Weekend Link Roundup (August 13-14, 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....

African Americans

In a review of Mychal Denzel Smith’s new memoir, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watchingfor the New Republic, Jesse McCarthy reflects on "what has changed in our politics over the course of the Bush and Obama years, and in particular on the reemergence of an activist consciousness in black politics (and youth politics more broadly)."

In Fortune, a seemingly nonplussed Ellen McGirt reports on the Ford Foundation's investment in the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF), "a pooled donor fund designed to support the work of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)...." And be sure to check out this profile of the Ford Foundation-led #ReasonsForHope campaign by Fast Company's Ben Paynter.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Is anyone in corporate America measuring the impact of their CSR programs? In Forbes, Ryan Scott shares a few considerations for companies that are approaching impact measurement for the first time.

Data

Intrigued (and a little alarmed) by the decision of the Australian department that manages that country's census to collect and store real names with its census data, Philanthropy 2173's Lucy Bernholz has some good questions for all of us.

Education

Committed reformer or Department of Education apparatchik? Newsweek senior writer Alexander Nazaryan, himself a former New York City school teacher, tries to make sense of the puzzle wrapped in an enigma that is New York City public school chief Carmen Fariña.

In The Atlantic, Emily Deruy reports on the nascent efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement to reshape K-12 education policy at the local, state, and federal levels.

At its recent annual convention, the NAACP approved a resolution that included language calling for a moratorium on the expansion of privately managed charter schools. The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss takes a closer look at the issue on her Answer Sheet blog.

Giving

Can knowing something about the history of philanthropy help us become better givers? Amanda B. Moniz, associate director of the National History Center and program coordinator at the American Historical Association, reflects on that question on the HistPhil blog.

What have we learned about the efficacy of Giving Days? Beth Kanter shares some key takeaways from a new Knight Foundation report that attempts that questions. (See our coverage of the report here.)

Higher Education

Soaring student debt is a huge problem, but the real crisis in higher education, according to a series of studies by Third Way, a think tank, is "that many colleges and universities are leaving students with no better than a 50/50 chance of graduating or finding work that pays more than what someone with a high-school diploma can expect to earn." The Washington Post's Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports.

And in the New York Times, op-ed columnist Frank Bruni wonders whether the college admissions process is "creating strange habits and values in the students who go through it, telling them that success is a matter of superficial packaging and checking off the right boxes at the right time."

International Affairs/Development

"A shift in the summum bonum, or the highest good, towards loose humanism, where life is better than death, education better than ignorance, health better than sickness, is what I believe we are seeing currently." Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker tells the World Post things are not as bad as most of us think they are.

On the list of ill-conceived development projects, the Olympics and the World Cup are pretty close to the top. Humanosphere's Tom Murphy reports.

Nonprofits

So you've decided that maybe it's time to jump from the for-profit sector to the nonprofit sector. In the Wall Street Journal, Ted Beck, president and CEO of the National Endowment for Financial Education, shares a short list of the major differences between the two sectors.

Beth K. (see above) shares a nice infographic and some good advice for trainers in the business of designing and delivering professional development for nonprofit professionals.

Philanthropy

In the Huffington Post, Kathleen Enright, president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, suggests that "[p]rivilege can be a barrier to good philanthropy in a number of ways...[and that it] often shows up as attempts to do for instead of with those most affected." Which leads her to wonder: What would change if philanthropy broadly prioritized hiring people whose life experiences provide them with fewer blind spots and with the hard-won, gut-level empathy that comes from a lack of privilege?

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Austin Long, a director on the Assessment and Advisory Services team at CEP, looks at a few of the things regional associations of grantmakers and other philanthropy-supporting organizations are doing to strengthen the field.

Here on PhilanTopic, we've posted a nice Q&A with Vikki Spruill, president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, in which Spruill explains how the UN's Sustainable Development Goals can be used by U.S. foundations to strengthen their anti-poverty and sustainability efforts at home, forge collaborations locally, regionally and globally, and learn from others.

Social Justice

In a podcast on the Tiny Spark site, W.K. Kellogg Foundation president and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron argues that if philanthropy hopes to advance racial justice in America, it has to be more courageous.

And taking a cue from Jay Smooth, the founder of New York City's longest-running hip-hop radio program, WBAI's Underground Railroad, NWB's Vu Le suggests that "[u]ndoing racism and other forms of injustice is a practice we must do every day, like brushing our teeth.... And like brushing, on some days, we’re better at it than on others." So we need to "give each other some grace. Let's admit we don't know everything and we can't be perfect. Let's all lower our defenses and see each other as imperfect human beings trying hard to do some good in a complex world...."

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..