April 2020

Advocates for sick leave, the homeless, and hungry kids are suddenly getting renewed attention in their push for change.

Here are the key changes you can expect as society counts on the professionals who dedicate themselves to advancing the common good.

Social distancing and the heightened dangers Covid-19 poses to older people are likely to disrupt volunteerism in coming months.

With social-service needs looming so large, private aid won’t be able to keep up.

Nonprofits felt the full weight of the coronavirus’s impact at the height of spring event season, calling into question longstanding patterns of how and when charities fundraise.

Both wealthy and middle-class donors are likely to experience economic repercussions from the pandemic but in different ways.

Amy Thomas, managing director of the Penumbra Theatre Company, says the pandemic is changing everything for her organization — and the nonprofit world.

Still, the unprecedented calamity means that many foundations are changing how they give and adding new flexibility and more general operating support.

The coronavirus pandemic, and the social and economic damage it leaves in its wake, is laying bare the nonprofit world’s lack of investment in organizations’ operations and their people.

The pain will be widespread but some groups, such as food banks and arts groups, the damage will be more severe.

Nicole Taylor is trying to turn it around after a workplace scandal — and now she must deal with the coronavirus scare and economic downturn. (See an article from Recode on Monday about a new effort the fund has undertaken to persuade donors to earmark up to 5 percent of their advised funds for pandemic relief.)

They need to step up their game to compete with what feels like countless options available to donors.

Stand for something. Play to your strengths. Communicate who you are.

Their popularity has been on a slow rise — an unexpected trend at a time when few households even have landline phones and federal regulations largely prohibit mass dialing to mobile phones.

Lowell Smith sent anonymous letters to about two dozen charities, laying out certain fundraising practices and asking the organizations to contact him through an intermediary if they believed they were doing “everything on the list.”

The Klabu Foundation has opened a sports clubhouse in the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement in northern Kenya. The goal is to help people form bonds, find purpose, and learn leadership skills.

How two nonprofits use video to thank donors and encourage them to raise money online.

A pledge by hundreds of grant makers to loosen or eliminate restrictions on their funding and trust their nonprofit partners more is long overdue, says a Ford Foundation official.

It’s time for foundation leaders to abandon inflammatory rhetoric and worst-case projections, writes James Piereson, head of the William Simon Foundation.

Philanthropy’s focus is rightfully on urgent needs, but we must also do all we can to ensure that the voices of those hurt most by the coronavirus are heard in the 2020 elections and census count.