Using the Whole Whale - A Nonprofit Podcast

After two great years at Whole Whale, Kariesha Martinez, Senior Marketing Associate is moving on. She shares how the Whole Whale Fellowship program works, what she learned over two years and other advice/thoughts for the company.

Nonprofit news for the week of 7/26/2021. Bezos Blasts Off Into Space, Donates $200 Million         Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and the world’s wealthiest human, has announced a $200 million donation to the activist Van Jones and humanitarian chef José Andrés. The money, with no strings attached, was part of Bezos’ new “Courage and Civility Award.” Bezos announced the award shortly after returning to earth from a ride to space via his aerospace company Blue Origin’s spaceship. Read more ➝ New Report On Trust In Civil Society Released The report, published by Independent Sector, finds that trust in institutions overall is declining across America, and that nonprofits and philanthropic organizations are not immune from this trend. While overall trust remains high, residents with lower income, lower education levels, and those who live in rural communities contributed to the downward tick in trust. Gen Z also exhibited decrease metrics when it comes to these institutions. How the public perceives nonprofits and philanthropic organizations broadly needs to be at the forefront of conversations around nonprofit development, fundraising, communication, and marketing. Read more ➝   Summary "Your Shot Texas" Boosts Vaccinations With Nonprofit Grant Money Bloomberg To Fund Tech Upgrades For The Arts Red Cross signals blood emergency with lack of donations A Nonprofits flowers carry meaning at The Tokyo Olympics  

Nonprofitnewsfeed.com 200 Nonprofits Close In Minnesota, Indicative of Larger Trend Between April of 2020 and March of 2021, 186 nonprofits stopped operations, according to data from the state of Minnesota. Hundreds of other nonprofits are believed to have downsized operations dramatically, indicating a substantial trend. Health, arts, and religious organizations were hurt most substantially. While this data only reflects nonprofits within Minnesota, Candid estimates that nearly one-third of nonprofits are in danger of closing within the next two years nationally. Coupled with record giving in 2020, this broad trend is indicative of an industry that’s slowly consolidating, as funding and resources increasingly flow to larger organizations at the expense of smaller organizations. Read more ➝ Steph Curry Partners With Nonprofit Venture NinetyToZero To Bridge Racial Wealth Gap NBA superstar Steph Curry has partnered up with the nonprofit project NinetyToZero, which seeks to bridge the vast racial wealth divide within American society. The new organization, incubated by the Robinhood Foundation in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Starbucks, took its name from the reported disparity of wealth in America, particularly that white Americans hold approximately 90% more wealth than black Americans. With additional support from the ACLU and prominent figures in the social philanthropy world, the estimated economic benefit of closing the racial wealth gap in America is $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Read more ➝   Summary With Donations Declining, LA Nonprofits Face Post-Pandemic Challenges Wes Moore, author and former nonprofit executive, launches campaign for Maryland governor Largest solar project for nonprofit organization in West Virginia nearly complete Journalists, activists among firm’s spyware targets, nonprofits say

Online Fundraising Platforms Face Fresh Scrutiny New scrutiny is being applied to the donation fundraising tactics of political fundraising platforms. After a New York Times expose highlighting potentially deceptive practices was released in April, fresh criticism has come in the form of an open inquiry being led by four democratic state attorneys general. The inquiry is into both the Republican platform WinRed and the Democratic platform ActBlue. Nonprofits, particularly those in the political and advocacy spaces, should watch this narrative closely as new rules may arise regarding how campaign-affiliated companies and organizations can procure online donations from the public. Read more ➝ FrontlineSMS Closes After 15 Years The professional SMS messaging service FrontlineSMS has announced that it will be closing. The service, which provided users with a primarily free platform to communicate via SMS, will continue to be available as a free, fully open-source software on Windows, Mac, and Linux. In an open letter, FrontlineSMS CEO writes that “our products have been continuously used by community groups, service providers, and national governments alike, reaching tens of thousands of people a year. Over the last 15 years, we’ve supported users in 200 countries around the world with primarily free tools and support. We’ve been part of peer-reviewed academic studies, ground-breaking journalism, and the transformational change of life-saving systems – both as subject and as service provider.” Read more ➝     Summary Black women push for racial equity at nonprofits Gates Foundation staff are 'freaking out' about the nonprofit's future as Bill and Melinda divorce, an insider reportedly said Attorney generals looking into online fundraising practices: reports How nonprofit leader Catherine Howarth got HSBC to swear off coal

Summary of nonprofit news.   Supreme Court Throws Out Nonprofit Donor Disclosure Law Last Thursday the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a 6-3 ruling that California could no longer require nonprofits to submit donor information to the state. Advocates of the law say it adds donor and transparency to the finances of organizations that may serve as a vehicle for unscrupulous influence, while Americans for Prosperity (which brought the case) argues that such donations are a first amendment issue. This case, like the landmark Citizens United v FEC before it, could make the job of watchdog oversight over not only nonprofit contributions but political campaign contributions harder to monitor. Read more ➝ NCAA Allows Players To Profit Off of Name, Image, Likeness A NCAA rule change, coupled with new state laws, has opened up the door for NCAA college-level athletes to profit off of their name, image, and likeness, in a reset that will likely reverberate throughout the college sports world. Private universities with NCAA programs are nearly all operated as tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, and this ruling represents the potential for a seismic shift in the way that such institutions relate to their student-athletes. The push for athletes to profit off of their name is not entirely separate from modern social justice issues and the reckoning on race that has accelerated in recent years. Nonprofit institutions, both big and small, should be attentive to cultural shifts and evolving norms that have the ability to change entire sectors of the nonprofit tax-exempt world. Read more ➝     Summary 2U set to acquire nonprofit edX for deal north of $600M – TechCrunch Nonprofit: Number of drownings in Great Lakes jumps in 2021 Parkland Nonprofit Raises Funds for Surfside Families

An exit interview with Ann, Technical Creative Director of WholeWhale.com reflecting on lessons over 7 years with the company.  Ann Nguyen Technical Creative Director On Social https://www.linkedin.com/in/nguyenann https://twitter.com/annnnnguyen    Ann joined Whole Whale in 2013 and has been making splashes since then in the areas of design, development, and A/B testing. She keeps the New York team afloat and works directly with clients on using design and tech to scale their impact. During her time at Whole Whale, Ann has overseen site builds that include DREAM, the LAMP, and Donate Life America. Beyond website development, Ann has led the charge on work with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the One Love Foundation, Charitybuzz, Prizeo, and United Way ALICE. Ann is also the product manager behind Lighthouse by Whole Whale and is currently working with Power Poetry on their Poetry Genome, a tool that uses machine learning to generate a percentage comparison to various writers based on the theme, style, and content of any poem on the site. Both classic and contemporary writers are represented in different sections of our Genome (shoutout to Shakespeare and Kendrick). Ann is a regular speaker and lecturer on nonprofit tech topics. She’s presented on machine learning for good and A/B testing for organ donations at the 2018 Strata Data Conference in San José, and spoke at the 2018 Strata Data Conference in New York on “How to Be Aggressively Tone-Deaf Using Data (or, We Should all Be For-Benefits).” 2018 also saw Ann copresent on A/B testing with the Wikimedia Foundation at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans. Ann has guest lectured at NYU, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College. She also frequently joins design discussions at various panels from the Lowline to the White House. Before joining Whole Whale, Ann worked with a wide range of organizations, including the Ford Foundation, SumAll Foundation, and Bitly.

Nonprofit news for the week of 6/28/2021   Warren Buffett Gives Away $4.1 Billion To Charity, Steps Down From Gates Foundation Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world, has announced a donation of nearly $4.1 billion to charity. This donation comes on the heels of other massive philanthropic donations from wealthy individuals like MacKenzie Scott. Buffet has previously said he seeks to give nearly all his money away to philanthropic causes. Also last week it was announced that Warren Buffett would be stepping down from the board of the Gates Foundation, just weeks after the divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates. Read more ➝ Raiders DE Carl Nassib Comes Out, Gives $100k To Trevor Project Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib came out last week, making him the first active NFL football player to come out as gay. In the announcement video, Nassib states his intention to donate $100k to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention to LGBTQ+ youth. Read more ➝   Summary Woman Gets 6 Years in Prison for Embezzling From Nonprofits Nonprofit News Media Pace Picking Up House GOP Members Demand Details of $350 Million in Grants From Nonprofit in 2020 Election Former drug dealer sparks nonprofit to train more young people to be welders for shipbuilding and repair    

We interview Quincy Larson, the founder and a teacher at freeCodeCamp.org. freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit community that helps millions of people learn to code 100% for free helping thousands of people find their first coding job. Quincy shares how the organization got started, built a strong volunteer base and grew its amazing educational library course by course.    Learn more and support at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/     

Nonprofit news summary for the week of June 22nd, 2021.  Charitable Giving Reaches All-Time High In 2020 - Report A new Giving USA report says that U.S. charitable giving reached an all-time high of approximately $471 billion. Driven by factors such as an unprecedented pandemic and a broad reckoning over racial violence, giving increased 5.1% from 2019 to 2020 (3.8% when adjusted for inflation). Experts note that a strong finish by financial markets including the S&P 500 (changes in which track with changes in individual and foundation giving) likely contributed to the spike. While individual giving increased 2%, giving from foundations jumped nearly 17% year over year. While lots of nonprofits, especially civil rights organizations, saw increases in funding — arts, culture, and disease-specific organizations saw a decrease.Read more ➝ Juneteenth Now A Federal Holiday Congress has overwhelmingly approved a bill making Juneteenth a federally-recognized holiday. With a 415-14 vote in the House of Representatives, June 19th will be officially recognized as a day commemorating the end of slavery in America. This is the first new federal holiday to be authorized since the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983. Read more ➝   Summary Nonprofit journalism grew in 2020 — and individual donors played a large part National Young Farmers Coalition | Young Farmers 2020 Accountability Report Girl Scouts Stuck With Over 15 Million Boxes of Unsold Cookies MacKenzie Scott’s latest round of $2.7B in gifts prioritizes philanthropy infrastructure

Nonprofit news summaries for the week of June 14th, 2021.    Featured product: A new Inclusivity Language Tool from Whole Whale. Helping organizations check their websites for inclusive language.  New Federal Legislation Aims To Speed Up Donor Advised Funds’ Impact To Charities New proposed legislation introduced by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) seeks to speed up the process by which donor-advised funds (DAFs) would be disbursed to nonprofit organizations. While controversial within certain philanthropic circles, the Accelerating Charitable Efforts (ACE) Act would establish timeframes for DAF distribution and new rules for DAFs, including both 15 and 50-year options. Read more ➝ Chicago-based Journalism Nonprofit Wins Pulitzer The Invisible Institute, a nonprofit news organization based out of the south side of Chicago, along with the staffs of The Marshall Project, Alabama Media Group, and The Indianapolis Star, have won a coveted Pulitzer Prize in the “National Reporting” category for investigative reporting that looked into Police K-9 units. Read more ➝ Summary   Big law firms are donating pro bono hours to block unions at legal nonprofits where their partners are board members EveryAction’s Acquisition Spree Lands Salsa Labs Square Launches $5M Bitcoin Fund to Promote Crypto Inclusion What the donor-advised fund payout rate means for philanthropy and how it fits into the bigger charitable giving picture How An Oklahoma STEM Nonprofit Is Empowering Students To Digitally Rebuild Tulsa's Black Wall Street