Helen Brunner, Founding Director, Media Democracy Fund

Helen Brunner, founding director of the Media Democracy Fund and an advisor to the Quixote Foundation, recently was awarded the Council on Foundations' 2016 Robert Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking for her efforts to protect the public's basic rights in the digital age and to secure universal access to a free and open Internet. Central to that work was funding and organizing the successful campaign to preserve net neutrality that culminated in the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 decision to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or "throttling" — intentionally slowing — the flow of legal content or services and from offering "fast lanes" for a fee.

PND spoke with Brunner about the role of philanthropy in the ongoing debates over freedom of expression, data privacy, and the impact of social media on civic discourse.

Philanthropy News Digest: The supporters of net neutrality seemed to have won a decisive victory last year, but the issue is being adjudicated again, with Internet service providers suing the FCC over the rules it issued in 2015 to protect the "open" Internet. Given that the court hearing the complaint is the same one that blocked the commission's earlier rules on net neutrality, how hopeful are you the new rules will be upheld?

Helen Brunner: I'm extremely hopeful they will be upheld, because I think this time we got it right. One of the things the commission didn't do in 2010 was to actually reclassify the Internet so that it could be regulated the way the commission regulates telephony. The Internet originally was regulated as a telecommunications service, but then the FCC decided, for a brief period, to regulate it more as an information service. But then they realized the Internet was far too important in terms of driving the economy — and innovation — to hamper it in that way, that the openness and innovation engendered by the Internet wasn't as well protected as when it was regulated as a common carrier. So they switched back, and that is, in fact, the current classification that enabled us to argue for "open" Internet, or net neutrality rules, under the rule of law properly.

So I'm hopeful the court will come back with a positive ruling. We had an extraordinarily good attorney arguing in court for the public interest petitioners, but the one thing that might come back for further review is mobile, which we care very much about because so many vulnerable populations rely on it for their Internet access. If the court feels that adequate notice wasn't given for that rule to be tasked, then the FCC will just go through the procedure again and get it right. That might be a concession the court would make in order to give more time for the big mobile companies to respond as to why they think it's a bad idea. And, of course, it would also give advocates of net neutrality another chance to respond as to why it's so important for the public interest and vulnerable populations for mobile to be neutral. There's a great deal of sympathy at the commission for that position.

PND: Social media played a major role in galvanizing public calls to preserve net neutrality and keep the Internet open. At the same time, social media seems to have had a pretty corrosive effect on civic discourse and the expectation of a right to privacy. Are those the kinds of inevitable trade-offs we all must accept as the price of the democratization of communication in the digital age? Or can something be done to slow or even reverse those trends?

HB: These are societal issues as well, whether we're talking about the coarsening of civic discourse or the aggressive tone of pundits in mainstream media. Social media is indeed amplifying all that, but I think we see polarized discourse everywhere, so it's something we need to address on a broader level. That said, there are some technical innovations that can cause social media to go off on a bad track, including something called "bots" on social media that can be used to drive discourse in a highly polarized direction, as well as techniques that enable companies to create false narratives. Now that isn't to say there aren't real dialogues and genuine arguments on social media, but there are things we can do to address the problem of bots, and there are several projects that different people are working on with the goal of at least eliminating the artificial hyping of phony debates.

[Review] The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World

The story Steven Radelet tells in The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World begins with the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989. Marking the end of the Cold War, the wall's fall ushered in an era of unprecedented development progress across much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But as the event itself faded into history, many viewed the breakdown of global order into ethnic cleansing, economic instability, the emergence of Islamist terrorism, and an upswing in refugee crises with growing alarm — a pessimistic view that, Radelet argues, was and is misplaced.

In his book, Radelet, who chairs the Global Human Development Program at Georgetown University and serves as economic advisor to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, highlights progress in more than a hundred developing countries across "four critical dimensions" of development: poverty, income, health and education, and democracy and governance. Between 1993 and 2011, Radelet notes, the number of people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 a day) fell from nearly two billion, or 42 percent of the global population, to just over one billion, or 17 percent. Meanwhile, GDP per capita in developing countries grew more than 70 percent on average, with population-weighted real incomes rising some 90 percent since 1994.

Over roughly the same period, the mortality rate for children under the age of 5 fell from 10 percent to 4.7 percent. With maternal mortality and fertility rates also down significantly, children in developing countries today are far healthier and better educated than they have been at any time in memory, while the percentage of girls finishing primary school has risen from 50 percent to 80 percent and the percentage of girls completing secondary school has doubled, from 30 percent to 60 percent. Whether as cause or product of these trends, it is no coincidence that the number of democracies globally has jumped from seventeen in 1983 to fifty-six in 2013 (not counting countries that claim to be democracies but merely pay lip service to fair and open elections).

To be sure, some of this progress occurred before the late 1980s. But burdened by the legacy of colonialism and factors such as unfavorable geography, inadequate resources, and endemic disease, many developing countries found themselves struggling to break free of the "poverty trap." What made their "sudden" ascent possible, Radelet argues, was the convergence of three post-Cold War factors: global geopolitical conditions becoming more conducive to development; increased opportunities provided by a new wave of globalization and the spread of new technologies; and the rapid development of the skills and capabilities needed to take advantage of those opportunities.  

Take the first. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and a rump Russia lost their appetite (at least temporarily) for proxy wars in the developing world as well as their costly habit of propping up Communist and right-wing dictatorships in countries like Bangladesh, Benin, Chile, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Panama. Moreover, as Communist and authoritarian ideologies lost their credibility among much of the world's population, a consensus began to form around the efficacy of market-based approaches to economic growth and development, an emphasis on individual freedoms, and respect for basic human rights. In time, "[d]eveloping countries around the world began to build institutions more conducive to growth and social progress," Radelet writes. "The doors opened to new possibilities."

5 Questions for...Gregorio Millett, Vice President and Director of Public Policy, amfAR

National Black AIDS Awareness Day, February 7, was established in 1999 in response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in African-American communities. More than fifteen years later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that while the number of new HIV diagnoses in the general population fell 20 percent between 2005 and 2014, the prevalence of HIV among African Americans remains significantly higher than it is for other racial/ethnic groups, while the rate of new diagnoses among young black men is rising.

Earlier this month, PND spoke with Gregorio Millett, vice president and director of public policy of amfar, the Foundation for AIDS Research, about the impact of HIV/AIDS on the African-American community and ongoing efforts to address it.

Philanthropy News Digest: What is the most striking finding in the 2014 HIV Surveillance Report, as well as the finding that surprised you the least? And what do current trends in the HIV data mean for the African-American community?

Gregorio Millett: What surprised me the least was the fact that the number of new HIV diagnoses is falling among injection drug users; that's something we've known for quite some time, and it's incredibly encouraging to see that trend continue nationally. And there were two things that surprised me: The first was the 42 percent decline in HIV diagnoses among African-American women nationally between 2005 and 2014; we knew that diagnoses were decreasing, but we didn't realize they were falling that rapidly. The other interesting thing is that, in the last five years, diagnoses have remained stable, for the most part, for African-American men who have sex with men — though for the ten-year period it actually increased — while the number of diagnoses has been increasing for Latino men who have sex with men. So the fact that we really need to start focusing more on Latino MSM was interesting.

That said, the overall prevalence of HIV is greater among African Americans compared to all other racial and ethnic groups; we've had a higher prevalence in the black community since the mid-1990s. The good news is that for most African Americans, HIV rates are declining at a rapid rate. The bad news is that rates are not declining among gay and bisexual men, who comprise most of the new infections in the black community. Another issue for the African-American community is that even though HIV rates are declining, African Americans overall are still more likely to die from HIV/AIDS compared to whites or Latinos, even though we now have very effective medications that enable people with HIV to live a normal lifespan.

PND: What are the key factors behind the persistently higher rates of HIV prevalence among African Americans?

GM: There are several. The first is that HIV prevalence is just higher in black and Latino communities, particularly among gay men, and when you have more people living with HIV, it means there are more opportunities to transmit HIV, so higher prevalence begets a greater number of diagnoses. Another huge issue is healthcare access; we know that whites are more likely to have access to health care in the United States compared to Latinos or African Americans, and if you don't have access to health care and you're HIV-positive, you're less likely to be on medication or virally suppressed, and therefore you're more likely to transmit HIV to your partners.

A third issue is that, quite frankly, we haven't focused on where HIV is really hitting the black and Latino communities. When you take a look at the cumulative dollars for research, for care, for prevention, they're going primarily to heterosexual communities and injection-drug-using communities. Unfortunately, from the very earliest days of the epidemic, that's not necessarily where HIV has hit hardest. A lot of that has to do with our society not being able to talk about HIV, which has been concentrated among gay and bisexual men, honestly, because our politics didn't allow us to talk honestly about gay and bisexual men. Instead, we say that everybody is at risk for HIV, which just isn't true; some groups are at far higher risk. So, from a historical perspective, there has been less money to address HIV among Latino and black gay men, and there has been less press and attention from black and Latino leaders. And you see that in the rates of HIV infection for those groups. In the African-American community, for instance, the overall infection rate is about 2 percent; among black gay men, it's about 30 percent. In other words, one in three black gay men is living with HIV. And if you look at the campaigns and initiatives led by black leaders, members of Congress, celebrities, and so on, they're doing wonderful work but they're talking about HIV among women or babies — U.S. populations where there is actually very little HIV. What we need is a realignment of those efforts to focus on dealing with HIV where it is still a problem in the black community.

[Review] The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty

"Foundations are bizarre beasts. They are created to solve societal problems by using inordinate amounts of wealth — wealth that is inherently contradictory because it was gleaned out of the inequalities...it proposes to address."

That contradiction, shared with Erica Kohl-Arenas by a foundation program officer in an interview conducted for her new book, The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty, is at the heart of what Kohl-Arenas calls the "self-help approach to poverty alleviation." It's an approach, she writes, grounded in the "belief that entrenched poverty is the result of social and economic isolation that [traps] poor people within a culture of poverty," while largely ignoring "the structural causes of poverty and inequality." As starkly illustrated by Kohl-Arenas, an assistant professor of nonprofit management at the New School in New York City, it is also an approach whose inherent limitations raise troubling questions about the ability of private philanthropy to change "the conditions of poverty or help the people [it] claims to serve."

Drawing on case studies of the mid-twentieth-century farm workers movement and more recent foundation-funded initiatives in California's Central Valley, Kohl-Arenas documents how, over the decades, grassroots self-help initiatives have repeatedly been co-opted by private foundations into "nonthreatening service or 'civic participation' programs in keeping with [their] current funding priorities," obscuring the fact that foundations in general are reluctant to support union organizing, strikes, boycotts, and other types of "radical" activity. The surprise, for Kohl-Arenas, is that anyone would be surprised. After all, it was Andrew Carnegie, in the Gospel of Wealth (1889), who suggested that "the new rich had a responsibility to help the poor help themselves — in the interest of preventing protest," while the history of American philanthropy in the decades since is rife with examples of foundations de-politicizing and "neutralizing" initiatives that threaten the social and economic status quo. As a result, Kohl-Arenas argues, foundation-funded self-help programs have served to shift the focus from "capitalist processes that create poverty" to "the weaknesses and responsibilities of the poor."

To illustrate her argument, Kohl-Arenas devotes a chapter to the case of Cesar Chavez, whose efforts to organize and unionize farm workers in California and Florida in the 1960s and '70s have been the subject of two recent books and a movie that, in her words, "complicate [the] story most commonly told." A farm worker and civil rights activist in the 1950s, Chavez rose to national prominence in the 1960s as co-founder (with Dolores Huerta) of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The broader farmworker movement had received crucial early funding, including "Depression-era grants to support migrant community and childcare centers incubated through the [Works Progress Administration]," from the San Francisco-based Rosenberg Foundation, which provided additional funding in the late 1950s and early 1960s to assist Central Valley farmworkers in building their own homes and to support so-called movement organizations. The effect of the foundation's programs, however, was to create, in Kohl-Arenas' words, farmworker leaders "more concerned with empowerment through education, relationships with mainstream institutions, and migrant-led infrastructure development," a model that, because of "its educational and relational, as opposed to confrontational and systemic, approach to self-help...garnered mainstream institutional support in local communities."

The emergence of Chavez as a social justice activist during the Delano grape strike of 1965 and the national grape boycott launched by NFWA the following year changed the picture. According to Kohl-Arenas, a younger Chavez never imagined union organizing becoming the focus of the movement, but as political unrest across the country mounted, the charismatic Chavez "rose to the occasion and became a spokesperson for the strike, both in the fields and nationally."

5 Questions for...Heather Nesle, President, New York Life Foundation

The New York Life Foundation is one of a handful of grantmakers that support childhood bereavement programs for children who have lost a loved one. This year, on Children's Grief Awareness Day, November 19, the foundation launched the Shared Grief Project, a website that seeks to "open up" the dialogue around childhood grief by featuring role models whose "grief journeys" can offer inspiration and guidance to grieving children.

PND asked New York Life Foundation president Heather Nesle about the foundation's grantmaking in the childhood bereavement area, its accomplishments to date, and its hopes for the future.

Philanthropy News Digest: Through its Nurturing the Children initiative, the New York Life Foundation has awarded grants to childhood bereavement programs since 2007. How did the foundation come to focus on support for children who have lost a family member or friend?

Heather Nesle: Our dedication to the issue of childhood bereavement began with our support of Comfort Zone Camp, the nation's largest childhood grief camp. Through that relationship, we quickly learned that supporting grieving children was something our employees and agents were particularly passionate about — as well as an issue in urgent need of increased attention and investment.

Like many of our corporate foundation peers, we've looked to integrate our philanthropic strategy with the company's overarching mission and values. Part of New York Life's mission is to provide peace of mind for our policy holders, and we see providing comfort and assistance to children in their time of greatest need as a direct, natural extension of that. We also saw an exciting opportunity to get involved with the issue from the ground up by engaging our extensive agent network.

PND: What kinds of programs and services for grieving children and their families does the foundation fund? And what have you learned about the kinds of support that are most effective in helping children cope with the loss of a loved one?

HN: Our key partners/programs include the National Alliance of Grieving Children, a national network of grief stakeholders whose reach we have helped expand considerably over the past few years; Grief Reach, our program for delivering direct support to childhood bereavement centers and programs across the country through community expansion and capacity-building grants; the Coalition to Support Grieving Students, a group of leading K-12 professional organizations that we convened to produce new educator-specific grief resources and training materials; Camp Erin/Moyer Foundation and Comfort Zone Camp, networks of free bereavement camps; the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), which offers compassionate care to those grieving the death of a loved one who served in our armed forces; and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. We also recently sponsored the HBO documentary "One Last Hug," an intimate portrayal of the Camp Erin program that premiered in 2014 and won an Emmy for Best Children's Programming.

We fund a diverse range of programs and organizations, but they all share two basic convictions: that grieving children need to feel they're not alone, and that they need to have outlets to express their grief. Every child is different, so we try to help educate people to better recognize and understand the variety of forms grief can take.

5 Questions for...Robert G. Ottenhoff, President and CEO, Center for Disaster Philanthropy

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, leaving 80 percent of New Orleans underwater, killing more than eighteen hundred people, and displacing hundreds of thousands of others, important questions remain unanswered. Are we better prepared to help communities of all kinds respond to and rebuild from extreme weather events and natural disasters? Has greater media scrutiny of relief organizations improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts? If not, why not? And what can or should philanthropy do to improve its performance and responsiveness in the wake of a major disaster?

With the tenth anniversary of Katrina just weeks away, PND asked Robert G. Ottenhoff, president and CEO of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy — an organization founded in the aftermath of the storm — how the philanthropic response to major disasters has evolved over the last decade and what his organization is doing to ensure that the philanthropic community is an integral and effective part of the response to major disasters in the future.

Philanthropy News Digest: You’ve written that Hurricane Katrina "forever changed the way our nation thinks, reacts, and plans for massive natural disasters." How so? And what were the key lessons learned by philanthropy in the aftermath of that disaster?

Robert G. Ottenhoff: Katrina was a traumatic experience for our nation and brought the realization that our conventional ways of responding to disasters were insufficient and unsustainable. We learned three big lessons: the need for comprehensive advance planning and preparation for disasters; the critical importance of building communities that are resilient to disaster and better able to respond and bounce back; and the need for funders to support disaster recovery needs before and after disaster strikes, as well as during the immediate humanitarian crisis.

Nonprofit organizations need a plan themselves, too. How will they respond when a disaster strikes? How will they handle an influx of donations or volunteers? If they are a service provider in a stricken city, how will they make sure any interruption of service is as limited as possible? How will their staffs continue to provide vital services?

CDP has been working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Rockefeller Foundation on the National Disaster Resilience Competition. Forty communities that have experienced natural disasters are competing for $1 billion in funds to help them rebuild and increase their resilience to future disasters. Our staff contributed to Rockefeller's Resilience Academies in Chicago and Denver with jurisdiction finalists and are working with them to develop initiatives and outreach plans that will better prepare them for future disasters — and, we hope, lead to better partnerships with foundations and corporations.

CDP also is working to ensure that the philanthropic community understands the importance of supporting long- and mid-term recovery needs in disaster areas. This fall, we will begin the process of awarding grants from our Nepal Earthquake Recovery Fund to community organizations in Nepal. Now that much of the immediate crisis has passed, these funds, raised from more than two hundred and sixty institutional and individual donors, will focus on long-term recovery and rebuilding of devastated areas.

5 Questions for...Jean Case, CEO, Case Foundation

How the digitally native, media-savvy millennial generation is shaping the way people view and bring about social change has been a topic of debate for some time. Are millennials "the giving generation," or are they just  "slacktivists"? Founded in 1997 by AOL co-founder Steve Case and his wife, Jean, the Case Foundation has been working to engage millennials in social work for the better part of a decade. As part of that effort, the foundation, in partnership with Achieve, an Indianapolis-based research and creative agency, recently released the 2015 Millennial Impact Report: Cause, Influence & the Next Generation Workforce (41 pages, PDF), the eighth in a series of reports that examines the question: How does the millennial generation engage with and support causes?

Recently, PND asked Case Foundation co-founder and CEO Jean Case about some of the report’s findings and  implications.

Philanthropy News Digest: Since 2010, the Millennial Impact Report series has examined trends in giving and volunteering by millennials. This year's report is focused on company cause work, the factors that influence engagement in the workplace, and the relationship between millennial employees and their managers. Why is it important for millennials to be engaged in giving and volunteering at the workplace?

Jean Case: Millennials play a powerful role in democratizing philanthropy. Now eighty million strong, the millennial generation is one of the most educated, tech-savvy, and idealistic generations ever. At the Case Foundation, we have long recognized the power of millennials to change the world — and that is why our support of the Millennial Impact Project has been critical to the exploration of how they connect, give, and inspire. Throughout our six years of research (and eight reports) with Achieve, we've found that with few exceptions, this generation is consistently willing and eager to "do good." And they choose not to leave their personal passion for doing good at the door but rather seek to integrate it fully into their work and social network of friends and colleagues. If we are going to solve the complex social problems of our era — eradicating deadly diseases, conquering global hunger, scaling sustainable energy solutions — we need this generation to lead the charge.

One aspect of our research which was telling was that 70 percent of millennials volunteered for a cause last year. That number is triple the average volunteer rate of America as a whole, which was just over 25 percent in 2014. Millennial employees value putting their skills and expertise to work in support of a cause, which means employers have a greater opportunity to positively engage with this growing portion of the workforce.

PND: According to the most recent survey, 46 percent of millennial respondents said they were more likely to donate to a company-sponsored giving campaign if asked by a co-worker, while only 27 percent said they were more likely to give if asked by their supervisor. Similarly, 65 percent said they were more likely to volunteer for a company initiative if their co-workers were participating, while only 44 percent said they would if their supervisor participated. What are the implications of these findings for companies looking to engage their millennial employees in "company cause work"?

JC: Millennials now make up a majority of employees — 53.5 million workers to be exact, or more than one in three American workers. We know that they place value on the relationships and bonds they build with co-workers. This is a generation that demands our attention and wants to take its idealism and put it into action in meaningful ways. CEOs and those in leadership need to understand that millennials are influencers who shape the behaviors and purchasing decisions of their larger social circles, so it's no surprise that they tend to be the most inspired by their colleagues and peers, and less so by management. Organizations can take this opportunity to shift away from hierarchical structures and top-down CSR programs and move toward more collaborative cause environments.

[Review] 'Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology'

Don't be fooled by the title of Kentaro Toyama's Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology: this is not an iconoclastic anti-technology manifesto. Nor is it a paean to an idealized pre-digital age when social change was driven by "people in the street." Instead, as back-cover blurbs from both Bill Gates and William Easterly, the NYU economics professor whose book The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor excoriated the kind of "technocratic" global health interventions favored by the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Geek Heresy presents a nuanced argument for a human-centric approach to development work that leverages, rather than relies on, technology to create change.

A "recovering technoholic," Toyama, co-founder of Microsoft Research India and now the W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan, once believed fervently in the power of technology to solve a range of "social afflictions." Like many of his peers in the tech industry, he embraced the idea that digital technology and cleverly designed devices could improve failing schools, eliminate health disparities, and lift communities out of poverty. But his work in India and elsewhere soon disabused him of that notion, convincing him, instead, that technology's role in society, not to mention its many grave consequences, was widely misunderstood. He couldn't ignore the fact, for instance, that Microsoft Research India's pilot projects, though successful in well-funded, closely monitored demonstration schools, faltered when scaled to underfunded government schools — in part due to the lack of adequately trained teachers, engaged administrators, and tech support and infrastructure. In those situations, technology not only didn't improve things; it exacerbated existing problems and disadvantages.

This "Law of Amplification" is the crux of Toyama's argument. "[T]echnology"s primary effect," he writes, "is to amplify human forces...[and] magnify existing social forces" — another way of saying "the degree to which technology makes an impact depends on existing human capacities." While it isn't a novel idea, as the author himself admits, Toyama sees it as a useful framework for a discussion of how NGOs, development experts, and industry leaders can leverage technology more effectively to address poverty, educational disparities, and other development challenges.

[Review] 'Staying the Course: Reflections on 40 Years of Grantmaking at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund'

William S. Moody joined the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1968, and for the next four decades he helped shape the fund's grantmaking programs in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Central and Eastern Europe. In Staying the Course: Reflections on 40 Years of Grantmaking at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Moody recounts with unflagging enthusiasm — and, at times, in great detail — his distinguished career, the credit for which he is more than happy to share with colleagues, collaborators, grantees, and members of the Rockefeller family and RBF board.

Staying the Course explores how RBF's grantmaking programs tried, "over time, to enlarge people's understanding of, and ability to address, sustainable development challenges; to protect human rights and promote international understanding; and to strengthen important dimensions of civil society and democratic practice in transforming societies." A tall order, to be sure, and one that, in Moody's view, the fund for the most part delivered on, thanks to what he describes as its "responsive and proactive, serendipitous and systematic" approach to "helping people help themselves."

Moody traces the evolution of that approach from the fund's establishment in 1940 by the sons of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The operation was still very much a family affair, he writes, when he came on board in the late 1960s, but the Rockefeller family philosophy of being "in it for the long haul, articulating ambitious goals knowing full well that those goals could not be reached quickly," and being "willing to make long-term commitments to effective organizations and institutions — a decade or two or more, long enough 'to make a difference', as Andrew Carnegie said" — was already deeply embedded in the fund's grantmaking practice.

As a program officer at a relatively small foundation, Moody was focused on allocating the limited resources available to him to maximum effect. In the late 1960s, for example, RBF's annual budget for international programs was a modest $10 million to $15 million — although at a time when only 5 percent of total U.S. foundation grantmaking was directed overseas, the fund was considered an important player in the international arena. More importantly, its efforts in that arena, Moody argues, demonstrate that small investments can create significant impact. In fact, the approach to grantmaking he developed back then, he writes, is quite similar to what today we call "venture philanthropy," characterized as it was "by a high level of involvement with grant recipients; a willingness to experiment and try new approaches; and a focus on capacity building for sustainability" — while avoiding any expectation of a quick pay-off.

Early on, Moody's efforts were focused on two areas: the thoughtful use of natural and cultural resources, or what is now called "sustainable development," in the developing world, and strengthening civic engagement and the nonprofit/voluntary sector globally. From 1968 through the mid-1980s, for instance, RBF supported rural development in sub-Saharan Africa and anti-apartheid efforts in South Africa, where the young program officer learned the importance of collaboration — as well as the need for flexibility, patience, and good partners. When making grants in six Central and South American countries, for example, he made it a point to invest in individuals, people like conservation expert Kenton Miller, a pioneer of sustainable resource management models and a key facilitator of RBF's productive partnership with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

5 Questions for…Bill McKibben, Co-Founder, 350.org

Forty-five years after the first Earth Day in 1970, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have stalled and the planet faces the potentially devastating effects of accelerating climate change. At the same time, calls for educational and philanthropic institutions to rid themselves of investments in fossil fuel companies have gotten louder and a grassroots divestment movement has emerged from college campuses across the country.

PND asked noted environmental activist and author Bill McKibben about the impact of the fossil fuel divestment movement, the role of philanthropy in the fight against climate change, and the prospect that something meaningful will come out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year.

Philanthropy News Digest: The name of the organization you co-founded, 350.org, refers to the goal of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the current level of 400 parts per million to 350 ppm — a level, according to climatologist James Hansen and others, that is necessary to preserve conditions on Earth similar to those which prevailed as humans evolved and flourished. Where do things stand as of 2015? And do we have any chance of meeting the 350 ppm target?

Bill McKibben: Where we stand is the CO2 level in the atmosphere climbs 2 ppm annually — and the Arctic and the Antarctic are dealing with preposterous changes that even the most pessimistic scientists thought would take many decades to arrive, oceans are acidifying, and the cycle of floods and droughts is deepening. If we managed to get off fossil fuels with great haste — if we worked at the outer edge of the possible — then by 2100 forests and oceans would have sucked up enough carbon that we'd be moving back toward 350 ppm. Much damage would be done in the meantime, but perhaps not civilizational-scale damage. But that window is small, and closing.

PND: 350.org’s Fossil Free campaign aims to convince educational and religious institutions, governments, and other organizations that serve the public good to divest their investment portfolios of fossil fuel companies. One frequently heard criticism of the campaign is that it is trying to put out a fire with a garden hose. That is, getting a few dozen or hundred institutional investors to divest their portfolios of fossil fuels will have no measurable impact on the activities of large energy companies — or on other investors who may see an opportunity as those stocks are sold. What’s wrong with that argument?

BM: If it was all anyone was doing, it would not be enough, not even close. Of course, we're also fighting against new pipelines and coal mines, and for the rapid spread of renewable energy. But divestment is one of the things that knits it together — it's been the vehicle for spreading the news that these companies have four times the carbon in their reserves than any scientist thinks we can safely burn. That's why everyone, up to the president of the World Bank, has hailed divestment as a crucial part of the fight.

5 Questions for…Nancy Northup, President and CEO, Center for Reproductive Rights

More than forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v. Wade, a number of states have passed laws designed to restrict women's access to reproductive health services, including emergency contraception and abortion. In Congress, meanwhile, the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortion services in most cases and has routinely been attached as a "rider" to annual appropriations bills for the Department of Health and Human Services, recently was attached to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act — a bill designed to protect citizens or permanent residents of the United States who have been trafficked and/or sexually assaulted or abused.

We asked Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global human rights organization that uses constitutional and international law to secure women's reproductive freedom, about these legislative trends, efforts to push back against them, and the road ahead.

Philanthropy News Digest: Your organization recently launched a campaign, "The War on Women Is Over! If You Want It," that was inspired by Yoko Ono and John Lennon's 1970 "War Is Over" campaign. What are the goals of the campaign, and what kind of response has it generated?

Nancy Northup: We launched the campaign on the forty-second anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade decision with the goal of inspiring current activists engaging and educating new audiences about the profound threats to women's freedom here in the United States. We're thrilled with the support we have received so far, from men and women across the country. Celebrities like Taylor Schilling, Susan Sarandon, Martha Plimpton, John Lithgow and Yoko Ono herself have all thrown their weight behind this campaign, and we couldn't be more grateful.

We were inspired by the power and history of Yoko Ono and John Lennon's 1970 "War Is Over" peace movement, which brought together thousands of anti-war activists across the country and unified them behind a simple message. And we are incredibly fortunate and grateful to have the personal blessing of Yoko Ono as we go forward with the campaign.

PND: The inclusion of the qualifier "If You Want It" would seem to suggest that society — women and men — have become complacent about women's reproductive freedom in the decades since Roe v. Wade. Why is that?

NN: There are countless dedicated people — clinic escorts, providers, doctors, lawyers, youth activists, researchers, elected officials, writers, volunteers, and donors — actively engaged in the fight for women's reproductive freedom. The vast majority of Americans support women's access to safe and legal abortion as part of a full range of reproductive health care. But the anti-choice community has waged a successful propaganda war, based on fear and misinformation, to marginalize the seven in ten Americans who want to see Roe v. Wade upheld, and that has made people feel alone and reluctant to speak up. This campaign is about giving the silent members of our majority an opportunity to make themselves seen and heard.

5 Questions for...Virginia Witt, Co-Founder and Director, NO MORE Campaign

As the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women meets this month to highlight progress in advancing gender equality, the status of women and girls worldwide continues to be the focus of media coverage, reports, and social media campaigns. But despite progress in areas such as access to education and health care, global statistics for domestic violence continue to alarm: Nearly 33 percent of women in high-income countries, 46 percent of women in Africa, and 41 percent of women in South and Southeast Asia say they have suffered physical or sexual violence, while only 14 percent of cases are reported to the police and the majority of victims do not seek support services.

Recently, PND spoke with Virginia Witt, co-founder and director of NO MORE, a public awareness and engagement campaign supported by an alliance of foundations, nonprofit organizations, and corporations, about efforts to end domestic violence and sexual assault in the United States and globally. Witt has served as a senior executive in a variety of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, leading strategic initiatives and public awareness campaigns to advance public health, education, and social justice issues.

Philanthropy News Digest: According to a recent report from the United Nations, 35 percent of women worldwide are estimated to have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence — with higher rates in many lower-income countries. What is the connection between violence against women and poverty?

Virginia Witt: Violence against women definitely was an urgent topic at the United Nations Beijing +20 Summit last week, as it should be every week. The UN statistics are very telling in terms of the magnitude of the problem, and we have seen commitments to address the issue building around the world. In many societies, women are not on an equal footing with men, and we know there is a strong connection between violence against women, gender inequality, and poverty. At NO MORE, however, we recognize that domestic violence and sexual assault go beyond gender, culture, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status, and that economic empowerment is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

PND: According to the UN report, a "major obstacle to ending violence against women is the persistence of discriminatory attitudes and social norms that normalize and permit violence." To what extent do you think awareness-raising campaigns like NO MORE can make a measurable difference in changing such attitudes?

VW: We know from our own research that simply starting a conversation about these issues can make it easier to help someone. There is so much silence, shame, and stigma attached to domestic violence and sexual assault. When survivors see the conversation opening up, they feel more comfortable about coming forward and seeking help. On our NO MORE Gallery, thousands have come forward — many of them survivors who are sharing their stories for the first time — to say "NO MORE" to domestic violence and sexual assault. NO MORE is a platform for survivors and bystanders to speak out, to feel supported, to feel empowered. We saw with HIV/AIDS that awareness efforts broke down the stigma around the disease over time and opened up new opportunities for those working at the community level to help those affected by the disease. We’re starting to see the same shift happening around domestic violence and sexual assault.

[Review] 'A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity'

A recent survey conducted by World Vision found that, despite the growing list of humanitarian crises around the world, 80 percent of Americans did not plan to increase their charitable giving in 2014. Discouraging perhaps, but not surprising. Those without the means to fund large-scale interventions tend to feel helpless in the face of widespread suffering, with many believing that a modest donation cannot possibly make a difference in addressing seemingly intractable problems, while others worry that little of their money will ever reach the intended beneficiaries.

In their new book, A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity, award-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and his wife, former journalist-turned-investment banker Sheryl WuDunn, beg to differ: You can make a difference. But to do so, you have to be thoughtful and intentional in your approach. That means: 1) doing research to ensure that your gift benefits the target population; 2) volunteering your time and expertise when possible; and 3) engaging in advocacy.

The authors, whose 2009 book Half the Sky examined ways to expand opportunity for women and girls in the developing world, here broaden their canvas to include efforts to expand opportunity for all marginalized populations, in the U.S. as well as abroad, with a particular focus on poverty alleviation. It's a formidable challenge, and Kristof and WuDunn do their best to make it comprehensible by breaking it down into parts: how effective interventions can make a lasting impact; how nonprofit organizations can maximize both their income and impact; how giving can benefit the giver.

According to Kristof and WuDunn, these days individual donors can be more confident about the effectiveness of their donations, for a number of reasons: anti-poverty interventions and development projects have become more evidence-based and cost-efficient in recent years; the Web makes it easier for donors to learn about the impact of their giving; and, increasingly, development projects are run more transparently and with greater buy-in and expertise from local communities. Indeed, the book, as much as anything, is a compilation of admiring portraits of nonprofit practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and activists working to remove barriers to opportunity. At the same time, it emphasizes the importance of (and increasing use of) rigorous randomized controlled trials to ensure that interventions are evidence-based and effective. And in highlighting organizations such as Evidence Action, MDRC, and the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, organizations that do the un-sexy but essential work of research and evaluation, it aims to empower individuals to think critically about the programs and charities they choose to support.

5 Questions for...Moukhtar Kocache, author, ‘Framing the Discourse, Advancing the Work: Philanthropy at the Nexus of Peace and Social Justice and Arts and Culture’

Earlier this year, the Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace issued a report, Framing the Discourse, Advancing the Work: Philanthropy at the Nexus of Peace and Social Justice and Arts and Culture, that highlighted the synergy between the arts and social movements around the globe — and the general reluctance among funders to fund arts initiatives with a social justice component, and vice versa.

Recently, PND spoke with Moukhtar Kocache, the report’s author, about some of the challenges foundations face in funding "social-change-through-arts" initiatives and what can be done to change the existing dynamic. Kocache is an independent civil society, nonprofit, and philanthropy consultant whose areas of expertise include arts and culture, media, gender equity, social justice, and cultural activism and change. From 2004 to 2012, he was a program officer in media, arts, and culture at the Ford Foundation.

Philanthropy News Digest: What are the arts uniquely able to do in situations where liberties have been eroded and freedoms suppressed that more traditional advocacy activities are unable to accomplish?

Moukhtar Kocache: The arts are ubiquitous wherever human beings come together in common cause. I have yet to see, in our own time, a social movement that did not sing, dance, paint, make theater, and record its activities. The arts are closely associated with our notions of identity, self-determination, and healing. The challenge is how to develop the strategies, mechanisms, and tools needed to get to the next level, the level at which targeted interventions that amplify the role of the arts in social change processes are conceived and implemented. So, rather than ask what the arts can do that traditional advocacy can't, I would suggest thinking about questions such as, What forms of art are most suited for a particular type of social change cause? And at what stage and through what process can the arts help people coalesce around and amplify their response to a specific social issue or reality?

Today, artistic creation and artistic processes are extremely responsive to the challenges confronting all of us as citizens of a global village; rarely these days do we see art that does not, in some way, address a social or political issue that resonates with a broader constituency. Indeed, the arts often play a role before, during, and after periods of social change, informing and galvanizing communities and even societies through the various stages of social transformation. So, it's important to think more broadly about how we as a society understand the realm of art, because that will help us tailor and design social interventions with more nuance and precision.

Consider, for instance: civil rights-era protest songs; an artist-organized campaign to shut down a supermax prison; young women learning to make and screen short films about their marginalized role in society; a community working with artists and architects to redesign and rehabilitate public housing; victims and perpetrators of genocide engaged in making theatre together; children creating art in refugee camps; and so on. It's a short list, but it demonstrates how diverse activities that fall under the rubric of "art" can be, and how, at various times and through specific mechanisms, these activities help communities to heal, feel proud, build social cohesion, create new narratives, and mobilize for or against an issue.

PND: You write in the report that, despite growing interest in "the symbiotic relationship between art, self-determination, cultural democracy and social justice," arts funders and social justice funders remain reluctant to support "social-change-through-arts" initiatives. What are the reasons for that reluctance?

MK: Arts funders would say, "We do not fund social change," while social justice funders would say, "We don’t fund the arts." But this binary dynamic has meant that a wealth of learning and opportunities for impact has been missed and that a lot of grassroots creativity in marginalized communities is not being harnessed for social change. Part of the problem has to do with limited resources and capacity at the funder level where, for many grantmakers, supporting something new often is seen as too experimental, too risky, and/or a distraction from more "serious" and conventional funding strategies. Foundation staff also tend to feel ill equipped to venture into fields where they have little expertise, even though most people understand, at both a visceral and intellectual level, the power of the synergy between the two types of funding. I believe, however, that with time, foundations will become more versed in both the arts and social justice traditions, and that that will lead to more knowledge and a greater willingness to experiment among funders on either side of the funding divide we are talking about.

5 Questions for…Michael Petrilli, President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

With a new school year beginning and debate over the Common Core State Standards heating up, we thought it would be an excellent time to talk to an expert on the subject.

According to Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a D.C.-based think tank dedicated to advancing educational excellence for every child, the "Common Core Wars” scorecard currently stands at 42-4-3-1: forty-two states out of the forty-six that signed on to Common Core are still on board (including "plenty" of states that have "rebranded" the standards); four states (Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia) never adopted them; three states (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Missouri) currently are going through a review process that will result in new standards; and one state, Oklahoma, has repealed the standards.

PND conducted the following Q&A with Petrilli earlier this month.

Philanthropy News Digest: One concern of opponents of the Common Core is that the standards are not as rigorous as some existing state standards. But a Fordham Institute analysis found that the Common Core standards were superior in content and rigor to the standards that three-quarters of the states were using in 2010. What are critics of the Common Core getting wrong? And why should any state with demonstrably tougher standards in place adopt the Common Core?

Michael Petrilli: Even critics of the Common Core acknowledge that the standards are more rigorous and challenging than what the vast majority of the states had in place before. To be frank, that's not saying much: most state standards pre-Common Core tended to be vague, misguided, or both. And the associated state tests, which often were set at ridiculously low levels, encouraged "drill and kill" style teaching, and regularly sent false signals that most students — and schools — were doing fine, were arguably worse.

The real question is how the Common Core stacks up to the best state standards, such as those that were in place in Massachusetts, Indiana, and California. In our judgment, it's a toss-up. Our reviewers gave the Common Core a grade of "A-" in mathematics and a "B+" in English language arts; a handful of states did slightly better, particularly in English. A smart move, then, would be to combine the Common Core with the best of these previous standards, as Massachusetts did in 2010 by adopting the Common Core but keeping, among other elements, the list of exemplary literary authors that was part of its old standards.

Why, you ask, should any of the handful of states with strong standards adopt the Common Core? We admitted to being divided on this question in 2010, though we anticipated some upside to the move to common standards, including the proliferation of high-quality Common Core-aligned curricula and assessments. In other words, it was our belief then that if states stuck with their old standards, even good ones, their educators would miss out on the improvements in curricula and assessments that we fully expected would soon sweep the country. Four long years later, we're finally seeing our prediction come true. Common Core-aligned curricular resources are starting to enter the market, and next spring Common Core-aligned assessments will replace the old state tests in at least half the country. And we still anticipate that these tools will represent big improvements over what preceded them.

But now the question, particularly in red and purple states, is whether states should stick with the Common Core. In Ohio, for instance, there's a bill under consideration that would move the state to the old Massachusetts standards in math and English. While that might have been attractive five years ago, in the interim school districts in the state have invested tens of millions of dollars in professional and curriculum development related to the Common Core. Ohio also is planning to use the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment, which looks to be a huge improvement on its previous test. So, changing assessments again would bring enormous additional costs. Such a switch also would be greatly demoralizing to Ohio educators, who have been working hard to implement the Common Core. In short, teachers and administrators would be right to be frustrated by a move to dump the standards simply because of politics.

PND: Another frequent criticism of the Common Core is that it was paid for and developed by a handful of large foundations behind closed doors and represents U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's reform agenda. You've written elsewhere that it was "a huge mistake" for some Common Core supporters to urge the federal government to create incentives for state adoption of the standards. What about the role of foundations in the process? Could the Common Core, or something like it, have been developed without the support of the Gates, Hewlett, and Broad foundations?