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2019-07-12
Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights;
In Illinois, nearly 5 million adults, 50% of the population, are estimated to have an arrest or conviction record. Housing is foundational for employment success, family stability, and overall well-being. Unfortunately, criminal history checks are a typical part of the housing application processes, and many people with records are declined housing opportunities they would otherwise be a good fit for, but for the criminal record.
Our goal for Win-Win was to develop user-friendly guidance about the use of criminal records in screening and housing applicants, and to provide recommendations that housing providers can adopt and adapt, in whole or in part, to increase housing opportunities for people with criminal records.
2019-07-09
Rockefeller Archive Center;
Can the market be trusted to provide the bundle of goods and services that society deems a basic entitlement of citizenship? The retreat from state-centered welfare institutions and the rise of policy movements emphasizing market-based alternatives over the past thirty years is said to mark a breaking point from the progressivism of the early twentieth century. Evidence from the Russell Sage Foundation Records, housed at the Rockefeller Archive Center, suggests that the trajectory from state to market or public to private is less representative than is commonly thought. Among the Foundation's most successful campaigns was its battle to reform small-sum lending between 1909 and 1946. Inspired by journalistic tales of working families held in virtual slavery by nefarious loan sharks, the Russell Sage Foundation devoted considerable resources to freeing small borrowers from the high rates of interest and criminal intimidation thought to engender poverty, crime, class agitation, and political radicalism. The Foundation's gradual pivot from promoting philanthropic solutions meant to circumvent the market in money to embracing profit and competition as a market-oriented means of achieving progressive ends stands as a key moment in the rise of the personal finance industry. It also serves as an early case study in the privatization of American social policy and an object lesson in the challenges reformers have faced when forging partnerships with the competitive marketplace.
2019-07-09
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation;
This report examines trust in media, showing that many young adults use news media to make decisions on policies and voting. It reveals that a majority of young adults are concerned about the impact of news on democracy and unity in the country, expressing that news organizations might divide and polarize citizens. Conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, the report analyzes the findings of a survey of 1,660 adults between the ages of 18 and 34. It also surveyed large samples of African American and Hispanic participants to explore beliefs and behaviors across races and ethnicities.
The study shows that young people believe some news sources are actively hurting democracy and corroding national unity. Sixty-four percent of young adults say their least-liked news source hurts democracy and 73 percent say their least-liked news source divides the country. Only 47 percent say their favorite news source helps unite it. When comparing partisan attitudes, 51 percent of Democrats say their favorite source unites the public, while 42 percent of Republicans say the same.
2019-06-18
CFLeads;
Spurred by an expanding field of practice, increasing support from state and local governments, and astrong body of research, children's savings accounts (CSAs) have emerged in the past fifteen years as apromising strategy for building assets and educational expectations for children and youth. To be effective, all CSA programs need local partners to support various aspects of program execution, including building community connections, helping with advocacy and outreach, and assisting program delivery.
In this brief, CFLeads articulates why collaboration between community foundations and CSA programs is in their mutual interest. We describe the variety of roles that community foundations can play in promoting the growth and success of CSA programs, and then identify the primary challenges encountered by community foundations in supporting CSAs. The brief concludes with key lessons learned about collaboration between community foundations and CSA programs.
2019-06-01
Lilly Endowment, Inc.;
Each year, we publish an annual report to share in-depth stories about the work of our grantees in religion, community development, and education and youth programs. The publication also offers a list of grants made that year and a thorough financial report.
2019-05-30
Nonprofit Vote;
One of the most compelling questions asked after every election year is "what will it take to get young voters to head to the polls?" Every year is an important year for voters. Which means every year the important question to ask is, how do we ensure the most eligible citizens turn out to vote?
Nonprofit VOTE's updated "Engaging New Voters" report tackles that question and proposes a simple but hard-fought answer: "contact." The report looks at 64 nonprofits across six states who reached out into the communities they serve via nonpartisan voter engagement activities and found amazing results:
Voters contacted by nonprofits are TWICE as likely to be nonwhite, TWICE as likely to be under 25 and TWICE as likely to have $30,000 in household income. These voters were also MORE likely to vote – 11 percentage points more likely. Asian, Latino and Black voters contacted by nonprofits show up 13-16 percentage points higher than those who weren't; those under 25 turned out 20 percentage points higher.
2019-05-29
Urban Institute;
This report calls on civic leaders, advocates, elected officials, and philanthropists to address the legacy of structural racism in the United States and advance racial equity by taking steps to close four large equity gaps between people of color and white people.
Based on interviews and discussions with experts, advocates, practitioners, and policy makers in the fields of wealth building, public education, employment, and justice policy, the report outlines solutions for each of the four interrelated disparities — in wealth, education, employment and earnings, and policing practices — arguing that greater equity in one area could lead to gains in others.
2019-05-29
Fund the People;
Produced by Fund the People and the Center for Urban and Racial Equity, this comprehensive report offers important findings on the challenges and opportunities of investing in intersectional racial equity in the U.S. nonprofit workforce.
With over 12 million paid workers, nonprofits employ the third largest U.S. workforce. This means 1 in 10 people work in the nonprofit sector. Despite its size and impact, nonprofits face a chronic deficit of investment in their staff.
To further complicate matters, the nonprofit workforce struggles to attract, retain, and support people from racially, ethnically, and otherwise diverse backgrounds to build a robust and durable talent pipeline. Our research gathered and analyzed data from over 1,400 survey responses, 3 focus groups, 20 interviews, and a literature review.
2019-05-28
Building Movement Project;
This brief shifts focus to those who have already reached positions as nonprofit EDs and CEOs to explore how nonprofit executives grapple with the real-world demands of leadership when they attain it. The survey data and insights shared through interviews and focus groups highlight key areas where the pressures of executive leadership seem to be increased for people of color. Despite these challenges, nonprofit EDs and CEOs demonstrate remarkable determination and resilience.
2019-05-22
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
The United States continues to be the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation and holidays. This report is the third revision of No-Vacation Nation (2007) and No-Vacation Nation Revisited (2013) comparing the statutory requirements for paid vacations and paid holidays in 21 rich countries (16 European countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand) and the United States. Workers in the European Union are legally guaranteed at least 20 paid vacation days per year, with some countries mandating up to at least 30 days. Nearly all other rich countries also provide paid holidays to supplement the paid vacation required to their workers.
Close to 1 in 4 US workers do not receive paid vacation or paid holidays. The absence of a mandated paid vacation time policy disparately impacts lower-wage workers, those employed part-time, and workers employed by smaller businesses. Throughout the report, we distinguish between paid vacations — also referred to as paid annual leave — and paid holidays, which are organized around particular fixed dates in the calendar. Our analysis does not cover paid leave for other reasons such as sick leave, parental leave, or leave to care for sick relatives.
2019-05-21
Center for Disaster Philanthropy;
In 2017, the U.S. experienced the costliest year of major natural disasters on record; 2018 was the fourth costliest year. In this two-year period, how many Americans donated to disaster aid and how much? What are the main drivers for disaster giving? Does giving to disaster aid come at the expense of other causes? Based on new data on American household giving, this forthcoming research brief answers questions about the patterns, preferences, and practices of individual charitable giving for disaster aid.
2019-05-15
Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice;
Paroling authorities play an important, if often unrecognized role, in American prison policies. Discretionary parole processes decide the actual release dates for most individuals subject to confinement in 34 states. Additional leverage over time served is exercised through parole boards' revocation and re-release authority. The degree of discretion these back-end officials exert over the dosage of incarceration is vast, sometimes more than that held by sentencing courts.
Any comprehensive program to change American prison policy must focus to a significant degree on prison-release discretion, where it exists, and its relationship to time served. During the buildup to mass incarceration, many parole boards became increasingly reluctant to grant release to eligible prisoners. Today, if it were possible to reverse this upward driver of prison populations, parole boards could be important contributors to a new evidence-based status quo of lower prison rates in many states. Reasonable objectives of reform include policy-driven increases in the likelihood of parole release, and more rational decision making overall about time served.
This report describes twelve "levers of change," each associated with potential reforms in the realm of discretionary parole release. The reforms are called "change levers" because, once a lever is pulled, it is designed to impact prison populations by altering parole grant rates and durations of time served. The report identifies 12 areas of innovation that, to some degree, have already been tried by a number of states. In most cases, from a distance, it is impossible to evaluate the quality of each state's implementation of one or more change levers, or the results that have been achieved. But the fact that states have begun to experiment in specific areas shows that there is an appetite for reform. In addition, actual experimentation indicates that some of the groundwork has been laid for evaluation, improvement, and dissemination of promising ideas to many additional states.
Some levers have become embedded in the decision protocols of parole boards over the past 20 years and more, while others have emerged only recently. One of the goals of this report is to demonstrate how combining the levers is key to reform. This report maps the terrain of the 12 identified change levers, to the degree permitted by available information. The map shows a huge amount of state-by-state variation, even without hands-on study of each system. The report further classifies individual levers based on the number of jurisdictions in which they have been identified, and their potential impact on states' prison populations.
