Philanthropy Today

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From senior editor Drew Lindsay: Conrad von Moltke’s AmeriCorps team was doing work all over the country when the Trump administration eliminated its funding.

In Ahwahnee, Calif., they built cabins at a summer camp for kids and adults with mental and physical disabilities. Following Hurricane Helene, they helped distribute emergency aid and clean up debris in North Carolina. They had recently finished a stint repairing affordable housing in a gentrifying neighborhood in Portland, Ore. When word of the cuts reached von Moltke, 24, and his eight-member crew, they were sent home.

These are the kinds of cuts that nonprofits, community-service programs, schools, and others are absorbing as the Trump administration executes its plan to dismantle AmeriCorps, reports Eden Stiffman for The Commons. Organizations that rely on the 32-year-old federal program for support and staff include giants like Habitat for Humanity but also local and faith-based groups that rely on corps members to deliver their programs.

Advocates also fear the cuts will erode the values of community and service that are a source of national unity. “We’re losing a sense of idealism that we’re all trying to work together to make the country better,” said Catherine Milton, the first executive director of AmeriCorps’s predecessor, the Commission on National and Community Service.

Read Eden’s piece for a good look at what America could lose if AmeriCorps shutters.

Big Philanthropy vs. the ‘Big We’

The large foundations and mega-donors known as Big Philanthropy do as much to divide America as unite it, says Hali Lee, founder of the Asian Women Giving Circle and co-founder of the Donors of Color Network. It’s the charitable actions of average Americans — through mutual aid, volunteering, and giving circles — that can knit us back together. That’s Lee’s argument in her new book The Big We: How Giving Circles Unlock Generosity, Strengthen Community, and Make Change.

Join Lee on Tuesday, May 20, at 12:30 p.m. ET when she’ll talk to Chronicle of Philanthropy deputy opinion editor Nandita Raghuram about how a communal approach to philanthropy can help bring people together amid rising loneliness and polarization.

Register here for this free event.

Of the Moment

News and other noteworthy items:

• Sol Erdman — a conflict-resolution expert, former Wall Street executive, and founder of the new Grand Bargain Project — joined the Great Battlefield podcast to discuss how the organization aims to unite Americans on core issues such as economic opportunity and growth. “Expecting a two-party system to function and produce consensus results,” Erdman said, “is like putting two prizefighters in a ring and telling the one who knocks the other out that you’re gonna get a million dollars and expecting them to waltz.”
  
• In Public Discourse, Stephen Matter of the Jack Miller Center praises the growing number of schools of “civic thought” at universities such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Florida. “These institutions have prompted criticism from media outlets seeking to expose their supposedly partisan character and their allegedly obscure Western-minded curriculum,” Matter writes. “In response to these claims, defenders have argued that this is instead a renaissance of civic thought and a good-faith effort to return higher education to standards of excellence that all Americans should embrace.”
  
• Reimagining the Civic Commons — the decade-old funder collaborative that invests in parks, community centers, and other public places as key ingredients of civic health — writes about four cities that see upkeep and maintenance of those spaces as key to building trust. “People lose faith in civic ideals if those investments in the public realm are neglected and poorly maintained — and conversely research shows well-maintained spaces can promote trust and feelings of stewardship and safety,” it notes in an article on Medium. The four cities are: Camden, N.J.; Cincinnati; Lexington, Ky.; and San Jose, Calif.