NPQ’s e-Newsletter of March 2, 2009, discusses a new nonprofit coalition on the development of the future role of the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and how to best advance the public interest though these organizations. You can download the declaration [PDF]. We have also included a link if your organization wants to sign the

Remember the debate in California regarding getting large foundations in that state to report on their grantmaking to racial/ethnic communities and to people of color-led organizations?  In several postings (available under the "racial equity" category here), the Cohen Report covered the foundations' visceral, furious reaction against the legislation that the California state legislature was considering.  Before the legislation got to a vote in the California State Senate, in June 10 foundations struck a deal with Assemblyman Joe Coto, the original sponsor of the proposed legislation, to pull the bill in favor of the foundations spending 6 months or so to come up with a voluntary plan for increasing funding and increased capacity-building support for organizations serving minority communities and for POC-led organizations.

In December of 2008, 9 of the 10 foundations released a report describing their 2-3 year plan, titled Strengthening Nonprofit Minority Leadership and the Capacity of Minority-Led and Other Grassroots Community-Based Organizations.  Although the foundations' report includes extensive discussion of the foundations' current grantmaking reaching communities of color, the following chart lists all of the foundations' self-categorized "new" commitments, both individual and collaborative, emerging from their 6-month review.

By the time most people read this, they’ll have seen summaries of the conference report on what the House and Senate conferees finally agreed to.   Here’s Part II of what may be in store for nonprofits, based on a reading of the pre-publication draft of the report that will accompany the final bill through the Senate–focusing on issues of tax relief for social safety net purposes.

The spending provisions of the compromise stimulus bill are a bit easier to track and understand than the more arcane tax provisions (see Part II of CR’s review of the conference report on the compromise House/Senate stimulus bill).  This review covers some of the provisions with pertinent direct and indirect implications for nonprofits.

To most small, local nonprofits–and nearly all operating 501(c)(3)s are small and local–the concept of “social entrepreneurialism” that they hear touted by their funders implies earning income from business-related activities. But some of the most highly publicized nonprofit social entrepreneurs promoted as models for the nonprofit sector-and frequently mentioned by sector leaders influential with the Obama Administration-demonstrate part of their entrepreneurialism by success at the public trough.

Details are beginning to emerge as to what the two chambers have done to meld their versions of an economic stimulus package.  It's still a moving target, but here are some of the items that seem to be emerging from the conference committee of relevance to nonprofits, drawn from a document released just moments ago by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office:

The economic stimulus packages moving through Congress are moving targets.  A snapshot from the February 7th Senate deliberations suggests that there might be some interesting discussions between the Senate and House when the two chambers’ stimulus bills come to conference.  For nonprofits, here are the headlines and implications.

Why is the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program important in thinking about how quickly economic stimulus outlays might actually reach nonprofits and communities?

Because CDBG is one of the true mainstays of government funding for community-based nonprofits for their core program activities.

With the vote by the U.S. House of Representatives on January 28th by 244 to 188 to pass H.R.1 (titled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), the $825 billion economic stimulus bill, our nation has taken one step in a long series of events that will ensue before nonprofits see any of the spending portions of the stimulus reaching their coffers.  Predicting the formal and informal processes of the executive and legislative branches is always problematic, but we can guess that the stimulus will have to hurdle the following fences and ditches before dollars reach intended beneficiaries.