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Every week Connections presents fresh links to the best the Web has to offer on issues related to the changing world of philanthropy. Subscribe to our biweekly Connections newsletter and receive two weeks' worth of links delivered to you by e-mail. If you have an item you'd like to share, drop us a line at connections@foundationcenter.org.
February 7, 2010
Health
Connections - Coming Out of Crisis: Patient Experiences in Primary Care in New Orleans, Four Years Post-Katrina
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one hospital that had been a key healthcare provider for uninsured, low-income residents of New Orleans was closed for more than a year, while another remains closed. The Commonwealth Fund has issued a new report, Coming Out of Crisis: Patient Experiences in Primary Care in New Orleans, Four Years Post-Katrina (49 pages, PDF), that examines the primary care network which has emerged in the city. Comprised of nearly a hundred independent neighborhood primary care clinics funded with federal, state, and local money, the report presents the ad hoc result as a potential model for delivering primary care to vulnerable populations elsewhere. Indeed, in a survey of clinic patients, most respondents said they had easy access to primary and preventive care, helpful communication with clinic staff, and good management of their chronic illnesses. Most patients also said they were not deterred by cost when they needed care.
February 4, 2010
Community Improvement/Development
Connections - Does Broadband Boost Local Economic Development?
A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California assesses whether policies designed to increase broadband availability — especially to unserved and underserved communities — contribute to local economic development. Funded by the David A. Coulter Family Foundation, the report, Does Broadband Boost Local Economic Development? (36 pages, PDF), found that between 1999 and 2006 there was a positive relationship between broadband expansion and employment growth across the country, especially in industries that rely heavily on information technology and in areas with lower population densities. At the same time, the local economic development benefits of broadband expansion appear to be mixed, with the average wage, overall employment rate, and prevalence of telecommuting and other home-based work unaffected by broadband expansion.
February 1, 2010
Education
The Shifting Gears Approach to Systems Change
In 2007, the Joyce Foundation launched its Shifting Gears initiative with the goal of strengthening postsecondary and adult basic education in five states (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) so that more low-skilled workers could acquire the skills, education, and credentials needed to advance and succeed in a changing economy. The foundation's report on the initiative, The Shifting Gears Approach to Systems Change (24 pages, PDF), found that although systems change can be daunting, it is achievable with a well-defined vision and clearly articulated plan of action; multiple types of policy change may be needed to achieve such reform; and proactive coaching and formative evaluation are critical to the success of the approach. A follow-up report will be issued in 2011.
January 29, 2010
Civil and Human Rights
Connections - Business of Change: A Resource Guide for Corporate-Nonprofit Collaboration
The Gill Foundation has issued a resource guide to help nonprofits that promote LGBT equality secure corporate partnerships that complement their existing individual and foundation support. Business of Change: A Resource Guide for Corporate-Nonprofit Collaboration (109 pages, PDF) offers best practices for promoting corporate investment in LGBT-focused nonprofits as well as case studies of existing corporate-nonprofit partnerships. Before approaching a company about a partnership, the guide recommends that nonprofits consider several things, including the creation of guidelines to ensure that partners' missions, vision, and objectives are aligned and whether it is willing to co-brand aspects of the relationship.
January 26, 2010
Disaster Relief
Moving to Higher Ground: Potential Roles for Philanthropy in Helping Washington's Communities Cope With Disasters
Following major flooding in Lewis County and Southwest Washington in December 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates and Seattle foundations and the United Way of King County launched the Statewide Disaster Preparedness Assessment for the Philanthropic Sector in Washington. The final report to come out of that initiative, Moving to Higher Ground: Potential Roles for Philanthropy in Helping Washington's Communities Cope With Disasters (72 pages, PDF), finds that although the level of preparedness and the ability to respond to disasters had improved in Washington State over the past two decades, the majority of the state's families, individuals, and businesses were still not fully prepared for emergencies and vulnerable populations continued to be disproportionately affected in every stage of a disaster. Among other things, the report recommends that funders establish systems which make emergency resources available in a more timely manner and work with community organizations to design more effective disaster management plans for vulnerable communities.
January 23, 2010
Philanthropy and Voluntarism
Nonprofits and Recessions: New Data From Maryland
According to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, nonprofit employment in Maryland increased by 2.7 percent in 2008, while for-profit employment fell by 3.3 percent. The report, Nonprofits and Recessions: New Data From Maryland (8 pages, PDF), seems to confirm an earlier finding by Johns Hopkins researchers that nonprofits are a counter-cyclical force in the economy, in that they tend to add workers in the early months of a recession. In Maryland at least, the nonprofit workforce increased to 256,618 by the end of 2008, representing 12.5 percent of private-sector jobs and 10.1 percent of all jobs in the state, making the nonprofit sector the second-largest employer in the state, behind retail trade.
January 20, 2010
Public Affairs
Addressing the Foreclosure Crisis: Action-Oriented Research in Three Cities
The Urban Institute has issued a final report on its National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a one-year effort to explore whether institutions could, in a relatively short time, acquire and utilize neighborhood-level data to influence local policy related to the foreclosure crisis. Funded by Fannie Mae, the report, Addressing the Foreclosure Crisis: Action-Oriented Research in Three Cities (46 pages, PDF), found that NNIP partners in Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., were successful in assembling and analyzing relevant data and using the data to engage key decision makers in promising new activities to address the problem of foreclosures. However, because foreclosures are difficult to address when approached jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction, the report makes the case for providing support to both local data intermediaries and institutions that can put the data to good use at a national level.
January 17, 2010
Hispanics/Latinos
Connections - Latinos Online, 2006-2008: Narrowing the Gap
According to a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center, Internet use among Latino adults rose 10 percent between 2006 and 2008 — from 54 percent to 64 percent — compared to a 4 percent increase for whites. Based on surveys conducted by the center and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the report, Latinos Online, 2006-2008: Narrowing the Gap (17 pages, PDF), found that foreign-born Latinos, Latinos with less than a high school education, and Latinos with household incomes of less than $30,000 — all groups that historically have had low rates of Internet use — experienced particularly large increases in Internet use over the study period. At the same time, the pattern of home Internet access changed very little; in 2008, for example, 81 percent of Latinos who were online had Internet access at home, compared to 79 percent in 2006.
January 14, 2010
Education
Evaluation of the School Administration Manager Project
The Wallace Foundation has issued an analysis of its School Administration Manager (SAM) project, which works to help principals delegate some of their administrative and managerial tasks so they can spend more time interacting with teachers, students, and others on instructional matters. Conducted by Policy Studies Associates, the Evaluation of the School Administration Manager Project (150 pages, PDF) found that the project's approach, which was implemented in thirty-seven districts in nine states, can increase the amount of time principals devote to instruction each week. Indeed, principals who delegated five time-consuming responsibilities to SAMs significantly increased their time spent on instruction. Only rarely, however, did principals select a set of high-level leadership activities that would serve specific purposes in instructional improvement.
January 11, 2010
Health
Addressing Colorado's Primary Care Provider Shortage
The Colorado Health Professions Workforce Policy Collaborative, which is made up of thirty regional organizations and is funded by the Colorado Trust, has issued a report aimed at informing policy makers, healthcare professionals, workforce experts, educators, and the general public about the primary care provider shortage in the state. The report, Addressing Colorado's Primary Care Provider Shortage (23 pages, PDF), cites data from the Colorado Health Institute, which found that by 2025 the state will need an additional 2,200 primary care providers beyond the anticipated supply. Without such an expansion of its primary care provider workforce, the state will suffer adverse effects in local economies as well as in the overall health of its residents and their access to health care. In the short term, the report recommends a number of immediate policy interventions, including adequate reimbursement for primary care providers, increased public funding for health profession education programs, and policies designed to increase the number of clinical experiences and residencies.
January 8, 2010
Philanthropy and Voluntarism
Funder Collaboratives: Why and How Funders Work Together
A new guide from GrantCraft, a project of the Ford Foundation, offers information from foundation leaders on the advantages and challenges of funder collaboratives for donors and grantees, how successful joint ventures work, and how to get started. The guide, Funder Collaboratives: Why and How Funders Work Together (30 pages, PDF), also provides case studies of three funder collaboratives; offers recommendations for building strong relationships, structuring a collaborative to fit its purpose, and assessing a collaborative to ensure its effectiveness; and makes the case that funder collaboratives are bringing non-funders — grantees, intended beneficiaries, experts, and others — into the grantmaking process.
January 5, 2010
Civil Society
New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization
The James Irvine Foundation has issued the third and final report in its California Votes Initiative, which has been working since 2006 to increase voter participation rates among infrequent voters, especially in the state's low-income and ethnic communities. The report, New Experiments in Minority Voter Mobilization (20 pages, PDF), examines the effects of specific approaches such as canvassing and phone calls, as well as the long-term effects of voter mobilization on voter attitudes toward politics and political engagement. It also identifies five practices organizations can use to increase turnout: making follow-up phone calls to self-identified likely voters; improving canvasser training and supervision; recruiting canvassers who are familiar with targeted voters; visiting or calling voters within four weeks of an election; and increasing live, personal contact between canvassers and voters.
January 2, 2010
Children and Youth
Why Are Young Children Missed So Often in the Census?
A new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count initiative finds that more than a million young children under the age of 10 and more than 750,000 children under the age of 5 went uncounted in the 2000 census. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's demographic analysis, the report, Why Are Young Children Missed So Often in the Census? (20 pages, PDF), found that children under the age of 5 are missed in the census more than any other age group. Possible explanations include the fact that young children are more likely than adults to live in rental units and to have large, mobile, or complex families — all of which historically have been difficult to count. The report predicts that achieving an accurate count of children in 2010 may be even more difficult than in the past due to the increased number of children living in unusual housing situations and the growing number of racial and ethnic minority households, which historically also have been difficult to count.
December 30, 2009
Education
Student Debt and the Class of 2008
College seniors who graduated in 2008 carried record amounts of student debt while being faced with soaring unemployment rates, according to a new report from the Project on Student Debt. The report, Student Debt and the Class of 2008 (12 pages, PDF), found that 2008 graduates carried an average of $23,200 in student loan debt, while unemployment for college graduates aged 20-24 climbed from an already challenging 7.6 percent in the third quarter of 2008 to 10.6 percent in 2009 — the highest third-quarter rate for this cohort during the decade. Students in the District of Columbia and Iowa graduated with the highest average debt levels — $29,793 and $28,174, respectively — while students in Utah had the lowest average debt at $13,041.
December 27, 2009
Philanthropy and Voluntarism
What Helps Leaders Grow: Highlights From the Fund for Leadership Advancement
The James Irvine Foundation has issued a report that shares lessons learned from an initiative that was designed to improve the leadership abilities of executive directors at selected Irvine grantees. Based on an evaluation of twenty grantees conducted by BTW, a strategic consulting firm based in Berkeley, the report, What Helps Leaders Grow: Highlights From the Fund for Leadership Advancement (19 pages, PDF), found that relatively small investments in leadership can yield important gains in organizational effectiveness. Overall, the initiative's approach, which included executive coaching and consulting on organizational development, was found to be effective, though some areas for improvement, including the complexities of leadership turnover and shared leadership, were identified.
December 24, 2009
Health
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Care Consumer Confidence Index
After a sharp rise in October, consumer confidence in their health care fell last month to levels closer to those seen throughout most of 2009, according to the latest Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Care Consumer Confidence Index (19 pages, PDF). The monthly index fell from 104.4 points in October to 96.9 points in November; since the index was launched in April, the average reading has been 99.2 points. On average this year, 81.7 percent of Americans said they believed it was important that the Obama administration include health reform in its plans to fix the ailing economy, 44.4 percent reported being concerned about their ability to afford routine care in the future, and 26.7 percent said they were concerned that medical bills would bankrupt them.
December 21, 2009
Arts and Culture
2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts
According to a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly 35 percent of Americans (some 78 million) attended an arts performance during 2008 — down from about 40 percent in 1982, 1992, and 2002. Conducted in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (104 pages, PDF) is based on responses to an arts engagement survey of more than 18,000 adults in the United States. Among other things, the report found that Americans are engaging with the arts through new media, with 47 million adults saying they went online to download, watch, or listen to music, theater, or dance performances in 2008 and most respondents saying they did so at least once a week. Individuals who participate in the arts are also two to three times as likely as non-arts participants to engage in positive civic and individual activities such as volunteering, attending sporting events, and participating in outdoor activities.
December 18, 2009
Education
The Status of the Teaching Profession 2009
Many California high school teachers lack the preparation, skills, and support they need to help their students learn, a new report from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning finds. Based on a survey by SRI International, the report, The Status of the Teaching Profession 2009 (150 pages, PDF), found that just 68 percent of the state's high school principals believed that a substantial majority of their teachers (at least two-thirds) had the pedagogical skills to promote critical thinking and problem solving or the interpersonal skills needed to connect with students. The rate varied widely by school poverty level, with 78 percent of principals in the state's most affluent high schools reporting that a substantial majority of their teachers had such skills, compared to 48 percent of principals in the state's least affluent schools.
December 15, 2009
Philanthropy and Voluntarism
All Volunteer Force: From Military to Civilian Service
According to a new report from Civic Enterprises, an overwhelming majority of soldiers who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan would like to volunteer when they return from their tours of duty, but many of them feel disconnected from the communities they return to. Funded by Target and the Case Foundation, the report, All Volunteer Force: From Military to Civilian Service (44 pages, PDF), found that 89 percent of veterans said other Americans could learn something from their example of service, though only half considered themselves leaders in their communities as a result of their military service. At the same time, 69 percent of veterans said they had not been contacted by a community institution, local nonprofit, or place of worship after they returned home and roughly the same percentage said they did not have enough information about meaningful service opportunities.
December 12, 2009
Public Affairs
Fiscal Haiku
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation has launched a Fiscal Haiku project to encourage individuals to express their thoughts and concerns about the state of America's finances in the familiar seventeen-syllable haiku form. Visitors to the site can read, rate, and/or submit their own, like this one: "Basic principle / We can't spend what we don't have / We have lost our way." New submissions can also be tracked via the project's Twitter and Facebook feeds.
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