Weekend Link Roundup (February 15-16, 2020)

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

Fundraising

Everything in the world of fundraising is based on relationships, or should be, right? Well, sort of, writes Vu Le on his Nonprofit AF blog. “[O]ur reliance on relationships is…problematic, as it often creates and enhances inequity and thus undermines many of the problems we as a sector are trying to address” — for example, by further marginalizing people and communities that don’t have the same access to relationships as better-resourced communities and nonprofits, or by reinforcing our natural bias toward people who look, think, and act like us. 

Giving

On the Alliance magazine blog, Alisha Miranda, chief executive of I.G. advisors, considers the pros and cons of curated approaches to giving.

Grantmaking

PEAK Grantmaking has released a set of resources designed to help grantmakers operationalize the second of its five Principles for Peak Grantmaking: Narrow the Power Gap. Within that frame, the organization has three very specific recommendations: build strong and trusting relationships with your grantees; rightsize the grantmaking process and implement flexible practices that reduce the burden on your grantees; and structure grant awards to be more responsive to grantee needs. Elly Davis, a program manager at the organization, shares more here.

Health

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), whose “AmeriCare legislation, first introduced in 2006, would have provided every American with a basic level of health coverage, and is the framework for Medicare for All and other comprehensive health reform proposals being discussed today,” passed away on January 24. The Commonwealth Fund remembers Stark, “a champion for health care access for all,” on its Turning Point blog.

More than 98 percent of American births and 97 percent of births in Colorado take place in hospitals. And yet outcomes for mothers and babies are among the worst of any high-resource country, and outcomes for African American and Indigenous families look more like they do in much poorer countries. Kristin Jones, associate director of communications at the Colorado Trust, reports.

Nonprofits

On the Candid blog, Laurel Molloy, founder of and chief consultant at Innovations Quantified, offers a brief primer on the difference between a theory of change and a logic model. And India Pierce Lee, senior vice president for program at the Cleveland Foundation, shares details of and lessons learned from the Greater University Circle Initiative, a public-private partnership focused on lifting up the neighborhoods surrounding Cleveland’s University Circle district — neighborhoods where more than half the residents are living in poverty and the median household income is less than $19,000 per year. 

February is the perfect time to reinforce, reestablish, and recommit to those big goals you dreamed about as the ball was dropping on New Year’s Eve, writes Common Impact’s Danielle Holly, before sharing five things you and your colleagues can do in 2020 to make sure you achieve them.

Philanthropy

Great interactive from the folks at the New York Times illustrating how Michael Bloomberg has used his philanthropy over the years to extend his “brand” and boost his influence.

“The philanthropic sector is stuck in old paradigms, and several common, critical issues are preventing [it] from making real and sustainable progress,” writes Mike Wilson, deputy director of education grantmaking at Ascendium Education Group. Although philanthropy “is uniquely positioned to lift up disenfranchised populations, people of color, and underserved communities, and to help transform our nation into a stronger, more just, and more equitable society,” he adds, “it must undergo serious self-examination and advance substantive change for [those goals] to be achieved.”

Poverty

Rutger Bregman, the Dutch academic who caused a stir at Davos a few years back with his suggestion that billionaires should be taxed more — a lot more — than they are currently, shares a post on the Correspondent blog with a very simple thesis: poverty isn’t caused by a lack of character; it’s the result of a lack of cash.

Science/Tech

And in a new post on her blog, Beth Kanter reports from the Google Impact AI Summit, where human-centered design was a hot topic.

(Photo credit: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

That’s it for now. Drop us a line at [email protected] if you have something you’d like to share.