Exploring ideas, conversations & solutions for a fractured country.
Dear John,
I want to introduce you to a few people I met recently who inspire hope. Like you, they are leaders in the nonprofit world, and their work holds great promise for their communities and the nation as a whole.
I'm an editor and writer leading The Commons, a new Chronicle of Philanthropy project to explore what nonprofits and philanthropy are doing to overcome the country’s divisions, bring down the temperature of disagreements, and remind opposing factions that their adversaries are human, too. Within this growing movement, we want to find promising people and ideas and share them with our readers.
Ambitious national programs are getting a lot of the attention and money, but that’s not the whole story. Many local nonprofit leaders are dedicated to making their everyday work part of the solution. They typically don’t see themselves as part of a movement; they are simply responding to needs in their community and fulfilling their mission to help others.
Here are just a few of my favorite people that we’ve featured in recent stories: |
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| Advice | | Can Your Volunteer Program Bring America Together? This Screenwriter-Turned-Charity Leader Thinks So | | David Levinson was a movie and television screenwriter who gave up Hollywood glamour to start the Los Angeles community-service group Big Sunday. What began as a one-day event is now a juggernaut that mobilizes 50,000 people a year. Levinson shared his story with us as well as his secrets to connecting people from all walks of life in volunteer work. First tip: Don’t call them “volunteers.” | | Read More ► |
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| Profile | | An Activist and an Adversary Found Common Ground. Making Change Proved Harder. | | Leah Garcés ran hard-hitting animal-rights campaigns. Craig Watts raised 700,000 chickens on a factory farm. They were supposed to be enemies. “We’d been told we should hate each other,” Leah says. Instead, they found a connection in conversations about their kids and families. A partnership formed that led to change in the poultry industry — and in their lives. | | Read More ► |
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| News | | Major Funders Bet Big on Rural America and ‘Everyday Democracy’ | | Carlton Turner represents the eighth generation of his family to live in Utica, Miss., population 600. Turner runs Sipp Culture, a nonprofit that rallies residents to reverse the decline of the town, which has closed schools, grocery stores, and businesses. Working from scratch, they have created a community farm, a commercial greenhouse, and an artists’ residency. “No one is coming to do this work for us,” Carlton says. “No one’s coming to save us.” | | Read More ► |
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| I invite you to visit The Commons at Philanthropy.com/TheCommons to find stories like these and much more that speaks directly to your work. For instance, Victoria Vrana of GlobalGiving offers advice about how fundraisers can re-engage average Americans in charitable giving. And Ben Greene, chief revenue officer at Charity:water, talks about how his organization broke a fundraising taboo and pointed to the country’s divides to show supporters that its work unites people.
And… if you know of leaders or organizations you think I’d enjoy talking to, please drop me a note at TheCommons@philanthropy.com. I look forward to meeting more nonprofit leaders who can offer hope to me and our readers.
Sincerely,
Drew Lindsay
Senior Editor
Chronicle of Philanthropy
P.S. The best way to keep up with everything we post in The Commons — and elsewhere on our site — is to follow Philanthropy Today or join the LinkedIn Group.
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