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Point-Counterpoint: Too Much Influence or Not Enough – Should Nonprofits Be Allowed to Support Political Candidates?
After signaling his intentions to do so at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, on May 4, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at weakening the Johnson Amendment, an act that has received mixed reaction from the nonprofit world. …
From Black Panther to Nonprofit CFO
Norma Mtume is my hero. As a college student she joined the Black Panther Party and went on to serve as director of the Alprentice Bunchy Carter and the George Jackson People’s Free Medical Clinics. She also co-founded a nonprofit in a broken-down trai …
I Followed A Founder: A First-Person Nonprofit Tale
Too often the focus on nonprofit executive transitions is about the departing executive. We’re in the middle of interviewing 58 executives who followed founders or long-time leaders. Here’s just one of their stories; we’ll call her “Amanda”: The …
Fundraising in Nonprofits of Color
Almost all research on fundraising is done on mainstream nonprofits, and almost all advice and guides on fundraising are addressed implicitly to mainstream nonprofits. Yet because they have different development trajectories, nonprofits in communities …
Deconstructing Nonprofit Sustainability
Maybe in some mythic past it was possible to think first about strategic impact goals, and then about how to raise the money. But today we know better: you can’t talk about what you’re going to do without talking about how to get the money. And, …
Donor-Advised Funds Background
This brief introduction to donor-advised funds (DAFs) accompanies the Blue Avocado article “Donor-Advised Funds: Non-Transparent Tax Shelters for Good.” In 1931, a New York community foundation created the first donor-advised funds (DAFs). But a …
How to Get a Job at a Foundation
An old joke: How do you get to become a judge on the Supreme Court? Answer: Be the college roommate of a future U.S. Senator. In this article we don’t address the pros and cons of foundation jobs (compared with nonprofit jobs), but simply how to …
Foundation-Nonprofit “Partnerships” — Fact or Fiction?
We are pleased to publish this article simultaneously with the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy: The question posed to me by NCRP for this article: “Is it possible for a foundation and a grantee to have an honest, real partn …
Regrets of a Former Arts Funder
As Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the San Francisco Foundation, I and philanthropic colleagues often bemoaned how fragile many culturally specific organizations were. One person would wonder why there were so few financially stable Afri …
The Trouble with Turkey
If there’s one day when socially conscious do-gooders can be excused for letting the cares of the world slip away in a haze of tryptophan, it’s Thanksgiving. As major holidays go, Thanksgiving is remarkably worry-free, its main focus n …
