Using the Whole Whale - A Nonprofit Podcast

Patagonia Goes ALL-IN on Nonprofits (news)

Patagonia Goes All-in Transferring Ownership to Nonprofit

The private B Corp company Patagonia, known for outdoor gear and its outspoken position on the environment has transferred its ownership to a nonprofit (reported by The NonProfit Times). The company, worth an estimated $3 Billion, is transferring 98% of non-voting stock to the Holdfast Collective a 501(c)(4), and 2% of the stock (all voting control) to the Patagonia Purpose Trust. 

Patagonia Founder, Yvon Chouinard has done something unprecedented for a company this size, ensuring that the $100m in profit each year will go toward philanthropic purposes instead of investors. The company still plans to donate 1% of profits toward grassroots environmental causes as well, at the discretion of the nonprofit. Further details of how money will be directed have not been revealed yet. 

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Summary

• The Ethereum Merge Is Done, Opening a New Era for the Second-Biggest Blockchain | CoinDesk
• More Than $1 Billion For Black And Underserved Communities
  The NonProfit Times
• Houston nonprofit helping migrants transported out of state by group of Republican governors | KHOU.com
• https://blackwealthdata.org/ 

 

Image from DALLE2 - Tree wearing a shirt.

 

Learn how to create AI content for your organization. 

Nonprofits Recognize Anniversary of September 11th Attacks (news)

Nonprofits Recognize Anniversary of September 11th Attacks With National Day of Service & Remembrance

This Sunday marked the 21st anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks. As Americans across the country reflect on the day, nonprofit and volunteer organizations stepped up to honor victims and families, as well as to pay forward the heroic acts of bravery and charitable acts of community displayed that September. The federally-recognized September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance brings together folks across the country to “rekindle the spirit of unity that arose in America in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” AmeriCorps CEO Michael D. Smith, says that “from supporting students and teachers, running food drives and making emergency preparedness kits to helping with home repairs and organizing cleanups, we can help our neighbors in communities across the country,” in an effort to “ensure that what unites us outshines what tries to divide us.”
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Summary

• Crypto Going Green? Ethereum 'Merge' Begins | MediaPost 
• Federal judge rules HIV drug mandate violates religious freedom | Roll Call
• $3.2 Billion Prediction: 2022 Giving Tuesday | Whole Whale

 

• Nonprofit prepares second Safe Outdoor Space for Albuquerque's homeless | KOB 4 

Donate Now, Pay Later Explained by B Generous

Conversation with Dom Kalms, the CEO and Founder of B Generous. B Generous allows for donors to donate now, and pay later. We discuss how this technology works, how nonprofits get money upfront and donors are allowed to pay back the loan interest-free over 9 months. 

 

There are new giving opportunities that are opened up with this new technology and Dom explains them on this podcast.

 

Donors want to give to the organizations they believe in more than ever before. B Generous makes that possible. 

Today in the United States, more than 70% of donors want to give more to their favorite nonprofit, but simply can’t…leaving donors with two options: don’t donate or use a credit card with high interest rates. We think that’s a false choice, which is why we’ve created a free way for you to support your favorite nonprofit now, while maintaining the convenience of paying over time.

 

 More about Dom Kalms, CEO and Founder of B Generous: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominickalms/ 

 

 

More about how donate now, pay later differs from pledge now, pay later. 

 

GOP Senate Ads Fail & NAACP NC Loses Nonprofit Status (news)

GOP-Tied NRSC Mismanaged Fundraising In Lead-Up To Crucial Midterm Elections

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the fundraising and campaign arm of the Senate Republicans, is facing backlash from its own party as details of how it lost millions on an ill-concieved fundraising strategy emerge. The NRSC, chaired by Rick Scott, managed to take in nearly $181.5 million in donation revenue by the end of this July, only to have spent 95% of what it had already brought in, according to detailed reporting from The New York Times. The committee now has less than half of the cash-on-hand of its Democratic counterpart, having gambled it all on a flawed digital donor acquisition strategy. The report also details an ethically dubious text-to-donate scheme in which millions of texts with the question “Should Biden Resign?” -- “Reply YES To Donate” processed donations immediately without any additional information. The WinRed platform insisted the NRSC abandon the tactic. Both GOP and Democratic campaigns have received criticism for aggressive marketing in the past. The 2020 Trump campaign was forced to provide nearly $122 million in refunds.
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Summary

• NC NAACP loses tax-exempt status, financial problems with IRS | Raleigh News & Observer 
• How an SF Housing Nonprofit Blew Almost $500K on a Flawed Effort To 'Tax Jeff Bezos' Ass' | SF Standard
• Fight For Website Control 'Destroying' Nonprofit, Judge Says | Law360
• Rape map where Republicans have made abortions illegal | The Democracy Labs 

Public Service & Student Debt Forgiveness (news)

Biden Announces $10k, $20k Student Loan Forgiveness For Most Borrowers

The Biden administration announced last week that up to $10k of federal student loan debt would be forgiven for eligible borrowers, including up to $20k for Pell Grant recipients. The sweeping announcement was a controversial policy move but nonetheless a major one, with tens of millions of borrowers affected. According to The White House, 87% of the eligible borrowers currently make less than $75,000 and will disproportionately benefit historically debt-burdened communities, including Black borrowers who hold a “disproportionate amount of student loan debt.” Nonprofit and public service employees should pay close attention to shifting (and temporarily expanded leniency) in rules for the government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Rules eliminating particularly onerous requirements have been temporarily waived but require borrowers to consolidate loans by October 31 to benefit. Read more here.

 

 

Summary

• Carbon Offsets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
• Why are so many nonprofit execs leaving their jobs? | Crain's Detroit
• What is SHADOW moderation & how is it silencing speech? | Whole Whale
• Hundreds of paddle boarders take to the lake for Austin nonprofit | CultureMap Austin

What is SHADOW moderation & how is it silencing speech?

A deep conversation on the topic of shadow moderation, a feature that lets moderators on platforms like Facebook and Reddit censor posts without alerting the person who posted it. 

 

We discuss how pernicious this problem is at scale with Rob Hawkins, the founder of Reveddit, which is a tool that lets users discover which of their content has been removed from Reddit.

 

This may seem like a small UX feature on the surface, but the implications of silencing speech in this way has large ramifications for the increasing polarization of discord online.  

 

 

About Rob Hawkins
Rob is a grassroots software developer living in Taiwan and is the founder of Reveddit, which is a tool that lets users discover which of their content has been removed from Reddit. Before Reveddit, Rob worked as a data scientist in the financial services sector to extract key information from large datasets. Rob also spent a year developing websites with DoSomething.org, an organization that inspires young people to change the world.

 

Resource links

https://www.CantSayAnything.win - A hub for everything Rob is doing to advocate for reviewable moderation on social media.

https://www.reveddit.com

https://twitter.com/rhaksw

 

 

 

Ai Image generated

Created with DALL·E, an AI system by OpenAI

“progression of a match being put out with smoke rising, Photojournalism ”

$1.6B Donation to Conservative Nonprofit (news)

Low-Profile Donor Gives $1.6 Billion To Conservative Political Nonprofit

Barre Seid, an “electronics manufacturing mogul,” has donated over $1.6 billion to the conservative political nonprofit Marble Freedom Trust, according to reporting from The New York Times. The 501(c)4 nonprofit, led by a prominent conservative political operator, represents the largest single donation to a political organization ever and dwarfs the spending of the top 15 GOP and Democratic-aligned nonprofits during the 2020 election. The donation was structured as a stock donation, as opposed to an all-cash donation, as a legal way to skirt a complicated web of tax rules. The Marble Freedom Trust is run by Leonard A. Leo, who among other titles, was previously vice president of the Federalist Society, and is largely credited with engineering an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas once jokingly referred to Mr. Leo as the “third most powerful person in the world,” as reported by The New York Times.
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Summary:

• Survey: U.S. Nonprofits Struggle to Find Workers, Funding | Government Technology
• $7.1 Billion in US Medical Debt Erased by Nonprofit Group -- How They Did It | GOBankingRates
• Nonprofit hospitals' outlook downgraded to 'deteriorating' by Fitch | Healthcare Finance News

 

Image from DALLE-2, an OpenAI project.

Prompt: "Rainstorm of money on an elephant, nature photography"

Learn how your organization could start using AI content creation. 

 

 

Historic Environmental Bill Passes! (news)

 

Nonprofits & Environmental Groups React To Landmark Inflation Reduction Act Legislation

The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law by the Biden White House shortly after passing through the Senate and House of Representatives in what has become a dramatic and unexpected win for Democrats and environmental activists alike. The new legislation is the largest investment in clean energy of any country in history, including hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy programs and environmental justice initiatives, among other non-climate provisions. “This is historic for environmental justice and front-line communities that have been all but ignored, overlooked, and underfunded,” according to Harold Mitchell Jr. of the South Carolina environmental group ReGenesis Institute. WWF says the new Act gets to the “root cause of climate change – carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels– and offers significant resources addressing those emissions in American businesses, on our roads, in our communities.”
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Summary

• WHO plans to rename monkeypox over stigmatization concerns | 
  ABC News
• Black Girls Code Founder Sues the Nonprofit After Her Ousting | Business Insider 
• New York City Council bill to help nonprofits in land bidding wars |  Crain's 
  
  
• This nonprofit shows how rigorous data analysis can dramatically reduce youth homelessness | GeekWire 

No Amnesty for NGO Report on Ukraine (news)

Amnesty International Triggers Global Criticism For Problematic Report Lacking Vital Context

Amnesty International published a new report as part of its ongoing reporting on the war in Ukraine that has been widely criticized as lacking critical context and framing, triggering both internal and external condemnation. The report criticizes the Ukrainian military for violating “international humanitarian law” by putting civilians in harm’s way in relation to where the Ukrainian military places defensive military equipment. While Amnesty (and other INGOs) rightly pride themselves on remaining neutral in evaluating humanitarian and legal violations (in fact HRW made similar assertions in a more thorough report), the framing of this particular report is being criticized for giving ammunition to Russian propaganda, misrepresenting legal norms via vague language, and sidelining Amnesty’s own Ukraine office in its publication. After inflammatory tweets from Amnesty’s Secretary General defending the report, Amnesty’s director of its Ukraine office resigned in protest. (AI’s Secretary General is now facing public calls to resign, and the organization has issued something of an apology.) Large nonprofits should heed this as a cautionary tale of the consequences of a very public fallout from bureaucratic misalignment of process and viewpoints between global/national and regional/affiliate offices.
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Summary

• PIR Offers New Top-Level Domains in Its ‘.ORG Family of Domains’ Portfolio | NonProfit PRO
• Nonprofits launch $100M plan to support local health workers | Daily Independent
• Planned Parenthood Action Fund sets new second quarter lobbying record amid fallout of Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade | Original Journalism from OpenSecrets 
• Nonprofit launches national Pickleball Day to make a difference in the community | ActionNewsJax.com 
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Trevor Project CEO Scrutiny for Past Pharma Consulting (news)

Nonprofit News.

 

Trevor Project CEO Under Fire For Purdue Pharma Consulting Work

Trevor Project CEO Amit Paley is coming under internal pressure from staff for previous consulting work done at McKinsey for Purdue Pharma, according to reporting from Teen Vogue. (The first revelations were published by the Huffington Post.)  Purdue Pharma, responsible for bringing OxyContin to market, is widely perceived as playing a critical role in the opioid crisis in America. Paley was a consultant at McKinsey working on the Purdue account, although his leadership and responsibilities in that role are disputed. Trevor Project staff have criticized the revelation, especially as the core mission of the Trevor Project is helping at-risk LGBTQ+ youth at risk of mental health crisis and suicide, verticals of care impacted by opioid abuse and misuse. The chair of Trevor Project’s board of directors has expressed “full confidence” in Paley while others inside the organization are quoted anonymously as saying the mood is “grim.”
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Summary:

• Post-'Roe' Digital-Privacy Concerns Should Send a Signal to Nonprofits: Take Online Security Seriously | The Chronicle of Philanthropy
• Senate Appropriations proposes $360 million for nonprofit security grants | Jewish Insider
• What Inflation? DAF Awards To NPOs Remain Strong | The NonProfit Times
  
  
• Nonprofit creates opportunities for formerly incarcerated | Spectrum News

 

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