As expected, this month’s Rio+20 conference and the People’s Summit were vast and challenging to navigate, with more than 500 side events to the official conference. Luckily, the orientation webinar and the breakfast briefings organized by the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, the…

If one can accept that mega confabs such as Rio+20 are inevitably about more talks, then the text (outcome) of the negotiating document that was finalized at about 3 a.m. on Tuesday, June 19, will not be surprising (or shocking). At yesterday’s breakfast briefing for funders on inside strategies…

In his acceptance speech for the 2012 Nicholas P. Bollman Award for leaders who inspire through values and actions, Claudio Martinez, executive director of Boston’s Hyde Square Task Force, reminded an audience of nearly 200 funders that the “journey to become visible is still too hard to travel.”…

The Creativity Conundrum in Public Education Leadership Many of the men and women who shaped the world over the course of history, from Mozart to Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs, have done so by thinking well outside the sphere of traditional education. Famously, each of these men had some issues…

A well-respected colleague and I recently had a troubling conversation.  While we agreed that we are entering into a new era of corporate philanthropy, we found ourselves in a circular conversation with no shared platform to speak from about our differing strategies to achieve the triple…

We are marking the first anniversary of Philanthropy’s Promise with a wonderful milestone: 125 leading U.S. foundations that represent a total of more than $3.37 billion in annual giving have pledged to prioritize the needs and promote the democratic participation of underserved communities…

  Danny Murphy - Coauthor The opening of the new Louisiana State University and VA Medical complex slated for 2014–2015 in downtown New Orleans is about to open up hundreds of jobs online to service and run these medical centers. Will the unemployed residents of New Orleans get hired…

That’s an old saying, but in Cincinnati, the decision to adopt employer-driven career pathways as a workforce strategy had many “parents.” Career pathways help align training for individuals with employers’ needs, close skills gaps, and develop talent-supply chains for in-demand careers. It takes…

Preparing my slides for today’s “What’s Next for Green Careers?” session at the Second Annual National Fund meeting in Cincinnati gave me the opportunity to reflect on SkillWorks Green Jobs Initiative activities from 2009 to the present. It took me awhile to figure out what message I wanted to…

It’s safe to say the time for rethinking the national workforce development system is way overdue: The reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) is now 12 years overdue and counting—with no one expecting it anytime soon. Not that a new and improved WIA will solve the myriad problems in…

Living in Anchorage, Alaska, I am reminded on a daily basis that freedom is not free. As an important part of our community, the Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard have a significant presence that transcends their service to our nation. Combined with the very high number of veterans who make our…

A lot can happen in a year. Twelve months ago, Osama bin Laden was the most wanted man in the world and “occupy” was just a word, not a movement.  During the next year, one million men and women will leave the active duty military service and return to civilian life with their family and…

At Placer Community Foundation, our small staff of just 3.1 full-time employees means we need a staffing model that works incredibly well. We made a couple of decisions early on that really helped shape how we staff. First, we decided to focus on bequests. We knew that the professional adviser…

Should Congress direct 80 percent of the upcoming Clean Water Act civil fine from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to coastal ecosystem restoration and rebuilding local economies in the coastal regions of the affected States (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida)? If you live and…

How should a mid-sized foundation position its initiatives in this age of austerity and how can one county and community foundation influence state-level decisions? These are questions that the Erie Community Foundation asked when it planned an early childhood education initiative more than a year…

Hundreds of miles from urban centers like Memphis, Atlanta, and New Orleans, the five counties served by the Community Foundation of East Mississippi are a textbook definition of “rural.” Cotton was king here years ago, but ever since it left—along with a good deal of the manufacturing industry—…