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From: Marilyn Dickey
Subject: Fighting Antisemitism; and 2 Windfalls for a Small Nonprofit
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“What’s going on in America today is similar to what went on in Nazi Germany in the ‘30s.”
— Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots
Good morning.
According to one measure, antisemitic assault, harassment, and vandalism jumped 36 percent in 2022 over the previous year — the highest number of incidents ever recorded by the Anti-Defamation League, which started keeping track 44 years ago.
Among those appalled by the rise in hate-fueled violence is Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots football team and started the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019. “What’s going on in America today is similar to what went on in Nazi Germany in the ‘30s,” he told Maria Di Mento, who reported this week on efforts to drum up more support to fight antisemitism.
Other big donors are also backing anti-hate efforts, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder and former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, among them. But nonprofit leaders say much more is needed — and that wealthy donors, and the public in general, don’t recognize the threat antisemitism poses to American democracy and society as a whole or its connection to racism and other kinds of hate.
Eric Ward, an expert on extremist movements, wrote an influential essay on those connections six years ago and has been heartened by the continued response from leaders of anti-hate groups.
“We are in a stronger place,” he told Maria, “but the case has not yet been made to the American public at the scale and depth the American public deserves.”
Here’s what else you need to know:
The National Housing Trust, which raised just $2.2 million in 2021, provides grants and loans for affordable housing, owns 4,000 housing units, and has a reputation for innovation, writes Jim Rendon.
The $19 million from Amazon will be used for grants the Housing Trust will make to organizations that develop property for people with lower incomes to purchase. The $20 million will be used as a revolving loan fund to help develop affordable housing that can also be purchased.
But the National Housing Trust can use Scott’s $10 million gift any way it sees fit.
“The most amazing part to me is that it literally was a gift,’ Priya Jayachandran, the trust’'s CEO, told Jim. “There was no grant agreement, no reporting. For somebody sitting in my seat, that’s just like the golden ring.”
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The Climate Shift Index, whose creation was supported by the fund, uses sophisticated algorithms to determine how weather around the world is being altered by climate change, writes Jim Rendon. The fund also helps put that information into the hands of weather forecasters in an easy-to-use format that they can layer over their maps.
People often view climate change in the abstract, as something that affects polar bears and future sea level rises, said George Mason University’s Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Weather forecasters, who have almost a personal relationship with viewers, can show its relevance to their everyday lives, as when Canadian wildfires poured smoky air into the Northeast United States this summer.
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Salaries of top nonprofit executives have been rising, but not as much as inflation.
A new report by Candid shows median compensation climbing 3.2 percent in 2021 — the most recent figures available — while inflation climbed 4.7 percent, reports Drew Lindsay. That’s a far cry from the previous four years, when median compensation grew 6 percent when adjusted for inflation.
It’s likely that the hot job market, inflation, and the growing number of pay-transparency laws pushed salaries up in 2021.
The Candid report, which covered pay for 14 categories of top nonprofit officials, also found that median executive compensation at the biggest groups was $293,000 and at the smallest, $43,000.
After two years of historically large declines in the poverty rate, the share of Americans living in poverty made its largest single-year jump on record last year, thanks to rising prices and expiring pandemic aid programs. (New York Times)
The Center for Reproductive Rights is taking legal action against three states – Idaho, Tennessee, and Oklahoma -- where it says abortion bans have jeopardized care for pregnant people. (Washington Post)
Thanks to their explosive growth, donor-advised funds accounted for most of the public charities in the United States in 2021, the last year for which complete data is available. (Inequality.org).
A California nonprofit is creating “safe sleep villages” in a new approach to the state’s homelessness crisis. (Los Angeles Times)
Georgetown University and the Jesuits are giving $27 million to a fund for descendants of enslaved people whom the Jesuits sold off in 1838 to pay a debt the school owed. (Washington Post)
The Colorado Sun, an online newspaper, is going nonprofit five years after launching as a for-profit/nonprofit hybrid. (Nieman Lab)
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told CNN that the group has had to increase security since Elon Musk accused it of trying to undermine X, formerly known as Twitter. (CNN and Atlantic)
An anti-hunger campaign by the Michael Kors fashion house is marking 10 years of social-media appeals and merchandise sales that have raised about $7.5 million to feed children in the developing world. (New York Times)
Church attendance continues to decline, and more clergy are dissatisfied, while giving and volunteering are on the upswing, according to a new survey. (Religion News Service)
A Saudi-funded foundation that aims to pour up to $1 billion annually into anti-aging research has opened a North American hub in Boston. (Boston Globe)
Your Chronicle subscription includes free access to GrantStation’s database of grant opportunities.
Cybersecurity. The Kyndryl Foundation supports nonprofits that are expanding an inclusive cybersecurity work force, including support for organizations and programs that provide cybersecurity training and career support to underserved communities, and preparing nonprofits to be cyberattack-smart, including programs that train nonprofit employees to prevent cyberattacks and develop training materials. Preference goes to groups in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, New York, and Texas. Grants generally range from $100,000 to $250,000. The application deadline is November 6.
Legal help to advance justice. The Impact Fund provides grants to groups seeking to advance justice in civil and human rights, environmental justice, and poverty law. Most grants are for class actions, but funding has also been provided for multi-plaintiff and environmental justice cases that aim to significantly affect a larger system or lead to significant law reform. The grants may be used for out-of-pocket litigation expenses such as expert fees and discovery costs but not for attorneys’ fees, staff, or other overhead. Rapid response grants are also provided for urgent financial assistance of up to $10,000 for sudden out-of-pocket litigation expenses for public interest impact lawsuits. Grants generally range from $10,000 to $50,000. Letters of inquiry are due October 10.
