Philanthropy This Week

Nicholas Rausch, AFP, Getty Images

Good morning.

Whew. The past week was so full of news about nonprofits and foundations that it didn’t surprise me on Friday that many of the people who made so much happen these past few days needed a break. All day long, I received out-of-office messages — including many from people whose entire organizations are closed all of next week. So here’s a summary of some key things that you need to know — and there is so much I am glad you will have a lot of time to spread out reading that will inform and inspire.

The Supreme Court blocked state regulators’ efforts to seek more information about charity donors. In a case involving a California law, the court ruled on Thursday that regulators had overstepped in asking charities to provide the names of their donors. The ruling divided the nonprofit world. The California Association of Nonprofits said on Thursday that “we are deeply concerned that this unprecedented finding will put a serious damper on the ability of the Attorney General to regulate our sector — to the detriment of hundreds of thousands of mission-driven nonprofits doing vital work in our communities.” But others are relieved, report Dan Parks and Michael Theis. “The Supreme Court’s decision protects philanthropic freedom and strengthens the ability of all Americans to give to causes they believe in without fear of retaliation,” said Elise Westhoff, chief executive of the Philanthropy Roundtable.

Background reading: Donor Privacy Case Before the Supreme Court Is a Threat to Nonprofit Transparency (Opinion)

More philanthropic money is pouring into efforts that help women gain equality. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it is putting $2.1 billion into programs that focus on women’s economic empowerment, family planning and health, and expanding women’s access to leadership positions, report Alex Daniels and Maria Di Mento.

Meanwhile, the Ford Foundation said Wednesday that it will award $420 million to nonprofits that advance women’s equity around the world and seek to fix problems exacerbated by Covid-19, including the rise in violence against women. Haleluya Hadero, our colleague at the Associated Press, talked to Darren Walker about what’s behind the plan.

Background reading: Embracing Feminism Can Change Philanthropy and Create a More Equitable World (Opinion)

Here’s What Else You Need to Know

Olivier Douliery, AFP, Getty Images

Nearly 400 big foundations, nonprofit leaders, and activists have joined forces to urge grant makers to dedicate more money to funds with close ties to people of color. The campaign got started when 31 nonprofit leaders of color published an open letter about racial-justice giving and officials from large grant makers such as Ford, Kellogg, and Hewlett wanted to join in, Jim Rendon reports. Hilary Pennington, a top official at Ford said she hoped the campaign would help ensure that philanthropy’s attention to racial-justice efforts doesn’t fade. “It would be a terrible mistake for big, mostly white-led foundations to only go it alone,” she says. “They can have so much more impact by working with and learning from the people of color-led movement and accountable public foundations. There’s no better way to do this work than that.”

Donor-advised-fund dollars are not necessarily going out the door very fast. A study of Michigan community foundations shed new light on the debate over a new Senate measure designed to give incentives to donors who send dollars to charities quickly. The study is one of the first to look account by account at the funds, and it found that the majority either sent nothing to charity in a given year or distributed less than 5 percent. John Arnold, a leading force behind the Senate measure, told Michael Theis the findings show “there are too many DAF accounts that have received a tax benefit and are not distributing resources into the community.” But some analysts say the study doesn’t necessarily give a full view of what is happening.

Background reading: Coalitions of Foundations and Donors Line Up to Oppose New Senate Measure to Speed Up Giving

Give mental health a high priority in deciding how employees should return to the office. That’s the key advice Lisa Schohl found when she surveyed nonprofit and workplace efforts on the best approaches for reopening. Plus, a new spot check shows that half of nonprofits do not plan to require employees to be vaccinated before they return, Michael Theis reports.

A debate over salary disclosures in job ads heats up. A guest essay we published last week from Vincent Robinson, an executive recruiter, said efforts to force disclosure of salaries in job ads were inadvertently hurting the women and people of color they were designed to help, prompting widespread opposition from letter writers, including Liz LeClair, head of the Women’s Impact Initiative at the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Lauren Janus, chief operating officer at Phila Engaged Giving, wrote that nonprofits won’t succeed in advancing equity unless they are “honest with employees about what an organization can afford to spend on a valued role and actively encouraging qualified women, people of color, and other traditionally underpaid professionals to apply. This means clearly publishing the salaries for all nonprofit positions, no matter how high.”

All of us at the Chronicle appreciate the debate that Robinson’s essay sparked, and we are always eager to publish first-person accounts from people like Janus.

For another first-person view that is essential reading, I urge you take some time with an article by Erik Stegman, executive director of Native Americans in Philanthropy. He writes about the need for philanthropy to help promote healing after the discovery of government-sanctioned boarding schools designed to obliterate Indigenous cultures. His own family suffered as a result of the horrific attacks, and Stegman’s essay is as poignant as the picture at the top of this newsletter, which commemorates the children who were lost.

Also worth reading in our summary of news from elsewhere: Innovations by nonprofits abound, including the spread of the “community fridge” movement and effort by two sisters and a small nonprofit to shape an approach to reparations that can spread nationally.

All of these important stories are what fuel our reporters and editors to provide you with great articles every day. But we are going to take the next week to recharge. Throughout the coming days we will post on philanthropy.com any important news that occurs, but you won’t see this newsletter again until July 19. We wish you wonderful summer reading days until then.

— Stacy Palmer

What We’re Reading Elsewhere

Here are some of the articles that attracted our attention in the past week. We provide these summaries every day in our free Philanthropy Today newsletter. (Sign up now.)

The Boy Scouts of America has agreed to a settlement worth $850 million for tens of thousands of men who say they were sexually abused as scouts. (Wall Street Journal — subscription)

As they divorce, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates seem set to throw themselves more deeply into causes that each of them has championed outside of their foundation. (Bloomberg)

Doctors without Borders said three of its workers were killed last week in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where atrocities have been reported amid clashes between government forces and local fighters. (Associated Press)

The “community fridge” movement, which came into its own during the pandemic, remains a lifeline for some neighborhoods as hunger rates creep back up. (Washington Post)

MacKenzie Scott’s recent multimillion-dollar gifts will allow dance companies that focus on works by people of color to hire people, fund scholarships, mount riskier productions, and, most of all, plan ahead. (New York Times)

Two sisters’ well-kept financial records helped launch a grant program that could become a model for reparations. (Washington Post)