past few years?

AD: They're making progress. Foundations are much more comfortable talking about funding advocacy, and they've made some real headway in terms of where the dollars actually go. So while I'm looking forward to the opportunity to analyze 2009 data to see how much progress we have made, I do feel as though there has been movement in terms of funders recognizing the importance of funding civic engagement, community organizing, and policy advocacy work.

-- Matt Sinclair