Each week we try to bring you a collection of links that highlight political news that impact nonprofits, helpful links for nonprofit professionals, the importance of sharing stories, and something positive to end your week.
Helpful Nonprofit Links
- Vu Le and Josh Sattely write an open letter to tech companies encouraging them to accept initiatives hosted by public charity fiscal sponsors so that more nonprofits can benefit from their tools and services.
- Susan Fish pens a post at Charity Village that provides advice on mending rifts between frontline staff and fundraisers/communications staff.
- Jay Love from Guidestar outlines five commonly held myths regarding the difficulty of using wills and trusts in charitable giving.
- While we tend to mock how often people use the word “disrupt”, it was interesting to see how the charity Wellcome Trust is creating a new fund devoted to life sciences focused on “bold ideas that would fall outside the remit of conventional life sciences funding.” Paul Karon from Inside Philanthropy explains this change and what it could mean.
- Many nonprofits use terms like privilege, marginalized, diversity, and inclusion. Kim Crayton writes a helpful guide on how to use a few vital words and concepts and the differences between them. Also, while the podcast isn’t related to nonprofits directly, this week’s Still Processing discusses what it means when institutions try to commit themselves to inclusion. Still Processing is a New York Times podcast featuring Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham.
- Linda Lombardi from Network for Good discusses what you need to ensure your donor management system is aligned with mobile giving.
Political News
- This week the IRS announced that it is going to stop collecting the names of large donors to political nonprofit groups. Peter Overby and David Green discuss this on NPR’s Morning Edition and what it means for nonprofits, the IRS, and our current political climate.
- The Trump administration has announced that it is (again) slashing grants to nonprofit organizations that help people get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Robert Pear from the NY Times provides analysis. If this impacted your nonprofit organization, we would like to hear from you and share more about your work. Send us a note via our contact page.
- The US government announced a new consumer education initiative called “Operation Donate with Honor” and are cracking down on charities that are falsely claiming to help veterans. Mark Hrywna from The Nonprofit Times shares the details.
- Harriet Rowan from Kaiser Health News explains how the states fighting the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with preexisting medical conditions will suffer the most.
- Several nonprofit organizations and advocates are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to stop the merger of prison phone companies Securus and ICSolutions. The merged company would control between 74% and 83% of the market. Aleks Kajstura from the non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative explains how this will affect people and links to the filing.
- The Trump administration is proposing some sweeping changes to how the Endangered Species Act is enforced. Brian Resnick from Vox details the changes and links to other helpful reads for environmental organizations reading up on these changes.
Sharing Stories
- Two recent posts share stories of young people supporting the arts community. Luis Gonzalez from the Walton Family Foundation describes how the Latinx Theatre Project in Northwest Arkansas was developed. Elisabeth Kramer from ParentMap interviews Kaya Nieves, a high school student who is an active volunteer with the Seattle Art Museum.
Something Fun
- We’ve all seen cats zooming around with a toy or ball. On Reddit, you can see a very big cat having fun with a soccer ball. Maybe the lion is still afflicted with World Cup Fever?