Residential households in the U.S. can order one set of 4 free at-home tests from USPS.com. Here’s what you need to know about your order:

For the last three weeks, I have been planning out this semester’s courses. I am teaching eight courses ranging from fully in-person to fully virtual but synchronous (using Zoom) to fully asynchronous and online with a combined hybrid approach mixed in. My goal is...

https://spencerauthor.com/strategic-confusion/

I’m in my hometown of Austin, Texas, riding in a golf cart with Alan Graham. He’s CEO and founder of Mobile Loaves & Fishes and he’s giving me a tour of this 51-acre master-planned community. It’s called Community First!

Continues...…

Much has been made recently about how our “narratives” about the way the world works create and reinforce the form and outcomes of social structures. Our civil society organizations are not immune from this dynamic. Nonprofits and movement groups are created and recreated by…

In traditional organizations structure is defined as the lines of authority, or decision-making, and communications. The core function of these structures is management of resources towards stated goals. However, in sensemaking organizations, those that cannot rely on…

A core idea in the sensemaking approach to organizational change is that the sensemaking process is kicked off by action. To expand on this, …

The experience of the individual in the work setting is not generally an area of focus in academic research or the workplace. Work narratives are from the viewpoint of the work that must get done through individuals, not from how the individual develops through the work, or…

Last year's COVID-19 lockdown disrupted the idea of school as we know it and it forced educators to think outside of the box. For one elementary school principal in North Carolina, thinking outside of the box had him heading outside — literally...…

During the early days of COVID in March 2020, members of Rocky Mountain Partnership, a place-based partnership dedicated to driving economic and social mobility for its community members, flexed their collaboration muscles to coordinate a response to quickly evolving community needs in the Denver area. Long-standing relationships and shared systems meant they could quickly coordinate everything from food delivery to childcare for essential workers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if children and…

Climate change’s negative effects are coming to bear on high-priority philanthropic issues. More and better funding can protect vulnerable stakeholders and speed the net-zero transition.…

Building communities is a crucial process that fosters connections amongst people and creates infrastructures for these connections to happen...

https://fairforceberlin.medium.com/why-building-community-is-so-important-6f1a3953c1d7

If you couldn’t afford your rent, where would you go for help? In most American communities, that simple question has no obvious answer. Federal, state, and local rent assistance is provided by multiple nonprofits and government agencies in each municipality, each with its own eligibility rules and ways to apply. The messy housing assistance system in the U.S. is one of the main reasons COVID-related rent assistance has been extremely slow to be spent. A full overhaul is needed to…

Rising at a startling rate, hospitals around the state are seeing a rapid increase in children needing behavioral health treatment. Depression and anxiety have become prevalent. It’s become a concern for families and hospitals alike...…

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) is pleased to announce three upcoming urban forestry grant opportunities. Award amounts, types of projects funded, and deadlines vary; see Urban Forestry Grant Opportunities (ct.gov) for a full overview.…

As they come to resemble corporations, universities increasingly wield the kind of power and influence that were hallmarks of ruthless employers in isolated company towns. Historian Davarian Baldwin calls this ominous trend the “rise of the UniverCity.”

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/university-cities-urban-development-gentrification

The worst problems are in the neighborhoods that aren’t gentrifying.

“Was anyone really asking for a gentrified Gone Girl?” reads a one-line, half-star review of Promising Young Woman.

“Graphic Novels Are Comic Books, But Gentrified” one …