This letter announces the start of NPQ’s effort to establish a fund that ensures that we carry forward the traditions of investigative and policy reporting that NPQ is known for, largely, in the past, through the expert reporting of our national correspondent, Rick Cohen.
The problem of performance-enhancing drug use sullies several sports, putting the spotlight on nonprofits like the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that function as quasi-regulators, with both national and sometimes international roles and influence.
Because the White House and Congress couldn’t figure their way to a realistic “public option” in the Affordable Care Act, they turned to completely new nonprofit health care cooperatives but then undermined them through a variety of financial and operational impediments. Five of the CO-OPs have succumbed this year.
Coming out of its “Philamplify” review of the Walton Family Foundation, NCRP held a debate between education reform experts for and against market-based approaches. NCRP said it was “agnostic” on the topic, but can you really be agnostic about the insertion of the market into public education?
If you’ve been the beneficiary of philanthropic support from Volkswagen, the news that the company has brazenly lied—for several years—to car-buyers, the public, and the U.S. government as a whole about the emissions levels of its diesel cars might make you question exactly what Volkswagen was trying to achieve with its corporate giving.
As North Carolina does the right thing by trying to compensate some of the victims of its state-sponsored, forced sterilization program that started in 1929 and didn’t end until 1974, we are reminded that eugenics, a pseudoscience promoted in the early 20th century by some major U.S. foundations, influenced many public policies, including the federal government’s design and implementation of mortgage redlining.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack yesterday declared in a very public way his frustration with U.S. foundations and their lack of investment in rural America despite much-heralded promises to the contrary. It’s a moment of political candor—and a revelation of philanthropy falling short of its own commitments, promise, and potential.
Competing narratives have developed about the recovery of New Orleans, post-Katrina. On one side, city authorities and major institutions portray a largely positive dynamic; on the other, grassroots advocates see the recovery as having damaged low-income people and the black community.
#BlackLivesMatter activists have protested at and disrupted two presentations by Sanders to push him to directly address issues of racial equity. Smart tactics to nudge the candidate toward addressing race, or not so smart because they target 2016’s most progressive candidate?
The CNN report on several federal investigations looking into allegations of mismanagement and corruption in the AbilityOne program that subsidizes federal agencies contracting with nonprofits that employ most blind or severely disabled workers didn’t really address one important part of the story—that the shortcomings in oversight and accountability practices in AbilityOne have been long known, but the federal government and Congress haven’t taken action to make the needed improvements.
