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Posted at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
16 pages in pdf, with highlighting for a quick skim. From the National Council of Nonprofits, March 16, 2010. Social needs are increasing, foundation grants are down, fundraising is down, federal grants are down, and the states are in disarray. Some are even withholding payments they owe to nonprofits or adding taxes and user fees to raise money from nonprofits. The result is that many nonprofits are teetering on the edge of insolvency, even as the populations they serve are imperiled. Download Highlighted Special-Report-State-Budget-Crises-Ripping-the-Safety-Net-Held-by-Nonprofits.
Losers lose out, shrugged Atlas. I am doing fine.
Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The most primordial of social gestures: procreation, eating, giving, killing, speech, art, worship, cultivation of crops, animal husbandry, burial rites, and maybe trade or barter, and certainly theft. We seem wired to create hierarchies and networks or tribes. Giving fits into both the hierarchy (potlatch, partriarch, patron) and the lateral networks defined by the traverse of the gift out, around and back from self, to family, to community. A community is the space marked out by a gift as it circulates. Grace defines all of Creation as a gift. The circulation of grace is love. Sacrifice, propitiation, that is love, I guess. Abraham with the knife. Tough love. Maybe God is an MBA. And St. Peter is his CPA. You know, maybe grace is God's own micro-finance, a kind of Divine Usury. I am in so deep I can never repay what I owe. May my debt be forgiven! Better yet, may another pay the price.
Posted at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)
The most primordial of social gestures: procreation, eating, giving, killing, speech, art, worship, cultivation of crops, animal husbandry, burial rites, and maybe trade or barter, and certainly theft. We seem wired to create hierarchies and networks or tribes. Giving fits into both the hierarchy (potlatch, partriarch, patron) and the lateral networks defined by the traverse of a the gift out, around and back from self, to family, to community. A community is the space marked out by a gift as it circulates. Grace defines all of Creation as a gift. The circulation of grace is love. Sacrifice, propitiation, that is love, I guess. Abraham with the knife. Tough love. Maybe God is an MBA. And St. Peter is his CPA.
Posted at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Government, Markets, Civic Sector - the three have certainly begun to interpenetrate and blur. Under G.W. Bush, it seemed that government was deferring to business. Now, under Obama, it feels that government is trying to make its presence felt in creating and managing and building public goods. Medical care might be an example. In the new Social Innovation Fund at the Corporation for National and Community Service government is partnering with nonprofits. By April 8, nonprofits will apply to this organization to be designated as "regrantmaking intermediaries." These intermediaries will then distribute a total of $50 million in Social Innovation Fund dollars along with a dollar for dollar or higher match that they themselves will contribute. Rick Cohen, for Nonprofit Quarterly, has a thoughtful and searching interview with the head of the program, Paul Carttar.
Left and right is one axis for understanding all things considered. But so too is big and small, or top down and bottom up, as is organic versus engineered and managed. In Rick's questions one can sense the concern that government no matter how well intended is a dangerous ally for a truly voluntary, grassroots, sometimes mettlesome, nonprofit sector. Do we want government matching grants from big nonprofits to amplify a shared agenda between big funders and big government for the good of all? I can see a Rick Cohen, known for his social justice work, and a Bill Schambra, a conservative noted for his hostility to top down solutions, whether philanthropic or governmental, having similar reservations about the Social Innovation Fund at the Corporation for National and Community Service. Even the name sounds a whole lot like Big Brother. We are here to help you with your money recylced through tax and gifts as governed by our wise bureacracy and friends with MBAs from Bridgespan, New Profit, or Monitor Institute. What the world needs is more top management! The self-organizing citizens with no clout, no money, no critical mass, and only each other are background noise.
Administrations change, political climates come and go, but the story of our time is bringing MBAs to scale. Could be worse, could be attorneys, though, they are the MBAs constant companion, along with the government official, the think tank thinker, and the business consultant. Seeing like a State remains a profound reflection on these trends, throughout modernity, in countries under governments as different as Stalin, Mao, Hitler, or FDR to measure and manage all things from art, to archetecture, to populations, to the farm, to the biosphere down now even to our DNA. It is what we all take for granted that must be questioned. When we speak of change, what if change meant the rise of organic, local, solutions sans top management? (Call the cops! The Happy Tutor is on the loose.)
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AKMA:
This morning as I was vesting for the 10:30 mass, I noticed that the shoulder of my alb was wearing through. Now, you well may roll your eyes, because you know that I haven’t bought any new vestments since I was ordained. But even more than that, this is an alb the my father-in-law handed down to me — so it had been in use since the 60’s, perhaps even the 50’s.
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To Whom it May Concern
Gifthub is an immortal work of art in theMenippean Tradition,written in a Padded Cell (he calls it a Dumpster for obvious reasons) in a state of shock by Phil Cubeta, Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, under an alias, or alter ego, The Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage...... More....
Email Phil Cubeta, Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families.
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