Like any other sector of society, a healthy philanthropic sector needs the scrutiny of external watchdog organizations as well as appropriate governmental regulation and oversight. But ensuring that the watchdog does not turn into a lapdog is a challenge that bedevils even countries with well-developed philanthropic sectors and confounds those where the sector is only beginning to build an infrastructure.
The Obama Campaign: Lessons for Nonprofits
There are so very many things about this election that call us to a new future but if the future is showing itself to be radically different, we must become different too — or we quickly become irrelevant — and endangered.
Condemned to Repeat the Past: Lessons from History for Foundations and the Legislative Process
In foundation circles, it is an oft-repeated truism that McGeorge Bundy, when he led the Ford Foundation, and his foundation colleagues botched their relationships with Congress when they testified against federal regulation and specifically what led to the 1969 Tax Act’s controls on private foundations. Though their dire predictions of the collapse of foundations after the Tax Act hardly came to pass—in fact, foundations boomed in numbers and assets following it–Bundy and his big foundation colleagues have morphed into philanthropic archetypes of how not to handle elected state or federal legislators.
What the Council on Foundations Should Have Said to Its Members
Like many, the editors of Nonprofit Quarterly were disappointed in the Council on Foundations’ open letter to its members about what they and other foundations should do during this time of national and global economic distress (see the end of this article for the original letter ). Here is the letter we wish the Council had sent.
Your Organization’s Experience in Financial Chaos
On the assumption that we can all learn from one another, we would ask you to share your situation and decision making with us and fellow readers.
The “It May be Hard Times” NPQ Reader
I am sure you are thinking about the scenarios your organization might face over the coming year. What will foundations do? Will they become more conservative in their giving in anticipation of reduced assets? What will happen to government spending? Will people continue to give generously as individuals when their own futures are more uncertain? What will happen in our communities when local businesses feel even more squeezed? And how will we respond if entitlements are brought up one-by-one for review in the big political football game we are now calling democratic process?
Paul Hudson on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
Broadway Financial Corporation CEO Paul Hudson is the first contributor to NPQ's series of expert opinions on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
Scapegoating the Community Reinvestment Act
Even in the midst of the nation’s financial sector meltdown prompting a societal march toward a long and deep economic recession, far too many people who should know better have decided to blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the subprime foreclosure crisis and the implosion of commercial banks and mortgage brokers.
The nonprofit sector knows better—and had better get on the stick to advocate against efforts to weaken this absolutely vital component of national policy. Enacted in 1977 “to encourage depository institutions to meet the credit needs of lower-income communities" (emphasis added), CRA became a crucial tool for reversing the prevalent banking practice of racial and geographic “redlining.”
Colliding Interests: The Wall Street Bailout and the U.S. Nonprofit Sector
A bailout package is ready to be voted on by Congress, but that doesn’t obviate the concerns of Nonprofit Quarterly readers who by and large believe that the bailout and the conditions that led to it reveal something fundamentally wrong about our society. The so-called Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) may even be necessary to jumpstart liquidity and credit in the financial sector, but it is for many a bitter pill to swallow.
Sound Off on the Bailout
As community activists and organization leaders, Nonprofit Quarterly readers probably have a lot to say about the various proposals for a purported financial sector "bailout" currently being debated on Capitol Hill. It is truly a bipartisan issue — liberals and conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and libertarians are debating the pros and cons of the largest federal intervention in the financial system since FDR's Banking Act of 1933. We want to hear what you have to say about this debate.
What the Financial Sector Meltdown Really Means for Nonprofits and Philanthropy
In the wake of the federal government’s intervention in the financial markets this past week—unprecedented since the Depression era banking legislation put through by Franklin Delano Roosevelt—nonprofits should not look to philanthropy from commercial banks and investment firms to soften the blow of the ailing economy and the inevitable impact on the nonprofit sector.
Welcome to Fall 2008
People: They are our greatest asset. Does this oft-repeated phrase hold real meaning in the nonprofit sector (where it certainly should), or is it a mere cliché? How do those who spend most of their waking hours in nonprofits feel about the third sector as a workplace? In this issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, we