The Latest
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AdviceYou Need Conservatives. Here’s How to Engage Them in Your Mission
Insights and tips from a conservative who believes nonprofits will fail in their mission if they muster support only from people who think — and vote — like they do. -
The Trump Agenda
AmeriCorps Cuts Threaten Service Programs and Their Unifying Power, Advocates Warn
The Trump administration intends to dismantle the national service program that fuels the work of big charities like Habitat for Humanity as well as local organizations and faith-based groups. -
VIDEO
How Nonprofits Can Rebuild Trust with America
Trust in American institutions — including nonprofits and philanthropy — has been falling for many years. What can individual charities and grant makers do to reverse the trend and boost trust in their organizations? Kristen Grimm — founder of Spitfire Strategies, a communications firm that works with nonprofits — dug into this question with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The result is a playbook for how nonprofits can tackle the trust deficit. -
The Commons
Giving Campaigns in Every Community? GivingTuesday’s Big New Idea
The organization behind the annual post-Thanksgiving giving spree wants to help nonprofits and foundations create fundraising drives nationwide to help groups raise cash — and earn trust. -
Technology
How Burnout Led to a Novel Way to Connect Black Women Across Generations
Amid a loneliness epidemic that affects Black women at high rates, can a network of “aunties” help? -
Opinion
A 3-Part Playbook to Build Connection and Community
Funders working to build strong communities should know this: Research shows that people crave relationship, but they need opportunities to come together and work together.
What If We’re Not Hopelessly Divided?
Research points to common ground on controversial issues, the country’s priorities, and America’s values — terrain from which nonprofits and philanthropy can work for change.
Essays
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I Grew Up Poor and Learned Early: Charities Aren’t Always So Charitable
As a young girl, the author found nonprofits often stereotyped her family. Now, as a journalist, she reports on how they can do better. -
‘While I Breathe, I Hope': A Black Nonprofit Leader and Daughter of the South Returns Home
A veteran fundraiser takes up a new job as CEO and pursues the American ideals that she, her family, and generations of Black philanthropists hold dear. -
What Nonprofits Can Learn From My Fellow Firefighters
America’s divisions can roil even efforts for the common good, but my Maine firehouse is a testament to the power of unity and shared purpose.
Advice
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VIDEO
How Nonprofits Can Rebuild Trust with America
Trust in American institutions — including nonprofits and philanthropy — has been falling for many years. What can individual charities and grant makers do to reverse the trend and boost trust in their organizations? Kristen Grimm — founder of Spitfire Strategies, a communications firm that works with nonprofits — dug into this question with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The result is a playbook for how nonprofits can tackle the trust deficit. -
Case Study
As Populism Surges, Can a $3 Billion Foundation Shed Its Elite Image?
Community grant makers are “built for this moment” of division in America, says New York Community Trust’s Amy Freitag. The trust wants to change how it’s perceived by the average New Yorker. -
Opinion
Your Secret Weapon in These Divisive Times? Fundraisers
They have the skills to break through polarization and build bridges to donors with a wide range of views — exactly what organizations need as the new administration takes office and red-blue tensions simmer.
Podcasts
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Podcast | Nonprofits Now: Leading Today
Listen Now: Steps Leaders Can Take Today to Bridge Divides
Tim Dixon, co-founder of More in Common, joins Chronicle CEO Stacy Palmer to offer research-based strategies leaders can use to bridge divides in the workplace and in their communities. Tune in as Stacy asks Tim to walk listeners through his approaches to persuading people with widely different views to unite and get things done.
Two Churches and a Quest for Racial Unity
Watch a short documentary by Alex Garcia, a Pulitzer Prize winner, on Bethel New Life and Hope Presbyterian churches outside Chicago.
The Commons in Conversation Interview Series
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Commons in Conversation
‘Taking Action With Your Neighbors’: Inside a $30 Million Funder Collaborative
A conversation with two leaders of a national effort to strengthen democracy by improving life in rural communities. -
Interview
Reid Hoffman’s $10 Million Contest to Restore Trust in Institutions
The LinkedIn co-founder joins Lever for Change’s Cecilia Conrad to talk about his open call to lift up new ideas — and attract funding — for reforms of government, the media, higher education, and more. -
Interview
How Distrust of Institutions Is an Opening for Philanthropy-Led Change
GOP pollster and CNN contributor Kristen Soltis Anderson talks of a growing “market for reform” that she believes nonprofits and funders are poised to lead. -
Interview
A ‘Powerful Journey’ Toward Racial Healing
La June Montgomery Tabron — head of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and author of two new books — talks about how organizations and communities can close the “empathy gap.”
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