Weekend Link Roundup (July 23-24, 2016)

Our weekly round up of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog....

Community Improvement/Development

In the New America Weekly, Heron Foundation president Clara Miller explains how the foundation's recent work in Buffalo, the fourth poorest city in the nation, "started as a response to a Heron board member's referral of the local community foundation" and led to the foundation becoming a trusted neutral convener and connector "for a number of contingents in the community."

On the Knight blog, Lilly Weinberg Lilly Weinberg, program director for community foundations at the Knight Foundation, shares three takeaways from a recent convening of twenty civic innovators who've received grants of $5,000 to implement a project in a calenadr year that improve mobility, a public space, or civic engagement in their home cities.

Criminal Justice/Policing

Reflecting on the killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Philando Castile in Minnesota, five police officers in Dallas, and three police officers in Baton Rouge, Open Society Foundations president Chris Stone suggests that the divide between black America and American policing is in part the "legacy of slavery, the legacies of Jim Crow, of lynching, of the repression of the civil rights and black power movements, the legacy of the war on drugs" -- and that efforts to close it must include solutions to racial disparities and the building of mutual trust between African Americans and local police departments.

Environment

Here on PhilanTopic, we featured a pair of great posts this week  -- one by Frank Smyth and the second by Maria Amália Souza -- on the noble, unheralded, and frequently dangerous work done by environmental activists in the global South.

Fundraising

Looking to sharpen up you fundraising appeal emails? CauseVox' Kat Boogaard shares five useful email tips guaranteed to inspire your supporters to take action.

Giving

The act of "giving" any amount in any given moment when it is not necessary to do so almost always is considered to be an act of altruism. But should it be? Forbes contributor Jake Hayman explains why the act of giving needs to be contextualized.

Health

Kristin Jones, assistant director of communications at the Colorado Trust, explains why we must see, and address, gun violence as a public health issue.

The HBCU Digest, which bills itself as the "news resource of record for historically black colleges and universities," has reprinted the full text of a letter signed by thirty-three sitting presidents of America's historically black colleges and universities calling on all Americans to join in a series of actions designed to help address the scourge of gun violence.

Impact Investing

Interesting blog post by Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger, who notes that recent estimates put the dollar amount of "global investible capital" at north of $100 trillion, compared to around $80 trillion for global GDP. And with the amount of capital needed to operate the global economy falling because of "just in time manufacturing, faster electronic payments and better working capital management," that means "we have massive amounts of capital available to invest in new endeavors."

On the Devex site, Catherine Cheney chats with the Case Foundation's Jean Case about data, entreneurship, and impact investing.

International Affairs/Development

Bill Gates was in Johannesburg, South Africa, last week to deliver the 14th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture. The theme of this year's lecture was "living together," and, as Gates noted, it was "also the theme of Nelson Mandela's life...[in that the] system he fought against was based on the opposite idea — that people should be kept apart, that our superficial differences are more important than our common humanity."

What can philanthropy do to help make the Sustainable Development Goals resonate with foundations and nonprofits in the U.S.? Writing for the World Post, Natalie Ross, director for global philanthropy at the Council on Foundations, shares some ideas.

Nonprofits

In a post that has generated dozens of comments, NWB's Vu Le wonders why it is so hard for funders to grok the concept of general operating support.

What if instead of "overhead," asks Ben Paynter in FastCo.Exist, nonprofits used a different word or term to refer to their indirect costs? Would funders be more willing to fund those activities if they were re-branded with a less "semantically stifling" term such as "shared costs" or "critical infrastructure costs" or (as Vu Le suggests) "things-we-need-in-order-to-do-our-job-of-helping-people-dammit"?

Based on material from their Nonprofit Mergers Workbooks, the folks at La Piana Consulting have a new post up outlining the key characteristics of effective communications in nonprofit partnerships. 

Philanthropy

Our Foundation Center colleagues at CF Insights have released a new brief updating community foundation growth and related operational activity during fiscal year 2015.

The shootings of Philando Castille and Alton Sterling  and of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge "have the potential to either deepen empathy and understanding among Americans, or divide us even more sharply along lines of race, ethnicity, and gender," write Brook Kelly-Green and Luna Yusai on the Ford Foundation's Equal Voices blog. Which is why, they add, that the foundation is more committed than ever to  be "a thoughtful, effective social justice funder" and is "eager to deepen and expand th[e] community of social justice funders,... nurture bold experiments and help the [Black Lives Matter] movement build the solid infrastructure that will enable it to flourish."

Social Entrepreneurship

And in a post on the Huffington Post's What's Working blog, Loukia Papadopoulos, business development director at UK-based SocialGrowth, explains why the future belongs to social entrepreneurs.

That's it for now. What have you been reading/watching/listening to? Drop us a line at mfn@foundationcenter.org or in the comments section below....