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Weekend Link Roundup (February 8-9, 2020)

people seated with US stars and stripes pleated fan flagOur weekly roundup of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog….

Economy

The stock market is up and inflation is muted. It’s the story of the last ten years. Or is it? In The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey reports on the affordability crisis breaking the back of America’s middle class.

Global Health

The novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, dominated headlines for much of the last week, leading to a spate of all-too-predictable scare stories and conspiracy theories. For a solid statistical breakdown of what is actually happening, in Wuhan and the twenty-seven other countries and territories in which the virus has been detected, check out this useful site created by the folks at World-o-Meter.

Grantwriting

On the Candid blog, Susan Schaefer, founding partner of Resource Partners LLC, looks at three of the core skills needed by a grant writing professional in 2020.

Health

More than fifty years after the civil rights movement changed the way Americans think about race, there is still much to do to reduce discrimination and increase health equity. On the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health blog, Dwayne Proctor, a senior advisor to the foundation’s president, reflects on the role of stories in the search for solutions.

International Affairs/Development

“For a private foundation engaged in global development, the quality of the partnership between the INGO and in-country partners is a fundamental determinant of whether and how dollars turn into results,” writes Ruth Levine, formerly of the William and Hewlett Foundation and now a policy fellow at Stanford University, on the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog. “Unfortunately,” she adds, “the nature of the relationship between an INGO and its local partners — whether good, bad, or just plain ugly — [often] goes unobserved by funders. It’s time for that to change.”

Nonprofits

In a new post on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz shares a provocative thesis: changes in the news media landscape in the USA over the last fifteen years portends the future of nonprofit organizations in the country.

As part of their organizational development and nonprofit management courses, a lot of college professors ask students to interview a nonprofit leader or three and then have them develop a series of recommendations on how the organization can improve. Vu Le’s advice to those professors. Don’t.

Philanthropy

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to let stand the Trump administrations recent “public charge” immigration rules, writes NCRP’s Stephanie Peng, philanthropy must ramp up its support for communities and organizations working on behalf of immigrants and against nativism and xenophobia.

In the first post of a new series on the Alliance blog, Cassie Robinson, head of the Digital Fund at the UK’s National Lottery Community Fund, shares a video that considers the role philanthropy might play in forging a new social contract between civil society and big tech. (Click here for the second post in the series.)

On the HistPhil blog, Thomas Adam, associate director of the International and Global Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, reexamines the Tocquevillian idea that civil society only flourishes in democracies.

Private equity mogul Stephen A. Schwarzman, whose total compensation in 2017 ($785.68) and 2018 ($567.8 million), according to Bloomberg, exceeded $1.3 billion, has joined the Giving Pledge.

Regulation/Oversight

Even though they lack pews and parishioners, a growing number of tax-exempt faith-based groups are asking the IRS to recognize them as churches. And the IRS is complying. Samuel Brunson, professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, reports for the Conservation.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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

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