Blogs

From entrepreneurs in their 20s to established real estate developers, the diversity of people who joined the first few gatherings on neighbourhood economics in Cincinnati had an initiator of the effort, Peter Block, happily stunned.

“The most excited people in some cases were the people who came in with the most responsibility — and they got it,” Peter says.

Christine Egger, who is supporting the gatherings in Cincinnati, says of all the communities she and her colleagues have been invited to learn with, Cincinnati is hosting the “most robust, diverse, inclusive” conversation on neighbourhood economics.

“Oftentimes we’re convincing people that they have the resources they need to create the communities they want to live in,” says Christine. “But in Cincinnati there was no need of that. There is already a very broad conversation that’s incredibly respectful of what each person in the room has to bring.”

People seem energized by the possibilities of something other than more human services in responding to problems in the city.

the rest of the article...

http://www.abundantcommunity.com/home/stories/parms/1/story/20150519_what_if_marginalized_neighbourhoods_crafted_their_own_handmade_place-based_economies.html ;

Saturday morning, 8am: Gateway Community College is a hive of activity. Approximately 200 family child care providers weave through the large, light-filled building, adjusting translation equipment, deciphering their workshop assignments, and greeting each other enthusiastically. Some began their days hours earlier when they boarded New Haven-bound busses in Bridgeport and Stamford. All are here to learn, connect, and explore at All Our Kin’s 2015 Family Child Care Conference.

Missed All Our Kin's 10th Annual Family Child Care Conference on May 2? Then check out our latest blog post here to read about conference highlights!  

Storytelling Delegation to Leόn, Nicaragua - July 26 – Aug 2 2015

The New Haven/Leόn Sister City Project invites you to join a family oriented delegation (families with kids middle school age or older are welcome to join the group) to Leόn, Nicaragua this summer 2015. The trip is to experience the cultural and economic realities of the current Nicaraguan community through sharing stories and experiences between the generations and with members of the rural Nicaraguan community of Goyena.

Delegates will:

• Participate in a community project and share in the learning process.
• Use storytelling activities to deepen understanding and create our own stories to take home.
• Get to know life in Nicaragua through homestays and daily participation in the rural Goyena community.
• Tour Leon historical and cultural highlights while learning about current economic, cultural, and political realities in Nicaragua
• Explore natural beauty of Nicaragua via excursions to nearby cultural, historic and environmental locations.
• Stay with host families in Leon.

The cost of trips is $1200 per person or $2000 for a parent and child together.  (Price includes housing, food, transportation, translation, all workshops and site visits).  Partial scholarships are available.

Apply ASAP to: Susan Bramhall at sbramhall@newhavenleon.org

or : Chris Schweitzer at nh@newhavenleon.org

For more information about New Haven Leon SCP and other delegations go to www.newhavenleon.org or write to Chris at nh@newhavenleon.org or call 203.562.1607http://www.newhavenleon.org/homehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL50E5z8VVk

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven is pleased to announce two special grant opportunities for organizations working with immigrants or formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. Organizations providing services or programs that provide direct service, advocacy, collaborative efforts, capacity building, public education and leadership development in alignment with the goals of The Foundation’s immigrant integration or incarceration and reentry strategies are encouraged to apply online through the request for proposal process at www.cfgnh.org/grants; deadline to apply is June 8, 2015.

“The Community Foundation has a long history of supporting immigration integration and reentry work in New Haven.  After hearing from community leaders working in these two areas, The Community Foundation decided to set aside special grant funds in 2015 of up to $250,000 to increase and enhance our long-term investment,” says Christina Ciociola, senior vice president for grantmaking and strategy. “Both strategies involve providing a more welcoming community to often marginalized groups in our community.”

Learn more about The Community Foundation's goals for its immigrant integration strategy and reentry strategy and how your nonprofit may benefit from these new grant opportunities.

For 20 years that we've been traipsing through the national parks, I looked forward to the day when we'd encounter black and brown Americans in such numbers among the visitors that their presence on the trail in Grand Canyon would be unremarkable. Their faces would be radiant with joy as we met among the giant sequoias in Giant Grove, Sequoia National Park. They'd move easily among the other guests at Yellowstone Lodge after a day watching bison and grizzlies in the park. I'd run into them at meetings in Washington DC to determine the future of Rock Creek National Park, and they'd be eager contributors to the cause of preservation with their dollars and their political clout...

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Lessons-from-our-National-Park-System-for-Baltimore--Ferguson.html?soid=1102771162576&aid=hElrG_2i56A ;

President Obama has started a new foundation focused on assisting young men in disadvantaged communities.

The Wall Street Journal article about this effort had offered three pieces of information: the foundation's origin/purpose; financial support, and the board. Nonprofit governance matters.

Here's what was stated about the board:

(News Corp) vice president and global head of government affairs, Toni Cook Bush, will sit on the organization’s board and leadership team. The effort to get the nonprofit off the ground has been spearheaded by Joe Echevarria,the former Deloitte CEO who retired from the company last year to pursue his interest in public policy and public service. Former NBA player Alonzo Mourning, musician John Legend, Washington consultant Robert Raben, and senior executives at Deloitte, American Express, Valor Equity Partners, BET, and other corporations will serve on the foundation’s board.

This board brings an interesting combination of smarts and experience, diversity and access to a wide-range of resources all to reinforce that nonprofit board composition and recruitment (yes, the recruiter makes it tough to resist wanting to engage) does matter

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven (The Community Foundation) announces that $1,291,096 will be distributed to area nonprofits thanks to more than 7,000 donors who made more than 9600 gifts during The Great Give® 2015, May 5-6. This outpouring of support far surpasses the amounts raised and the number of gifts made during The Great Give® in previous years. 

“Our Community’s response to The Great Give 2015 is deeply gratifying,” said William W. Ginsberg, president & CEO of The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. “It is a tribute to the strength of our local nonprofit sector and the generosity of our community.”  

The Great Give® 2015 shows that children and youth are top on the minds of area donors this year. By category, the most money ($223,682) was donated to children- and youth- serving organizations. 

To incent giving, $170,000 was provided in pro-rated matching funds and prizes by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the Valley Community Foundation (VCF), Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Higher One CARES (Community Action for Resources Education and Service). 

Grand Prizes were awarded to the nonprofits that attracted the greatest number of new donors ($10,000 to Elm City Internationals) and the greatest number of donors ($15,000 to Music Haven). 

Grand Prizes of $5,000 each were also awarded to nonprofits for the most money raised by an all-volunteer organization (Greater New Haven Community Chorus), most money raised by an organization with five or fewer full-time staff (Shoreline Village CT) and most money raised by an organization with more than five full-time members (St. Martin de Porres Academy).

New to the prize pool in 2015: a $5,000 prize to the organization that received the largest single gift (LEAP with a gift of $50,000), a $5,000 loyal donor prize to the organization that attracted the most repeat donors (Neighborhood Music School with 93 repeat donors), a $3,000 prize to the organization participating in its first Great Give that received the greatest number of individual donors (Calvin Hill Day Care), $3,000 prizes to the organizations that showed the greatest increase in the number of individual donors over last year (Women & Family Life Center and The Institute Library), a $2,500 prize for the organization participating in its first Great Give that raised the most money (The Graduate Institute), and a $2,500 prize to the organization that showed the greatest increase in total money raised over last year (ConnCAT).

The Valley Community Foundation provided additional prizes during The Great Give® 2015, incentivizing residents and workers in the five Valley towns of Ansonia, Derby, Seymour, Shelton and Oxford to give locally. Nearly 1,000 gifts were made as a result, which, combined with the prize money, totaled over $172,000. VCF Grand Prize winners will be announced on May 14 at an ice cream social at St. Mary’s Church in Derby; to learn more, please contact the Valley Community Foundation at 203-751-9162 or visit their website at www.valleyfoundation.org.

“We are thrilled to see so many new and returning organizations participate in this online giving event, as well as the growing number of supporters,” said Sharon Closius, president & CEO at VCF. “Those living and working in the Valley region have truly come together in The Great Give to collectively impact and invest in our community.”

Event sponsors Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Higher One CARES each provided special prizes by category for the second year in a row. 

A complete list of participating nonprofits and prize winners is available at www.thegreatgive.org.

The Great Give® is the annual online giving event on giveGreater.org®, a local resource for learning and giving created in 2010 by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to increase philanthropy in the Greater New Haven region of South Central Connecticut. Donors wishing to support their favorite cause or charity can visit the giveGreater.org® website to find information on 328 nonprofits, including their mission, governance, programs, financials and community impact. 

Thanks to the generosity of three generations of donors, The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven awarded more than $22 million in grants and distributions in 2014 and has an endowment of over $460 million through hundreds of individually named funds. In addition to its grantmaking, The Community Foundation helps build a stronger community by taking measures to improve student achievement, reduce New Haven’s infant mortality rate, promote local philanthropy through www.giveGreater.org and encourage greater understanding of the region at www.cfgnh.org/learn. For more information, visit our website at www.cfgnh.org, find us on Facebook atwww.facebook.com/cfgnh or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cfgnh.

If nonprofit boards are the surrogate owners of a nonprofit representing the public/taxpayer's interests, it stands to reason that good governance would mean that the board would sit ever ready to listen and hear the needs, wants and interests of the many stakeholders/constituents of what the nonprofit has to offer. If a board accepts this concept it then must also accept and value the concept of community engagement.

In last week's conference on governance, David Renz of the Bloch School of Management and host of the conference suggested that a nonprofit board need not be the "home" of governance but the "host" of governance. While the daily tasks are focused on fiduciary and strategic duties, these tasks are then informed by the community such that the board must always act from a more "global" or community-wide perspective and not then just from its several or whole biases and interests.

Unionization is certainly one arena that actually changes the position of the board from being a home to being a host effectively and legally forcing the board's governance to consider the interests of the employees in its actions. The unionization of home health care aides in Pennsylvania will then go a long way toward making those nonprofit home health aide provider boards much more of a host than home in their governance. One must wonder if the workers for nonprofits would have moved to unionize had the boards of the nonprofits been acting as host not home and whether indeed there is a lesson for all nonprofits.

Here's the Wall Street Journal article describing the unionization event.
Pennsylvania Home Health Care Aides Vote to Unionize
Two pending lawsuits seeking to block union drive may not be resolved for months
By
KRIS MAHER
April 24, 2015 6:39 p.m. ET
1 COMMENTS

A union claimed victory Friday in its effort to organize 20,000 home health aides in Pennsylvania, even as two pending lawsuits seeking to block the union drive may not be resolved for months.

Home health aides voted 2,663 to 309 in favor of being represented by the United Home Care Workers of Pennsylvania, according to the union, which is a joint partnership of the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The union noted that it won 89% of votes cast. Mary Kay Henry, president of the 1.9-million-member SEIU, which represents 600,000 home care workers, applauded the win in a tweet Friday afternoon.

But legal challenges could undo the victory. Two lawsuits are pending in Pennsylvania state court alleging that an executive order issued by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf that allowed the vote violates the state’s constitution and labor laws.

The executive order permits an elected representative of home care workers to reach an agreement with the state Department of Human Services over wages, benefits, dues and other issues.

On Thursday, the judge hearing the cases said he would allow a representation vote to proceed but issued a preliminary injunction barring any union that won from reaching an agreement with the state. The lawsuits are scheduled for argument in September.

Among other things, the lawsuits complained that the executive order violated state law by allowing a union to win representation by gaining a majority of votes cast rather than a majority of eligible votes. In this case, votes for the union represented about 13% of eligible votes.

“Part of the reason they won was that the executive order was drafted as a handout to the unions,” said David Osborne, general counsel for The Fairness Center, which filed one of the lawsuits challenging the executive order. The nonprofit organization in Harrisburg, Pa., represents workers in disputes with unions.

Jeff Sheridan, a spokesman for Gov. Wolf, said the governor is pleased the process is moving forward. “The governor’s plan ensures that seniors, consumers, and direct care attendants will continue to have a voice in shaping the future of the homecare industry,” Mr. Sheridan said.