Baker plan aims to “bring our neighborhoods back” (Gazette): “Six Prince George’s County communities will get some extra attention from the county government, as officials believe assisting the areas will help cut down on crime and improve economic development. Department leaders from the county executive’s administration will lead Transforming Neighborhoods Initiative in six areas: East Riverdale/Bladensburg, Glassmanor, Hillcrest Heights/Marlow Heights, Kentland/Palmer Park, Langley Park, and Suitland/Coral Hills. CE Rushern L. Baker said that the program “would provide a holistic approach utilizing county services […] to aid some of the county’s most vulnerable communities.”
Tag Archives: Nonprofit Sector
The Arts Work
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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Jobs Growing
From The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
Nonprofits 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, according to a new study.
Even during the recession years of 2008 and 2009, charities increased their employment by nearly 2 percent, while for-profit jobs declined by nearly 4 percent, according to the report, which was based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
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Getting To Know You
Applications are now open for the 2012/2013 Catalogue for Philanthropy and due on February 13 at midnight. So let’s talk details:
Who is eligible? We try to keep the process as open as possible to a wide range of nonprofits. You just need to be a 501(c)3 organization, operating in the Washington region, with a budget below $3 million. That’s about it. And if you were featured in the 2008/2009 print Catalogue and earlier, you can apply for it again this year.
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Resolving for 2012
I tend to be a bit skeptical of New Year’s resolutions, since (for no other reason) the first day of the second month of winter feels like an odd time to restart engines or rethink strategies. Moreover, for many arts nonprofits, the new “year” actually starts in August or September. That said, rather than a time for a restart, maybe this is a good time just to pause, ponder, and reconsider. Which was the theme of many of these resolutions, compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Here are three that jumped out to me:
Stop referring to our industry by what we don?t do. Not-for-profit is a tax status, not an operating model. We are social-benefit organizations that produce significant value.
— Howard Kucher, executive director, the Evergreen Project
“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 …
DCPS needs more than money to attract top teachers (Greater Greater Washington): “DC Council Chairman Kwame Brown plans to draft a bill that focuses on recruiting teachers to teach in high-poverty, low-performing schools. However, the incentives he proposes may not be enough to recruit highly effective teachers to work in these schools […] In addition to monetary incentives to recruit teachers to low performing schools, districts must also motivate effective teachers to stay in these schools through other factors like strong school leadership, access to high-quality professional development, career mobility, and comprehensive induction for new teachers.” Do you agree? Are these intangible benefits in fact more effective in the long-term?
What Inspires You?
From yesterday’s “Inspiration to Action 2011” at the Harman Center for the Arts:
Here we are. YEAR NINE. To the 2011-12 charities featured in our new Catalogue and to those of you being re-featured on our website this year, it is truly an honor, and a pleasure, to see you here today. I hope you are already feeling inspired by what we are doing together. […] Here at the Catalogue we believe in the power of telling stories — and in the hard work that makes it possible for donors and volunteers to tap into the in-depth information and guidance that is the foundation of our work. We want people who read the Catalogue and visit us on the web, to explore their own philanthropic interests and find what matters to them — knowing that we have already done the hard work that makes meaningful personal choice possible.
— Barbara Harman, President, Catalogue for Philanthropy
Catalogue First: Journalism
We always like to celebrate a “first ever” for Catalogue!
From the American Journalism Review (October 21, 2011):
Investigative reporting remains a major part of the mission for the mainstream media. But financial pressures have drastically reduced the watchdog capacity at many news organizations.
Nonprofit investigative outlets like ProPublica have jumped in to help plug the gap. But there’s still plenty of accountability reporting to be done.
In The News …
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.