Objections to Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (WAMU: Diane Rehm Show): “The widely praised Violence Against Women Act faces a tough reauthorization battle. Though introduced in a bipartisan way, it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote with all the Democrats voting to move it to the full Senate and all the Republicans voting against.” Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, explains that the bill “as passed out of the Senate committee, recognizes the LGBT community [and] immigrant women who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse;” but the bill does not include a “mandate for holding batterers accountable” or a reparations provision. 17 CFP nonprofits, including the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, focus particularly on girls and women and women; learn more right here.

President Obama’s Budget Request for the NEA: The Fine Print (Americans for the Arts blog): “We learned early that morning that President Obama is proposing an increase of $8 million (from $146M to $154M) for the NEA, which was a very positive start. In the past two years, NEA funding has dropped almost $22M and has yet to recover from the enormous cuts from its high of $176M in 1992. In particular, the budget of the Our Town program, which rewarded over half of its grants to communities of less than 200,000 in 2011, would increase from $5 million to $10 million. Two months ago, the NEA also announced Operation Homecoming, a partnership with the Department of Defense that will host “a new series of writing workshops for returning troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.”

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How Many Students Really Graduate From High School? (WAMU): “Now, for the first time, the federal government is requiring states to follow a standardized method. As a result, DC’s public school graduation rate could drop by about 20 percent under the new calculation, according to the office of the state superintendent [...] The new method, called the adjusted graduation cohort rate, requires states to follow every individual child from the ninth grade on until he or she walks across the stage to receive that diploma. It takes into account students who change schools and get held back.” A new State Longitudinal Education Database will track each DCPS student from kindergarten through 12th grade through a special identification number. Could a more accurate picture of graduation rates be a critical step towards improving them?

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Last week, we linked to this Chronicle of Philanthropy piece, which reported that the nonprofit sector “added jobs at an average annual rate of more than 2 percent from 2000 to 2010, while for-profit jobs were cut by 0.6 percent each year on average.” Drawn from a study by the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, these findings invite the question: if nonprofit organizations are indeed the third largest private employer in the country, should more job training programs prepare employees to work at them? More broadly, why do nature and arts and human services nonprofits not play a larger role in the national employment discussion?

In “Putting Americans to Work,” published on the Huffington Post yesterday, Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser tackles a similar topic:

But at a time when unemployment is the key political issue and when virtually everyone in politics is struggling to find ways to reduce the ranks of the unemployed, why doesn’t some smart politician realize that the arts are one way to help solve this problem?

Who better to train young people to think creatively, to exercise their own unique ways of thinking than we in the arts? The success of arts organizations and artists depends on the ability of people to be creative and make something new.
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“The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.”

– President Lyndon B. Johnson

In 1961, the 23rd amendment was ratified, assuring the District of Columbia the same number of electoral votes granted to the least populous state. Today, in 1964, DC residents were able to vote in a presidential election for the first time.

Interested in learning more about District voting rights and enhancing advocacy efforts in Congress? Today is a great time to check out CFP non-profit, DC Vote.

Obama’s Jobs Bill: Ready to Take a Chance Again? (Nonprofit Quarterly): Wondering “which parts of the president’s plan are most relevant to nonprofits, and what effect are they likely to have on the sector?” NPQ’s intricate piece walks through both the President’s “track record on nonprofits” and six points of interest to nonprofits in the jobs bill (#4: “Are there any parts of the American Jobs Act that appear to take advantage of the unique skill sets and missions of nonprofits?”), and concludes that “the American Jobs Act must do a better job than ARRA did in involving and including nonprofits of all stripes in its implementation.”

How do we make cities greener? Start by growing smarter?(Greater Greater Washington): Continuing on the green cities theme of yesterday’s article, check out this post on GGW: “a fixed set of people is more sustainable the fewer acres they collectively use. At one point, some viewed the ideal sustainable lifestyle as one where a small bubble of trees and grass surrounds each household. But instead, that just means a lot of heating and cooling energy is wasted to that bubble, and we spend far more energy moving among them [...] The way we grow in the future is likely to be the most significant factor in how sustainable a region we have for generations to come.”

Washington economy grows 3.6% (Washington Business Journal): “Washington’s gross domestic product grew 3.6 percent in 2010, reaching $425.2 billion, the fourth-largest metropolitan economy in the nation. Washington also ranks as the third-fastest growing metropolitan economy” behind Boston and New York. For some additional positive news, metropolitan economies across the country grew in size by 2.5% in the past year, whereas they declined by that same percentage in the previous year.

So who is “connected” — digitally, that is– and who is less so? According to a new report from the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University:

People who live in the Washington, DC, region are pretty well connected when it comes to high-speed Internet service — but there are still large swaths of the population that are unwilling or too financially strapped to plug in.

Having a low income is the most consistent trait among non-adopters, while Hispanics and rural residents are also less likely to be broadband subscribers, according to a four-month study of government data by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

The data show that in the DC region and elsewhere, the debate over the “digital divide” has become less about access to broadband and more about the far-stickier issue of affordability. The District ranks 17th out of 29 counties and cities in the region for residential broadband adoption. The most connected areas, like Fairfax County, VA, are also among the wealthiest. Read all »

BREAKING NEWS!

The Catalogue for Philanthropy Class of 2011-2012 has been selected! Check out our 70 new and re-listed charities, as well as those who have been “re-certified” to remain on the web. (Several of whom have grown so much in the past few years that their budget renders them too large for the print catalogue!) Check them out right here. Congratulations!

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Welcome to Wednesday! Here comes a sample of non-profit news …

Reactions to the demise of the Kansas Arts Commission — As you likely have read, Gov. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) vetoed funding for the Kansas Arts Commission over Memorial Days weekend. An override was unsuccessful. But Create Equity does find something of a silver lining: “this controversy has revealed genuine, broad-based public support for funding the arts … the dogfight over the Arts Commission was the top story on the Topeka Capital-Journal’s website. I don’t mean it was on the front page, I mean it was the #1 story in all of Kansas.” In other words, arts have real political power. Maybe more than imagined.

The Giving Pledge Goes Hollywood — Inspired by Bill & Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, “Laurence Fishburne, Kim Kardashian, Richard Gere, Ricky Martin, and Justin Bieber, have joined dozens of other entertainers and sports figures … to use their fame to promote their favorite charities and encourage their fans to donate time and money.” While celebrities directing their star power towards charitable causes certainly deserves acclaim, will interest in the cause or the celebrity be the driving force behind donations from fans? Interesting discussion topic …

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Welcome to Wednesday, folks.

First, to address the questions that are arising both in the wake of the President’s budget proposal and from the debate to come, do check out yesterday’s coverage at Chronicle of Philanthropyand in the Nonprofit Quarterly. The former takes a more level approach, pointing out that “the news wasn’t all bad. The president proposed adding money, for example, to programs to help homeless people and provide rental assistance to low-income families.” The latter then offers a partial “list of program terminations and reductions … tucked into one of the supplemental volumes” of the President’s proposal and concludes that his “middle-of-the road … strategy might be part of the reality that nonprofits have to address.” In terms of indirect effects, the plan also “proposes limiting the value of itemized deductions for the better off [such that] deductions could only be claimed against a 28% rate.”

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What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea — the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That’s why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here. It’s why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can’t just stand still.

– President Obama, State of the Union 2011

‘Tis the day for mid-week news and notes… And let us know if you have anything to share with the CFP crowd!

How to Find Generous Donors — Just before 2011, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported on three new giving studies, conducted by Blackbaud, Network for Good, and the Daily Beast. Their findings? Our area stacks up quite well! In the Blackbaud study, DC and Maryland ranked #1 and #2 respectively for the number of donors with incomes over $100K. And Network for Good reported that DC is #1 and Virginia #8 in average giving per household.

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