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Giving Today?

Still deciding about year-end giving? First, check out our “How To Give” section:

- You can donate easily to any Catalogue nonprofit or the Catalogue itself online. You can browse through the five nonprofit categories here and donate directly from any nonprofit’s page as you go.

- Just as easily, you can download a Giving Form here, make a list of charities and contribution amounts, and send one check to us. We’ll handle the rest!

Second, a good way to learn what your donation will mean to a particular nonprofit is to check out the Wish List:

- At Montgomery Countryside Alliance, $100 covers two Agricultural Reserve tours for elected officials and $500 covers 1 year of action alert emails.

- For Educacion Para Nuestro Futuro, $500 buys 10 textbooks for children learning English and $1000 provides a university field trip for 10 college-bound students and their parents.

- Or for Partner for Surgery, $100 buys transportation and care for two patients post-surgery and $500 covers pre-surgical nutrition support for children with cleft palates.

In other words, gifts of all sizes can make a major difference for these high-impact nonprofits. So consider spending a part of New Year’s Eve day getting to know all of them and helping them better our communities. They are amazingly good at it!

In The News …

Regional jobless rates fall in November (Washington Post): “Steady private sector growth drove down the unemployment rates in the District, Maryland, and Virginia for the second consecutive month in November, according to a US Labor Department report released Tuesday. The data showed that the District’s unemployment rate dropped to 10.6 from 11 percent the month before, fueled mainly by gains in the professional and business services sector and in education and health.” Virginia’s jobless level fell 0.2 percent (from 6.4 to 6.2), while Maryland’s dropped 0.3 percent (from 7.2 to 6.9).

Leadership needed to extend DC school day (Greater Greater Washington): “Both the Washington Teachers’ Union and DC Council agree that DCPS should likewise increase teachers’ time on task, but no one is showing needed leadership to make it happen [...] The innovation that is perhaps most common in successful charter schools, according to a new research study, is an extended school day. On a comprehensive ranking of public charter schools by educational outcomes released by the DC Charter School Board, all of the top performing charter middle schools have school days longer than the 6.5 hour DCPS school day.” Do you agree? If so, what is needed to drive such a change?

Americans Are Most Generous, Global Poll Finds (Chronicle of Philanthropy): “Americans give more to help others than the residents of 152 other countries, according to a new global survey. That’s a big change from last year, when the United States ranked No. 5. people whether they had donated money to a charity, volunteered their time, or helped a stranger in the previous month.” Ireland and Australia closely followed the United States in the rankings, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand tied for fourth position.

Esperanza

She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, born today in 1954

And in this spirit, learn more about our literacy charities right here.

20 Year Goal

Monday morning food for thought from Martha Ross of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, via WAMU 88.5:

The city should commit to an ambitious goal: by 2022, 90 percent of DC’s young people will earn a post-secondary credential and obtain full-time work by the age of 24. Such a shared goal would have a cascading effect, and require partners in the public, private and social sectors to re-think and re-orient their standard operating procedures [...] Building and expanding such programs will be a complex, multi-year project, but it’s not out of our reach. In fact, city leaders have already taken a number of steps. They created a community college, revitalized the Workforce Investment Council, and are developing an intermediary to better match residents with job openings. These steps are necessary but not sufficient. We must do more.

What do you think? Is such a goal achievable? And what might be the first steps for us, in the nonprofit sector?

Around Town: December 17-18

Still making weekend plans? First, we suggest that you check out the awesome City Paper feature on our 2011/2012 nonprofits — very cool. Second, we have some indoor & outdoor events coming right up …

The Child and Family Network Centers (116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria)

Tea with Santa at the Morrison House on Sunday at noon! Kids will also enjoy holiday crafts and story time. Purchase tickets, and support CFNC, right here.

Dance Place (3225 8th Street NE, Washington)

Usher in the holiday season with Dance Place’s annual Kwanzaa Celebration, featuring Coyaba Academy, Coyaba Dance Theater, and special guests to celebrate the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Performances throughout the weekend; learn more here.

Continue reading

“Give It Up” Is Up …

… and we couldn’t be more psyched to see our seventy 2011/2012 nonprofits as the feature of this week’s issues of the Washington City Paper:

[...] Ordinarily, we’d sit around grousing about holiday materialism before schlepping out to pick up stocking stuffers. But this season, we decided to do something different.

For the better part of a decade, the Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington has been vetting top local nonprofits to include in its annual giving guide. The process, which takes about six months, involves selecting 70 organizations with budgets under $3 million and rock-solid financial and organizational structures. The vetting is conducted by expert volunteers from the nonproft sector as well as by accountants from the auditing firm RAFFA. Traditionally, the Catalogue has bound its list into a book and distributed thousands of copies to “high net worth individuals” in the area. This year, we’ve worked with the organization to highlight its list in our pages, with the idea that you don’t have to be rich to want to give a little.

Read the full piece here (or hurry to the nearest City Paper box!), and get an awesome glimpse into our newest nonprofits. We’ve also highlighted volunteer opportunities, so you can give with time or money this season.

In The News …

Little known about DC’s young homeless, except that numbers are growing (Washington Post): “Though relatively little else is known about them, the number of homeless youths in the District has jumped, according to numbers released Tuesday by the National Center of Family Homelessness [...] In 2010, 4,309 children were found to be without stable housing in a city where 27% of households pay more than 50% of their income for rent.” According to the State Report Card on Child Homelessness, “Virginia and Maryland ranked 18th and 22nd for risk for homelessness;” and the DC Alliance of Youth Advocates finds that a growing number of homeless individuals are also parents under the age of 24.

Foundation Funding for Hispanics/Latinos (Philanthropy News Digest: PhilanTopic): “Our colleagues here in the Research Department have just released a new report that examines foundation giving to Hispanics in the U.S. and for Latin America over the last decade [...] Foundation Funding for Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and for Latin America found that over the past decade, U.S. foundation giving intended to benefit Latinos remained steady at about 1% of total foundation giving, even as the Latino population in the US grew significantly.” The report, which gave particular focus to the 2007-2009 period, also found that the greater Los Angeles area received the largest share of both grant dollars (17%) and grants (13%) of any US metropolitan area in that time.

Theaters’ Fiscal Outlook Improves Slightly (Chronicle of Philanthropy): “The latest round of an annual survey of nonprofit theaters’ finances offers some optimism [...] Theater Facts 2010, compiled by grant-making and advocacy outfit the Theater Communications Group, found total assets, including box office, gifts, and endowment earnings, exceeded expenses last year for the 113 organizations that have participated in the study for each of the last five years.” TCG head Teresa Eyring points out that rising attendance, at readings and workshops as well as full productions, also “bodes well for the health of theater overall.”

21 (Nonprofit) Questions

Ever wondered about your 501(c)3 IQ? Test your knowledge of all things nonprofit with this quiz from the Wall Street Journal. A few good sample questions:

1. The Urban Institute says volunteering can be just as important as cash or goods for many nonprofits. What percentage of American adults volunteered for or through an organization in 2010?

A. 5%
B. 14%
C. 26%
D. 32%

17. Which community foundation gave away more than $183 million in 2009, making it the largest community foundation that year in terms of giving?

A. New York Community Trust
B. Silicon Valley Community Foundation
C. Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
D. Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

21. Charities, of course, vary in size by both revenues and assets. But one sector was by far the largest in 2009, garnering 60% of revenues and holding 41% of assets. Which sector was that?

A. Education
B. Health
C. Arts, culture and humanities
D. Public and social benefit

(Answers: 1 – C, 17 – D, 21 – B. Take the whole quiz here. How did you do?)

As Justice

You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind.

I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice [...] I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — And I will be heard.

– abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison, born today in 1805