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??How Community-Based Public Space Can Build Civic Trust: Lessons from Akron

NonProfit Quarterly

That changed when a team from Reimagining the Civic Commons decided to reinvigorate public spaces in Akron’s systemically disinvested neighborhoods, including Summit Lake. Moving at the Speed of Trust Employing deep listening, engaging in meetings, and building one-on-one relationships with neighbors…helped inform public space design.

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Lifting a Powerful Policy Lever for Housing Justice

Stanford Social Innovation Review

By Tiffany Manuel & Dana Bourland What if government, the philanthropic sector, and community advocates could pull a policy lever and advance housing, climate, and racial justice all at once? Public comment ended in April 2023, and HUD will likely release the final rule sometime later this year. But we’re not there quite yet.

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Shifting the Harmful Narratives and Practices of Work Requirements

NonProfit Quarterly

Image credit: Drazen Zigic on istock.com Work requirements—or requiring people to find employment in order to access public benefits—force people to prove that they deserve a social safety net. But where did they come from, and why are they still a central part of economic policy today? So, what keeps them alive today?

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Whose Capital? Our Capital! The Power of Workers’ Pensions for the Common Good

NonProfit Quarterly

Imagine your outrage if you were a public school teacher and your pension fund invested in a company that supported and lobbied for vouchers and charter schools. Public employee pension funds in the United States have $5.99 Public employee pension funds in the United States have $5.99 Pension Funds: Whose Capital? Our Capital!

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We Must Be Founders

Stanford Social Innovation Review

To change peoples’ material reality, however, means rehauling the entire operating system of our democracy, not just tinkering with its policies. Historically, for example, Black public health leaders in Pittsburgh created Freedom House Ambulance Services after being neglected by police-staffed ambulances.

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The Pitfalls of Personal Judgment

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Yet it can also create space for bias: familiarity can be derived from a variety of factors—the words someone uses, their background, conjugation, or even eye color—but it’s often connected to culture, ethnicity, and/or traditional access to social capital. Invest in bias training for staff.

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The EPA Launches Final Strategy on Lead Mitigation

NonProfit Quarterly

In developing the report, the EPA accepted feedback from the public from October 2021 through March 2022 and conducted nearly a dozen public listening sessions, including one for tribal communities as they are some of the most impacted by lead. No amount of lead is safe in the blood.