Weekend Link Roundup (October 6-7, 2018)

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

Advocacy

"[W]e are in a season when the electorate has the obligation to choose our future," writes Richard Marker on his Wise Philanthropy blog. "And the philanthropy world has an obligation to weigh in on many of these matters. We have everything at stake in re-asserting a stable and civil society, eliminating poverty, rejecting racism and xenophobia, and urging systemic equity. The challenge for us is to not be intimidated by those who would limit our outspokenness under the guise of accusing us of partisanship. Of course, there are legal limitations to what we can lobby for and what lobbying we can support. But our rights, I would say even our obligations as funders, to advocate for constitutional rights, civil society, and equity for all are virtually unlimited."

Children/Youth

On the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Culture of Health blog, Martha Davis, a senior program officer at the foundation, shares six recommendations for communities that are developing collaborative, place-based approaches aimed at ensuring that all children have a solid foundation of safety.

In a Q&A on the Case Foundation blog, Justin Cunningham, the millennial co-founder of Social Works, discusses what he and his colleagues are doing to empower youth in Chicago.

Giving

The team at GiveWell has made a number of changes to the organization's cost-effectiveness model.

Grantmaking

In a post on the GrantCraft blog, Jen Bokoff, director of stakeholder engagement, announces the release of the latest GrantCraft guide, Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources through Participatory Grantmaking, which was created in partnership with researcher/writer extraordinaire Cynthia Gibson.

Nonprofits

On the GuideStar blog, Lisa Keitges and Ryan Grosso of Orr Associates, Inc. share some good advice with respect to board transitions.

In his latest, Vu Le has some advice for nonprofit professionals who have become jaded and cynical about "the Nonprofit Industrial Complex."

Philanthropy

The Stanford Social Innovation Review, in partnership with the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, has launched a new series focused on "power in philanthropy" with posts by Kathleen Enright, president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations ("Power, Privilege, and Effectiveness: Are Funders Connecting the Dots?"), and Luz Vega-Marquis, president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation ("The Power of Family: From Poverty to Agency to Unity").

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Jennifer Wei, organizational effectiveness officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, argues that a "handful of foundations offering general operating support to nonprofits is not even close to being enough" and that the field needs "many more funders — a critical mass — to provide general operating support grants and recognize the full cost of running an organization. Only then," she adds, "[will] nonprofits have enough unrestricted dollars to truly use those funds flexibly, prioritize organizational capacity needs, and strengthen organizational health."

Here on PhilanTopic, Foundation Center president Brad Smith argues that general operating support provided to the Federalist Society over the years by conservative-leaning foundations played was a significant factor in the elevation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The team at HistPhil winds down its forum on Paul Brest and Hal Harvey's Money Well Spent with a post by Erica Kohl-Arenas (The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty) that offers a brief history of strategic donor behavior. And in the forum's final post, Brest and Harvey respond to the comments of forum contribtutors.

And after two years of work, the renovation of the Ford Foundation's landmarked building on Manhattan's East Side is almost complete. Darren Walker, the foundation's president, explains how the building, newly renamed the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, "will be a unique asset for champions of social justice across sectors and geographies...in the U.S. and globally."

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