Debating Federal Charter-School Support, Plus More: Tuesday’s Roundup
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
December 8, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
- Is the Obama administration overemphasizing charter schools as a way to improve public education? On the National Journal’s education blog, which is paid for in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, school leaders, nonprofit officials, and others debate this idea.
- The controversy caused by a nonprofit Houston toy drive’s request that those seeking gifts provide Social Security numbers is a sign that charities and others need to examine how they view immigrants, says Larry James, chief executive of Central Dallas Ministries, on the Sojourners blog.
- While this week’s United Nations meeting in Copenhagen centers around environmental policies, the discussions are key to finding ways to reduce hunger and global poverty, says Bread for the World, an advocacy group, on its Web site.
- William Easterly, the New York University professor and a critic of foreign aid, and Laura Freschi, also of New York University, write about what they call “the murky finances” of Project RED, the cause-marketing campaign designed to fight AIDS in Africa.
- Holden Karnofsky, a co-founder of the charity-evaluation group GiveWell, decries the dearth of information available about the Robin Hood Foundation’s impact.
- Lucy Bernholz, an adviser to donors, highlights on her blog a new paper she co-wrote suggesting that “data are the new platform for change.” The draft paper, Disrupting Philanthropy 2.0, says that data will significantly alter how philanthropic dollars are spent and, coupled with changes in government and business, will lead to the creation of a “social economy” made up of interdependent government, business, and philanthropic money and organizations that create social good.
- Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, writes on Outside magazine’s Web site that many charities have not absorbed lessons about how to market their work effectively — namely, to highlight stories of individuals whose lives could be helped with small donations.
