Weekend Link Roundup (April 7-8, 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....

Communications/Marketing

The Hewlett Foundation's Ruth Levine argues (persuasively) that "the benefit/cost ratio for [nonprofit] annual reports is pretty unfavorable" and that "[t]they are more trouble than they're worth." 

Reinvent the wheel. Close the loop. Onboarding. Vu Le has gathered nineteen of the most annoying phrases used in the nonprofit sector.

Diversity

On the BoardSource blog, Kevin Walker, president and CEO of the Northwest Area Foundation since 2008, shares five recommendations for foundations that want to do something about the lack of board diversity in the field. 

Giving

When should you start teaching your kids about charitable giving. Forbes contributor Rob Clarfeld shares a few thoughts.

Higher Education 

After a lifetime working in and around students and public schools, Harold O. Levy, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and a former chancellor of the New York City public school system, reflects in an op-ed in the New York Times on the "troubling fact" that "[d]espite the best efforts of many, the gap between the numbers of rich and poor college graduates continues to grow."

The Times' Kyle Spencer reports that, with the price of higher education soaring, middle-class families increasingly are looking to community colleges as an option.

"For years, researchers have highlighted the vast inequities that persist in the country's K-12 education system with students of color disproportionately enrolled in public schools that are underfunded, understaffed, and thus more likely to underperform when compared with schools attended by their white peers," writes Sara Garcia on the Center for American progress site. "What has received less attention is the fact that these inequitable patterns do not end when a student graduates from high school but persist through postsecondary education."

International Affairs/Development

On his Gates Notes blog, Bill Gates reviews his late friend Hans Rosling's new book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think — and explains why he's decided to stop talking about the "developing" world.

Journalism/Media

In a Q&A with  Anders Hofseth on the Nieman Lab site, Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, avers that with the collapse of ad-supported models for quality journalism, public service media hasn't been this important since World War II.

How biased are your favorite sources for news? You probably won't agree with the conclusions of patent attorney Vanessa Otero, who has updated a chart she first created for the Marketwatch site back in 2016.

Nonprofits

In a post on her Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington looks at half a dozen of the key strategic questions facing nonprofits. 

Philanthropy

Is philanthropy driven by morality or markets? That's the question Eric Michael Johnson, a historian of evolutionary biology, asks — and tries to answer — in an essay on the Evonomics site.

In response to a recent paper ("What Makes a Strong Ecosystem of Support to Philanthropy") authored by Barry Knight and published by WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support), Foundation center's Larry McGill argues that "there are no good reasons why philanthropy should not strive to maximize its effectiveness through appropriate forms of strategic cooperation and action, on scales that go beyond the unconnected efforts of single organizations and individuals."

Poverty

Poverty in America increasingly is a suburban affair — but government programs to combat it have not changed to address it. Aaron Wiener reports for the Washington Post.

Public Affairs

Two recent op-eds — one by Jonathan P. Baird in the Concord (NH) Monitor and the other by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the New York Times — remind us that the road to fascism unfolds in incremental steps.

On a somewhat brighter note, the Hewlett Foundation's Daniel Stid is cautiously optimistic about the future of American democracy — and, in a short piece on the Hewlett site, explains why you should be, too.

Social Media

And what does the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica controversy mean for your nonprofit's digital strategy. Beth Kanter breaks it down.

(Photo credit: Shutterstock/tungtopgun)

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