community engagement

LA’s Community Safety Partnership has been covered by a variety of media outlets including NPR and The New York Times Magazine. I happened upon it while changing channels via a […]

This is a sidebar to “On Board,” an article about making a community development organization’s board welcoming to residents and low-income members. CDC boards can be a first stop for […]

Phillip Henderson was only 38 when he took the helm at the Surdna Foundation seven years ago, becoming Surdna’s second director in what he calls its “modern era.” Henderson came to the family foundation from a career that had been focused on international philanthropy, but he applied many of the lessons he learned fostering civic engagement in post-Communist Europe to Surdna’s domestic grantmaking. Henderson sat down with Shelterforce to talk about aligning program with mission, cross-pollination between programs, and Surdna’s recent launch into the impact investing world.

Oakland, Calif., like many cities, is beginning an annual or biennial budget process and coming to terms with the stark realities of structural problems with its municipal budget. An overwhelming […]

A breakdown of the funding climate for civic engagement.

For the past five years, I have been involved with a project in Eastern Oregon in a town with a population of 3,310. The town is in a rural area […]

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Community Survey, and with it announced a new class of America’s poorest big cities: Toledo, […]

Read Rob McKay and Ori Brafman’s recent post at Huffington Post and you’re likely to feel your pulse race over the transformative possibilities of grassroots action. “Progressives are forming more […]