I wrote to a friend the other day and got an email back that said that she was away meditating and would not be back until mid-March.

A youth program in Boston’s Chelsea neighborhood gets a huge investment, but it is putting a lot on the line.

If the players for the Northwestern University football team win their hearing before the National Labor Relations Board on February 7th, they might be the first college football team to gain recognition as college employees, not just “student-athletes,” and accorded union rights to negotiate for a better share of the huge college football revenues in the U.S.

The formulas for classical arts organizations are changing radically, even at the Met. But it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.

Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson has identified 27 indicators of the true state of the union that would have been valuable pieces of context had President Obama referenced them.

Fidelity Charitable Gift Funds saw donations into their funds as fairly static last year, but giving was decidedly up from the funds to nonprofits.

Well over a year late, the House of Representatives has passed a farm bill, which the Senate appears all but assured to accept. It cuts food stamps more than some Democrats wanted, but less than right-wing Republicans advocated.

Across the developing world, many international charities rely on local, volunteer staff to perform all kinds of work. Many volunteers provide low-level assistance to organizations. However, thousands of volunteer healthcare workers are bringing vital skills and expertise to rural areas, which suffer from a severe shortage of doctors and nurses. Many praise the “volunteer spirit”

President Obama’s State of the Union address tackled income inequality as pundits predicted. For nonprofits, however, the president’s policy prescriptions to shrink the nation’s income gaps and to increase social mobility were strong on calls for voluntary action and a little thin on new federal program initiatives.

Two politicians from Norway’s Socialist Left Party lauded Edward Snowden for acts that have “led to the reintroduction of trust and transparency as a leading principle in global security policies.”

Will Scarlett Johansson cut her ties with SodaStream, the home soda maker company, or with Oxfam, the humanitarian aid NGO? She is currently a “global ambassador” for both, but Oxfam objects to her SodaStream role because SodaStream operates a factory in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Just as the Minnesota Orchestral Association managed to resolve its long, public labor dispute, the whole board of the Minnesota Dance Theatre board has stepped down.