GIVING SMART

Three Loudoun County middle schoolers have come up with a way to raise as much as $500,000 for local food pantries through donations as small as a dime or two from the students who buy lunch at school. Food pantries rely on unpredictable cash and food donations, but these youngsters, who started the project as part of a lesson on the Great Depression, “did the math” and found that if students made regular 10-cent donations, the impact would be tremendous. Read more here.

The Top Five Most Promising Trends in Philanthropy include addressing the root causes of social problems, sharing of data/best practices and collaborative philanthropy.  Fortunately, many in this sector are beginning to move toward working together more regularly, including Loudoun County charities.  Read the full article here.

Virginia is the first in the nation to end homelessness for veterans.  How did the state, which has the 7th largest veteran population in the country, achieve this benchmark?  By using the Housing-First model,  a policy that provides homeless people with safe, supportive shelter as a prerequisite for attending to other underlying issues. In the past year, Virginia has provided permanent housing to more than 1,400 homeless veterans.  The benchmark also means that the state has the resources to take in any veterans who want housing in the future within 90 days.  Housing-First is proving to be a cost efficient and humane way to end homelessness.  Do you think it would make sense to extend this policy to nonveteran homeless people with the same focus in coming years?

To combat childhood obesity, a school in rural Buckingham, VA, worked with architects to make the entire school more conducive to a healthy lifestyle. From school gardens, to a commercial kitchen allowing students to watch as their lunch is made, food labs and other innovative techniques, they are teaching healthy eating along with the core curriculum.  Read the full article.

Neighborhood Centers of Houston, TX, has succeeded in helping poor neighborhoods because they “go where they are invited and do what we’re asked to do.” Instead of seeing the disadvantaged as the “problem,” they see them as the asset and source of solutions. Learn how Neighborhood Centers puts people first and helps them move up the ladder and out of poverty. 

In May, Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG) and Enterprise Community Partners collaborated on an innovative new funding pool they are establishing for developers of affordable housing units. In their presentation to the Federal City Council, they said it will provide developers with access to low-interest bridge loans and will provide updates soon. Read more here.

20 teachers from NoVA schools recently shadowed professionals in fields including agriculture, medicine, and transportation as part of the Teachers in Industry Project, run by GWU. The program helps to better equip students to prepare for life after high school. Read the full article here.

Many kids who rely on school meals struggle to get enough to eat during the summer months.  Arby’s Foundation, a core partner of No Kid Hungry, will match your donations dollar for dollar up to $150,000 this summer, doubling your impact to help feed hungry kids. Learn more about the program, which is part of Share our Strength by clicking here.

66 percent of food insecure households that received food from Feeding America’s network of food banks must decide whether to purchase food or their medicine because they simply can’t afford both. How can we ensure that people get both the food and medicine they need? Read more.

An organization in Charlotte is trying to help the homeless in a different way. Speak Up Magazine is a group that gives people living on the streets not just a job, but a chance to tell their story. Read more.

Conventional wisdom says young Americans are not as generous as older generations, particularly if they’re not religious. That may hold true for most donors, says a new report, but younger women appear to be bucking the trend. Millennial and Generation X women who are single and unaffiliated with a religion give two-and-a-half times more money to charity than their older, similarly secular counterparts, according to the report, which looked exclusively at unmarried donors. Their giving also doubles that of peers who have loose ties to a religion. Read more.

In order to incentivize food stamp recipients to purchase healthier foods, the federal government passed the farm bill earlier this year to put $100 million into doubling the value of SNAP benefits when people use them to buy local fruits and vegetables. The idea has spread across the country and is expanding rapidly. When can we see these extra SNAP benefits in our grocery stores? Read more.

A site for teachers to directly raise money to fund projects in their classrooms. Teachers can post projects (a request for technology, supplies, books, etc.) that need funding and people can directly give (by-passing the need for approval from school administrators or other gatekeepers). The site has been around since 2000 and has raised $286 million for 210,000+ teachers’ projects around the country. Donors can plug in local zip codes to see what is needed in their respective area(s). Read more.

How do you donate food so it doesn’t go to waste? Have a look at the suggestions from someone who’s been there. For a quick rundown: Don’t give outlandish things; do give no-cook foods; leave food in the original packaging; think simple; label special dietary needs, make it easy to open, and ask what’s needed! Read more.

Public-private partnerships may just hold the key to alleviate poverty in America’s cities. Living Cities, a New York-Washington based organization, seeks to improve the economic wellbeing of low-income people. In a recent blog post on their website, Ronda Jackson recounts some insights from a roundtable discussion. So how can philanthropies successfully work with cities? Read more.

Wealthy people often wait until middle age or even retirement to begin thinking in earnest about giving. Of course, this is sometimes necessary—it often takes time to earn wealth before one can consider investing it in worthy causes. But age should not be the determining factor, and philanthropy, no matter when one starts, will yield successes and failures that offer lessons for one’s future giving. Effective philanthropy is not an easy undertaking, and postponing one’s engagement can mean postponing effective giving. Read more.

“If you care about the result, if you care about what happens to kids, if you care about solving problems, that means you have to care about evidence and data.” Read more.

Corporate responsibility is no longer about how you give money away; it’s about the way you make money – about the culture and the values that inform your operating practices. Social impact investing enables investors to align their investment strategies with their values. Those values can range from supporting healthy environments, sustaining communities or promoting diverse workforces and humane working environments. Unlike traditional financial investments, the returns in impact investing aren’t measured solely in dollars. They are measured by changes in social or environmental policies and outcomes. While the degree of change can be difficult to measure, there are signs that the increasing flows of investment dollars into impact investing are indeed making a difference. Read more.

July 14, 2014
Community foundations today operate in an environment that is very different from the one in which their current systems and approaches were developed. Their ability to adapt to a rapidly changing context will have serious implications for all of philanthropy. Foundation staff members work as community organizers to train and mentor residents, foster relationships, conduct research, and work with policy makers on local and regional issues. But is it enough? Read more.

Search the Nonprofit Collaboration Database to find real-world examples of how nonprofits are working together. Explore different collaboration models, what prompted organizations to collaborate, challenges encountered, and the outcomes experienced by partner agencies and the community. Read more.

PerformWell is a collaborative effort initiated by Urban Institute, Child Trends, and Social Solutions. PerformWell provides measurement tools and practical knowledge that human services professionals can use to manage their programs’ day-to-day performance. Information in PerformWell leverages research-based findings that have been synthesized and simplified by experts in the field. By providing information and tools to measure program quality and outcomes, PerformWell helps human services practitioners deliver more effective social programs. Read more.

More than $300 billion in the U.S. alone is donated annually to nonprofits, and the number of private foundations has doubled in the last two decades as community foundation numbers have tripled. But experts question whether the billions backed by good intentions have made the most possible difference or effectively solved problems. If donors want to achieve more, they need to do more than give. Do More Than Give, a highly regarded book authored by Leslie Crutchfield, is about how high-impact donors catalyze change in the world. Read more.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy enlisted several experts to set up a great list of answers to fundraising questions. Pose your own question or browse through previous advice. Read more.

When is it a good idea to donate money to a for-profit organization? When that organization is leading the way to innovation, so says Google CEO, Larry Page. Ultimately, he thinks that one of the best ways to improve the human experience for future generations is by investing in the elite innovators who will leave the largest positive impact on humankind. What do you think? Read more.

Does philanthropy by the most affluent among us make up for the negative consequences of inequality? At the center of this debate is how to quantify the positive impact of philanthropy by the world’s wealthiest people on the world’s poorest, along with the negative impact of inequality—both tasks that are difficult, and perhaps impossible. Read more.