Children & Youth
The Search Institute has released an important American Family Assets Study. Just as Search reframed child and youth development to focus on assets rather than characteristics or problems, this study and related work by Search promises to establish a new and positive frame for families.
Extended family members and close family friends care for more than 2.7 million children in the U.S., an increase of almost 18 percent over the past decade. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT program estimates that 9 percent of youth will live with extended family in “kinship care” for at least three consecutive months at some point before age 18. About 104,000 of these children have been placed with kin formally, as part of the state-supervised foster care system.
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) initiative can enable programs to move beyond survival mode and into developing creative platforms for learning and programs. CCLC’s reliable funding stream and program flexibility leads to innovation for the entire out-of-school time (OST) field, says the Harvard Family Research Project.
Up to 7.5 million students miss enough school to be at severe risk of dropping out or failing to graduate from high school, according to The Importance of Being in School, a new report by the Johns Hopkins University. Only a handful of states measure and report on chronic absenteeism, defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a given year.
Delivering effective youth services depends on sound money management practices, according to Building Stronger Nonprofits Through Better Financial Management: Early Efforts in 26 Youth-Serving Organizations.The Wallace Foundation-supported report recommends that funders boost payments for overhead, reduce burdens, and invest in building nonprofits' financial management capabilities.
Data, smartly employed, can help after-school decision-makers with everything from allocating resources fairly to improving program quality. After-School Data: What Cities Need to Knowis a new set of six tip sheets to help city agencies, after-school program providers, intermediary organizations and others make the most of data in after-school programming.
Poverty & Community
"A good work ethic is all you need to escape poverty," according to almost half of the respondents in a new study, Perceptions of Poverty: The Salvation Army's Report to America. Nearly half also believe that poor people would take advantage of more assistance. But 60 percent say poverty is an inescapable trap for some people.
Material hardship—in the form of trouble meeting basic household expenses and keeping up with utility bills—has generally increased among the deeply poor, says a National Poverty Center working paper. Material hardship remained roughly the same for those at 50-99 percent of poverty and decreased among the near poor (100-150 percent of poverty). The result: intensified stratification of low-income households with kids.
Housing, neighborhoods, infrastructure, schools, financing, opportunities for ex-offenders, and sensible public policy are all specific challenges yet interdependent, suggests a new series by the What Works Collaborative. The collaborative comprises funders, researchers and practitioners creating a research agenda to advance policy and practice. (Urban Institute)
Government and community-based organizations are crucial resources for low-income households but neither reaches all of the needy, says Receipt of Public Benefits and Private Support among Low-income Households with Children after the Great Recession. The analysis of Detroit metro area data has lessons for other cities, particularly those expecting a long recovery of the labor market. (National Poverty Center)
Nonprofit Sector
Among the best strategies for developing diversity in human services is to retain and develop talent within your organization. NHSA’s toolkit, Retaining and Developing High Potential Talent, focuses on Onboarding, Employee Mentoring and Succession Planning as key levers for advancing diversity and inclusion through talent management.
In 2011, $146,172 was the median reported president/CEO salary, based on a survey by Alliance for Children and Families of its members for its 2012 human services compensation report. The report analyzes 59 positions and breaks out operating budgets, regions, education, and years in position.
More than 15,000 of the 38,000 tax-exempt organizations declaring at least $1 million in donations also told the IRS that they spent zero to solicit donations and fundraise, all the while managing to amass $116.7 billion, according to IRS public records analysis. The reporting has raised questions about how nonprofits account for and report their overall administrative costs. (Scripps Howard News Service via Philanthropy News Digest)
America’s Promise Alliance welcomes a new president and CEO. John Gomperts takes over for retiring CEO Marguerite Kondracke, who will now serve as a senior advisor. Gomperts has been director of AmeriCorps, chief of staff for the Corporation for National and Community Service, and president of Civic Ventures, among other experiences.
With social media emerging as critical to nonprofit communications, can demands for clear measurement be far behind? Community Organizer 2.0 argues that the key metric is not traditional ROI (Return on Investment) but ROE – Return on Engagement – of organizational goals and of community commitment.
As many as two million interns are employed each year, but scant information exists on how internships – paid or unpaid – affect the labor market, says the Economic Policy Institute. |