Weekend Link Roundup (Jan. 27-28, 2018)

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

Animal Welfare

Following recent allegations of workplace misconduct leveled at Human Society of the U.S. chief executive Wayne Pacelle, Nonprofit Chronicles blogger Marc Gunther takes a closer look at charges of widespread sexual harassment and gender bias in the animal welfare movement. 

Arts and Culture

Be sure to check out the Q&A on Barry's Blog, a service of the Western States Arts Federation, with John E. McGuirk, the recently retired director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Performing Arts Program.

Fundraising

On the Inside Philanthropy site, IP contributor Mike Scutari asks: When should nonprofit institutions keep a gift that has been tainted by the bad actions of the giver?

Grantseeking

You've been awarded a grant and now the deadline for reporting your program's outcomes is looming. Should you invest as much time and effort into writing the final project report as you did in writing the grant proposal? On the Philanthropy Front and Center-Cleveland blog, Jenna Gonzales, a program associate at the San Antonio Area Foundation, shares six things you can do to "articulate your impact and demonstrate you are a credible partner to consider for future grant opportunities."

Higher Education

At a time when postsecondary educational attainment in the United States remains below 50 percent for the 25-34 year-old age group, "the vast, affordable, and extraordinarily diverse community college system is central to the national debate about access and quality in postsecondary education, and about work life readiness for the next generation of Americans." The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Mariët Westermann explains. 

Journalism/Media

Congratulations to Jaeah Lee and Valeria Fernández, the inaugural recipients of the $100,000 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, established by the Heising-Simons Foundation to recognize "demonstrated excellence in long-form, narrative, or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present American landscape."

Nonprofits

On her Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington has a timely bit of advice for nonprofit leaders: Being reactive is likely to get you nowhere.

On the Forbes website, members of the Forbes Nonprofit Council weigh in on how their organizational culture attracts — and serves to retain — members and stakeholders.

The folks at Wild Apricot have put together a list of five "must-have" digital marketing tools for nonprofits (a few of which I had never heard of). 

And check out these tips from Nonprofit AF blogger Vu Le about staying healthy while working at a nonprofit.

Philanthropy

"[T]o maintain relevance in a fast-moving culture and to continue making an impact — that cherished word invoked in every end-of-year glossy report — today's philanthropy can't do things the same old way. Being prestigious is no longer a guarantee of being relevant...." On Quartz, Andrew Searzin, president of the Templeton World Charity Foundation and a former program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shares how losing my faith in philanthropy led him to rediscover its power to change the world for good.

What is the role of philanthropy in times of public-sector austerity? David Johnson, a senior editor at the Stanford Social Innovation Review, talks with Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, about that and the changes Rockefeller is making both domestically and abroad.

Looking back on a year that many people would like to forget, NCRP's Lisa Ranghelli finds some reasons for optimism.

It's been a busy start to the year — for many of you, we suspect, and for us here at Foundation Center. Check out this update from Jen Bokoff, the center's director of stakeholder engagement, to see what we've been up to.

Poverty

More than 40 million Americans live in poverty, and for the past two decades, "U.S. anti-poverty policy has coalesced around the idea that work should be at the center of anti-poverty programs." But renewed calls "to increase work requirements among those receiving government assistance should recognize that most poor adults are already working, looking for work, or are disabled or ill," Ann Huff Stevens, deputy director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, writes on the PBS NewsHour site. And while "work may be a policy goal on its own," adds Stevens, "requiring work will not necessarily raise families above the poverty line." 

And in an op-ed in the New York Times, esteemed British-American economist Angus Deaton, argues that, for many reason, the United States can no longer ignore its "deep poverty problem."

Got something you'd like to share? Drop us a line at mfn@foundationcenter.org.