Weekend Link Roundup (October 22-23, 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....

Communications/Marketing

On the Triple Pundit site, Eric Griego, director of business development at @Pay, a secure mobile giving platform, shares five strategies for improving your cause marketing communications.

Fundraising

It's the most stressful time of the year — and, in a post on her blog, Beth Kanter shares a few self-care tips for nonprofit fundraising professionals taken from her new book (co-written with Aliza Sherman), The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout.

On the WeDidIt blog, Ryan Woroniecki shares eight tips for converting your online donors to major donors.

This #GivingTuesday, November 29, Foundation Center and Philanthropy News Digest will be turning our social media feeds over for the day to fine winners of our "Elevate Your Cause" sweepstakes. Learn more.

Higher Education

The dining hall staff at Harvard University has gone on strike for a yearly minimum wage of $35,000 — and the administration of the richest university in the country is not pleased. Michelle Chen reports for The Nation.

Princeton University, the third-wealthiest endowed university in the country, has agreed to an $18 million settlement with neighbors who claimed the university’s tax-exempt status unfairly made their property taxes higher. Elaine S. Povich reports for Stateline.com.

And in Washington Monthly, Annie Kim looks at how the Internet wrecked the college admissions process.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Communications Network site, Hattaway Communications' RJ Bee and Kate Pazoles share three lessons for taking ownership of your evaluation efforts.

Nonprofits

Cinthia Shumann Ottinger, deputy director for philanthropy programs at the Aspen Institute, takes a closer look at as yet-unrealized benefits of the Digital Accountability and Transparency (or DATA) Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2014 with the aim of improving "the accessibility and transparency of federal spending information through the website, www.USAspending.gov."

Philanthropy

Here on PhilanTopic, Foundation Center president Brad Smith looks at a few of the things foundations are doing to "fix" U.S. democracy.

Nice explainer in The New York Times on the Trump and Clinton foundations, which "differ widely in size, purpose and the reach of their charitable work."

Are the tech barons of the New Gilded Age philanthropists in the traditional sense of the word? In an op-ed piece for the Guardian, Evgeny Morozov, author of Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, shares his doubts.

Pushing back against Ford Foundation president Darren Walker's notion that "So long as those at the top of the tree give something back to society then the system will improve — even if it continues to produce great costs and inequalities in the process," former Ford Foundation staffer Michael Edwards notes in an essay on the Transformation blog (which Edwards edits) that "in the U.S., philanthropy has increased in line with inequality over the last 50 years, so the more you have of one, the more you have of the other. Statistically speaking, philanthropy is a symptom of inequality and not a cure...."

Poverty

Twenty percent of American children live in poverty — more than in Russia and more than three times as many as in Norway or the Netherlands. And two of the federal programs designed to address the situation, the child tax deduction, which allows families to exclude $4,000 a child from their taxable income, and the more progressive child tax credit either are of little help to the poor or simply benefit too few of them. So why not get rid of both and instead provide a monthly check of $250 for every child in the country to guarantee a minimum level of well-being? New York Times "Economic Scene" columnist Eduardo Porter weighs the pros and cons.

On his Nonprofit Chronicles blog, Marc Gunther profiles Mauricio Lim Miller, who in 2001, after leading an antipoverty organization in the Bay Area for two decades, started the Family Independence Initiative, a nonprofit that "enables poor people to connect with one another, share ideas, and resources — and then mostly stays out of the way."

Social Enterprise

Is there a tool for early-stage social enterprises that require something more flexible than impact investing as currently practiced? There is, writes Josephine Korijn, co-founder of the Hybrid Finance Initiative at Ashoka, and it's called "blended finance."

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