Tag: Philanthropy

Rent for Moms is a fundraising campaign looking to help 50 single Black moms in select cities retain or obtain housing by Christmas. Under...

In this first installment of updates to Shelterforce articles of old, we find that market dynamics are different in many places we’ve written about, but many of the organizations fighting the good fight are continuing to do so, even in changed times.

A review of Courageous Philanthropy: Going Public in a Closely Held World, by Jennifer Vanica.

A pair of funds backed by philanthropic heavy hitters tries to take advantage of a moment when all eyes are on housing.

There was much speculation last year about whether and how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would enter the affordable housing space. We got our first peek today . . .

Fifteen years ago, one of Fahe's member organizations in West Virginia reached out to a national foundation to request...

Housing in the developing world is a process. Families may replace a dirt floor with a clean, hard surface. They might reinforce the walls or the roof to prevent water from seeping through the cracks when it rains. They may build an additional room after welcoming a new child into the world or build a […]

Domestic social impact investment is stuck. Each year a few deals trickle through, but despite the potential and promise, impact investments in the United...

We first met Darren Walker about 15 years ago while planning an issue on faith-based development. Darren was the chief operating officer of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, the storied community development arm of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City. We asked Darren to write an article that was not simply a cheerleader’s promotion of church-based CDCs, but a realistic assessment of the benefits and challenges to an institution embarking on that path.

Darren was optimistic and enthusiastic about the work he was doing at Abyssinian creating hundreds of units of affordable housing in Harlem. But he was pragmatic and realistic also. His article encouraged organizations to temper the enthusiasm necessary to even consider this work with a realistic analysis of an organization’s capacities and a clear-eyed examination of their assumptions about the rewards of creating a CDC.

Darren approached his work enthusiastically, I think, because he had visceral understanding of the challenges low-income folks had and the opportunities that were available to them with the right help. The kind of help that the stability of an affordable home could provide. His understanding came from personal experience that would inform his work wherever it took him, from law school to international finance, from a storefront afterschool program and Abyssinian to the Rockefeller and Ford foundations.

When we sat down with Darren on March 18 to conduct this interview, we were glad to see that enthusiasm, optimism, and pragmatism were as strong as ever as he starts his leadership of one of the world’s largest foundations.

As we prepared this issue, the term "philanthropic equity" kept surfacing. What is this new concept in philanthropy, and how is it different from both traditional grantmaking and program-related investments? In December we gathered a group of people from foundations and nonprofit intermediaries to explore the concept, its promises and pitfalls.

In response to my earlier post about anchor institutions and community development, Andrew Frishkoff, executive director of LISC Philadelphia, commented “Too often we have seen...

When was the last time you sat down with your financial manager and the actually considered the various tranches of capital you would need?

There are wealthy people and institutions out there in the world right now who are willing to give your nonprofit a lot of money. As a matter of fact, that number appears to be growing.

Impact investing—the deployment of capital with the intent of not only generating financial return, but also producing measurable social and environmental impacts—is not new....

ArtsBlog (the blog of Americans for the Arts) recently hosted a forum called:  “So, Does Size Matter?”  The short answer is hell yes it...

Health philanthropy and community development have historically worked on separate tracks. That’s changing. 

A handful of Newark, New Jersey, nonprofits received some much-needed relief in a time of reduced donations from a surprising benefactor — Oprah Winfrey. In...

In a time of great economic peril for the communities they serve, nonprofit grassroots organizations must push the federal government to raise foundations' payout requirements.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation plans to invest $25 million over the next five years in research into the causes, effects...

It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to deduce that a foundation called simply “Resist” might be a little different than your...