It’s not just at the federal level. Dark money is behind campaigns at all levels of government, including the Detroit mayoral campaign.

Nonprofits could raise more money if they had more engaged organizations, supportive bosses, board member participation, and adherence to the body of knowledge. In this first of a two-part column, Simone Joyaux shares her insights into the CompassPoint report, “UnderDeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising,” released earlier in the year.

Join us for NPQ’s first Google Hangout: A Conversation with NPQ’s Ruth McCambridge, the Knight Foundation’s Eric Newton & journalist Jim East.

The activities of the Vatican have been watched especially closely since the election of Pope Francis in March 2013. A new questionnaire on issues related to families and marriage is the latest instance of Vatican actions becoming the subject of intense speculation. Those looking to the survey as a harbinger of significant change in Catholic doctrine are likely to be disappointed.

Who benefits when those with vast wealth use generosity as another arena for personal competition?

The likely new mayor of Detroit comes with a lengthy nonprofit resume. Will that make a difference to Detroit’s nonprofits and to the solutions he helps devise to revitalize the Motor City?

Nonprofits will be the ones who measure the impact of the expiration of the SNAP benefit increases. Stateline has presented an interactive map that allows you to see the population of people affected in your state.

As audits of mental health providers in New Mexico continue, two of the agencies being investigated—Presbyterian Medical Services and Youth Development Inc.—have agreed to pay back a significant sum to avoid “avoid the time, trouble, expense, delay and uncertainty of the time litigating this matter.”

Are our responses to rebuilding after disasters like Superstorm Sandy correct? A Western Carolina University professor suggests that our disaster rebuilding strategies are seriously off base.

A wide variety of nonprofits rallied outside the Utah governor’s mansion last Friday to show support for expanding Medicaid in the state.

Yesterday, we printed Bill Schambra’s presentation to the Kettering Foundation, wherein he said that much of “community buy-in” is, for philanthropists, a mirage, or just another technical problem to be solved by community-relations experts skilled in the subtle sciences of manipulation and consensus-creation. Today, Peter H. Pennekamp of the Community Democracy Workshop offers a reply, wherein he suggests that Schambra’s perspective is “too far away” to be accurate.

Rick Cohen responds to Scott Walter’s piece in Philanthropy Daily, “Respect for the Poor,” with a thoughtful discussion of guns, untimely deaths, and his own poor childhood in urban Boston.