Weekend Link Roundup (June 3-4, 2017)

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

African Americans

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor in the department of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, television personality, and founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center, has some advice for the NAACP, which recently announced the departure of its president, Cornell William Brooks, and its intention to pursue an "organization-wide refresh."

Climate Change

Hours after Donald Trump claimed "to represent the voters of Pittsburgh in his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement," Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto announced his support for a goal of powering the city entirely with clean and renewable energy by 2035. Shane Levy reports for the Sierra Club. (And you can read Peduto's executive order to that effect here.)

Although there's no doubt that "President Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris Agreement on global warming is a short-sighted mistake," writes Nature Conservancy president Mark Tercek, the jury is still out as to whether "the decision [will] unravel the entire agreement."

Fundraising

We missed this post by Vu Le outlining the principles of community-centric fundraising when it was first published in the lead up to the Memorial Day weekend. But it is definitely worth your time.

Hey, Mr./Ms. Nonprofit Fundraiser, job got you down and almost out? Beth Kanter shares four warning signs of burnout — and easy ways to make yourself feel better.

On the GuideStar blog, BidPal's Joshua Meyer looks at five unexpected benefits of text-to-give software.

Giving

"Giving is truly the most satisfying form of investment, and it is with enormous satisfaction that we honor our Giving Pledge, where we intend to donate most of our wealth during our lifetime. This $400 million is a living donation, and it starts now." Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest, who with his wife, Nicola, recently pledged AUS$400 million ($299 million through their Minderoo Foundation in support of medical research, education, equity, and anti-slavery efforts globally, tells HuffPo Australia why they did so. 

A very nice story. UNICEF, the UN children's agency, has received its largest-ever cash gift from a private individual — €6 million ($6.7 million) from an anonymous donor in Finland.

Grantseeking

Getting ready to write a new grant proposal. The experts at the Forbes Nonprofit Council share seven tips you'll want to keep in mind as you write.

Impact/Effectiveness

We've reported on the decision of the Ford Foundation to commit $1 billion of its endowment to mission-related investments over the next ten years (and spoke with Ford's Xavier de Souza Briggs about that decision). Can we say, then, that impact investing has reached a tipping point? The experts at UPenn Wharton explore that question.

Media/Journalism

In the Spring issue of NCRP's Responsive Philanthropy publication, Josh Stearns, associate director for the Public Square program at the Democracy Fund, notes the "real concern about the spread of misinformation and issues of basic trust in our democratic institutions, including the press, our fourth estate," and poses an important question: What can philanthropy do to rebuild trust in news? 

Nonprofits

Is there a silver lining for nonprofits to the dark cloud that is the new Trump administration? Well, maybe, writes Jamie Ray-Leonetti, a staff attorney with Philadelphia-based Disability Rights Pennsylvania, on the NonProfitPRO blog.

As part of a special blog series curated by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field, Edward D. Breslin, chief executive officer of the Tennyson Center for Children and a 2011 winner of the Skoll Award For Social Entrepreneurship, shares his own take on that "magical moment when staff shift from fear and [a] transactional mindset to a big, bold move designed to address a fundamental problem at scale."

Philanthropy

Nonprofit Chronicles blogger Marc Gunther takes a closer look at The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, the new book by Inside Philanthropy founder and editor David Callahan. (You can read our review here.) 

Regulation/Oversight

In an op-ed piece in Newsweek, Philip Hackney, James E. & Betty M. Phillips Associate Professor of Law at Louisiana State University, explains why President Trump's promise "to defend religious groups from the IRS when they engage in political speech" is pointless and unnecessary.

Transparency

And on her Giving Evidence blog, Caroline Fiennes poses an interesting question: Why do so few charities have their meetings in public?

That's it for this week. Got something you'd like to share? Drop us a line at mfn@foundationcenter.org.