Fresh Surge of Flu Cases and Vaccine Shortages Raise Anxiety on Campuses

College campuses experienced a surge in flu cases last week just as vaccine shortages and delays were forcing many to postpone scheduled shot clinics, the American College Health Association reported on Wednesday. Some of the increases in what the association called "influenza-like illnesses"—widely thought to be the H1N1, popularly called swine flu—occurred in regions that had seemed to be recovering from severe outbreaks earlier this fall. The unexpected rebounds in the Southeast, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast have some health experts worried that the holiday season might bring some colleges a double dose of illness.

Full-text post by Katherine Mangan is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/28/09.

Green Offshoots

A small but growing number of environmental nonprofit organizations are establishing for-profit businesses to pursue their agendas and build a green-economy work force. Commercial ventures such as SmartRoofs, a spin-off of the nonprofit group Sustainable South Bronx, also generate revenue for the parent organizations, potentially reducing their dependence on foundations, individual donors, and government grants. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins of Green for All, a national group working to develop environmentally friendly economic opportunities in poor areas, called such enterprises “early adopters” that are “paving the way for mainstream business to integrate the concept of green jobs into everyday practices.”

Full-text post by Liz Galst is available via The New York Times, 10/28/09.

Charitable Giving for U.S. Health Care Rises a Tepid $241 Million in 2008, While Canadian Charitable Giving Plunges 13 Percent, Association for Health

Charitable donations to benefit U.S. health care grew by $241-million, to $8.6-billion, in 2008, a 2.9 percent growth. In Canada health-care giving plummeted by nearly 13 percent, to just under $1.1-billion. The slight bump in U.S. medical giving resulted from most nonprofit hospitals and health-care systems closing their books before the recession hit with full force in the final quarter of 2008, the association reported. Institutions that closed at end of the calendar year reported a 0.2 percent fund-raising dip.

Full-text post by Kathy Renzetti is available via the New York Post, 10/26/09.

Doing the Most Good, Digitally

In this age of instant communication online, a lot of money could be saved and organizations can be far more efficient and get much broader distribution by going 100 percent to a virtual annual report. A need to transition the Salvation Army's annual report to digital-only occurred to Maj. George Hood, the organization's national community relations and development secretary, and he discusses a downloadable annual report on the organization's Web site — basically a printable version of the mailed annual report.

Full-text post by Abny Santicola is available via Fundraising Success, 10/27/09.

Billionaire Aids Charity That Aided Him

Sergey Brin, the Russian-born co-founder of Google, has donated $1-million to the Jewish organization most responsible for his childhood immigration to the United States. The gift to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was the largest of several Mr. Brin gave to groups that assisted his family’s move from the Soviet Union 30 years ago, when he was 6. The aid society helped the Brins apply for visas, paid for transport, and gave them money as they moved from Russia to Paris to Maryland. “I would have never had the kinds of opportunities I’ve had here in the Soviet Union, or even in Russia today,” said Mr. Brin, who in recent months has publicly discussed giving away more of his estimated $16-billion fortune. “I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that’s what this organization does.”

Full-text post by Stephanie Strom is available via The New York Times, 10/24/09.

U. of Phoenix Expects to Spend Up to $80.5-Million in Settling Whistle-Blower Case

The parent company of the University of Phoenix expects to spend no more than $80.5-million to settle a contentious six-year-old whistle-blower lawsuit filed by two former admissions counselors, the company announced on Tuesday. While the amount could be a record settlement for an institution of higher education, the sum is far smaller than the $1.5-billion that the parties had hoped to collect for themselves and the federal government after accusing Phoenix of obtaining federal student-aid funds under false pretenses.

Full-text post by Goldie Blumenstyk is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/27/09.

Cuomo's pay-to-play rap for nonprofits

Dozens of New York State charities have been ordered by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to take back illegal political contributions or risk losing their tax-exempt status. A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo’s office said an investigation found “widespread” donations by nonprofit groups to candidates and officeholders, including state legislators and New York City Council members, in violation of federal and state law. Many of the groups reportedly received government grants arranged by the politicians they supported.

Full-text post by Fredric Dicker and Sally Goldenberg is available via the New York Post, 10/23/09.

Presidents Favor Reining In Athletics Costs but Feel Powerless to Effect Change

A majority of college presidents at the nation's largest athletics programs favor sweeping change to contain the escalating costs associated with big-time college sports, but are hard-pressed to identify an entity that can achieve it. Those are among the key findings of a new report on the financing of major-college athletics programs that was issued on Monday by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. The report was based on a survey of 95 college presidents in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's most competitive grouping and was conducted last spring. The report also includes comments based on interviews with nearly a quarter of the campus leaders surveyed.

Full-text post by Libby Sander is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/26/09.

Carnegie Medals Recognize Catalysts for Giving

This week, the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy was awarded to outstanding individual philanthropists and family foundations who have embodied Andrew Carnegie's ideals. Drawing parallels to the Nobel Prize in honoring individual contributions to society, the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy recognizes individuals who live in the same spirit as Andrew Carnegie: “private wealth for the public good.”

Full-text post by Susan Carey Dempsey is available via onPhilanthropy, 10/23/09.

Couple donates $5 million to UVa Health System

A couple with a record of philanthropy has donated $5 million to fund diabetes research at the University of Virginia Health System. The gift by Paul and Diane Manning comes on top of nearly $3 million they've donated to the university in recent years. Paul Manning, whose two children have diabetes, says he thinks the health system has the best shot in the country of ultimately discovering a cure for Type I diabetes. Manning is the chief executive officer of PBM Products in Gordonsville, which markets and distributes baby formula to more than 20,000 retail locations.

Full-text post by Brandon Shulleeta is available via the Charlottesville Daily Progress, 10/25/09.

Troubled Barber-Scotia College Seeks Revival

Barber-Scotia, a four-year college here, is on the edge of extinction. The college lost its accreditation in 2004, and total enrollment is down to a dozen, 10 of whom are first-year students. The historically black college, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is saddled with nearly $11-million in debt and can afford neither to maintain many of the buildings on its historic campus nor to tear them down. Its supporters, however, are trying to resuscitate the college.
Full-text post by Eric Kelderman is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/18/09.

Corzine reveals donations by his foundation

Under pressure from his Republican challenger, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has released details of his charitable foundation’s giving for the past year. The more than $3-million in donations benefited community organizations, African-American churches, cultural groups, and foundations, some with ties to New Jersey power brokers and to the head of the state’s Black Ministers Council, who last week endorsed the incumbent Democrat. Republican candidate Chris Christie pressed Mr. Corzine to release the records, claiming that much of Corzine’s philanthropy is politically motivated. The Corzine campaign had originally planned to make the foundation records public after the election.

Full-text post by Chris Megerian is available via The Star-Ledger, 10/22/09.

Online College Access Comes at a High Price for Students, Survey Says

Online programs are expanding access to education, but a survey reveals new details about the cost of that access, suggesting that students enrolled in online programs may pay higher fees than their on-campus counterparts. The report found that, at nearly half of the 182 institutions surveyed, tuition for online students is often higher than for on-campus students. Students in some online programs may face bills that are 10 percent or more than those in parallel face-to-face programs.



Full-text post by Marc Parry is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/22/09.

Pharmaceutical executive donates $100 million to St. John's Health Center

Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of Abraxis BioScience, and his wife, Michelle Chan, have pledged $65 million to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. The gift, which comes on top of the $35 million the couple donated to St. John's two years ago, will be used to create several research centers and help fund future projects at the hospital.

Full-text post by Molly Hennessy-Fiske is available via the Los Angeles Times, 10/1/09.

Fairfield man's philanthropy makes Yale cancer center a reality

Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven is a brand new cancer center, reflecting the philanthropy of Fairfield resident Joel E. Smilow. The complex will feature 112 patient beds, a healing garden, a boutique, outpatient treatment rooms, state-of-the-art operating rooms, infusion suites, diagnostic imaging services, radiation oncology and a specialized women's cancer center. A member of the Yale University Class of 1954, Smilow has been one of the school's most ardent football boosters.

Full-text post by John Burgeson is available via the Connecticut Post, 10/20/09.

Fulbright Program Adapts to Obama Administration's Priorities

The Fulbright Program, run by the U.S. Department of State, has always straddled the worlds of academe and public policy. Tailored to enhance both the international interests of the United States and the scholarship it supports, the program is sending 1,551 students and 1,250 scholars abroad this academic year. Now, with a new administration in place, the State Department is reviewing the disciplines and areas of the world on which it wishes to focus, with an eye toward putting President Obama's stamp on the program.

Full-text post by Beth McMurtrie is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/18/09.

The State of College Admissions: Full of Uncertainty

As the number of college applicants and applications have gone up, many colleges have seen other things go down, including their acceptance rates, their "yield" rates, and their confidence in predicting enrollment outcomes. A new report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling puts that trend in context. For the fourth straight year, about three-quarters of four-year colleges and universities saw an increase in applications over the previous year, says the report, which examined the admissions cycle for freshmen who enrolled in the fall of 2008. Twenty-two percent of those applicants had submitted seven or more applications, up from 19 percent in 2007.
Full-text post by Eric Hoover is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/20/09.

Financial Giants Donating Little to Obama Party

The Wall Street giants that received a financial lifeline from Washington may have no compunction about paying big bonuses to their dealmakers and traders. But their willingness to deliver “thank you” gifts to President Obama and the Democrats is another question altogether. Mr. Obama will fly to New York on Tuesday for a lavish Democratic Party fund-raising dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for about 200 big donors. Each donor is paying the legal maximum of $30,400 and is allowed to take a date. Four of the seven “co-chairs” listed on the invitation work in finance, and Democratic Party organizers say they expect that about a third of the attendees will come from the industry.

Full-text post by David D. Kirkpatrick is available via The New York Times, 10/20/09.

Bentz Whaley Flessner and WealthEngine Team Up to Provide Integrated Prospect Research and Analytics

Bentz Whaley Flessner announced today that it has partnered with WealthEngine, a leading provider of sophisticated prospect research tools and screening services, to provide the market’s most comprehensive and effective analysis of giving capacity and propensity.

For more than 18 years, WealthEngine has been helping higher education, healthcare and nonprofit organizations understand the giving capacity of their donors and identify prospective future donors through its comprehensive wealth screening capabilities. Today, more than 2000 organizations rely on WealthEngine’s wealth identification and verification tools for their donor and prospect research.

Bentz Whaley Flessner’s analytics division, DonorCast, founded by Joshua Birkholz, principal of Bentz Whaley Flessner and author of Fundraising Analytics, specializes in custom-engineered analytics and data mining training that provide nonprofit organizations with important insights into the giving patterns among their own donors across a spectrum of fundraising programs. DonorCast uses predictive modeling and statistical analysis to increase the sophistication of fundraising programs and to point their efforts to the greatest opportunities for success.

“We have proven to be a solid combination as our clients already respect the tremendous value WealthEngine and Bentz Whaley Flessner deliver within our own respective disciplines of prospect research and modeling,” said Tony Glowacki, chief executive officer of WealthEngine. “In fact, working together, we recently won engagements at two major universities in the Midwest. By formalizing our partnership going forward, institutions can benefit from our integrated approach to wealth identification, prospect segmentation and predictive modeling.”

Through this integrated approach, WealthEngine will comprehensively screen an institution’s records for wealth qualification and giving capacity. WealthEngine’s screening across 30 databases provides the capability to quickly identify and focus on the best major gift prospects. It also provides the capability to further segment the results to identify opportunities for annual appeal upgrades. DonorCast will then incorporate the wealth screening results and constituent information from the client’s database to perform highly customized predictive modeling on all individual records in the database.

“The goal is to identify and segment the best prospects for each institution by using the latest in capacity and propensity analysis, thereby providing transformative change to our clients’ prospect development efforts.” said Joshua Birkholz director of DonorCast. “Our unique “screen then model” approach arose from the many requests of prospect research and development professionals uncomfortable with pre-filtering screening by demographic modeling. Together with WealthEngine, we’re answering the call for these proven approaches that yield measurable results.”

About WealthEngine
WealthEngine is a leading provider of sophisticated prospect research and analytics to nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education, financial services firms, and other for profit organizations. More than 2000 clients use WealthEngine’s products for comprehensive prospect research on individuals, companies and foundations. Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., WealthEngine offers products in both the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit http://www.wealthengine.com/.

About Bentz Whaley Flessner
Bentz Whaley Flessner is a full-service consulting firm dedicated to helping leading nonprofit organizations build strong institutional advancement programs and execute successful campaigns. Since 1983, Bentz Whaley Flessner has provided counsel and assistance for every step of the development process. DonorCast, the firm’s analytics division, offers the most comprehensive custom analytics services for fundraising.
For more information, visit http://www.bwf.com/.

Goldman Bonus Stigma May Overshadow Charitable Effort

Goldman Sachs, reportedly exploring ways to quell a public backlash over expected record year-end bonuses for its executives, is working with the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting effort, on a giving plan that could exceed $1-billion. After accepting, and repaying, billions of dollars in government funds as part of the federal bank bailout, Goldman Sachs earned record second-quarter profits and has already set aside $16.7-billion for compensation this year, putting it in a public-relations bind that has fueled Wall Street speculation of major charitable activity.

Full-text post by Catherine Rampell is available via Bloomberg, 10/15/09.

[Your Name Here] Chair of Economics

The New York Times reports on named giving opportunities at Harvard Law School. A gift of $4 million, for example, enables the donor to imprint a name on a newly endowed professorship. The amount for a named professorship is about the same at Princeton, according to a donation wish list that a Princeton official sent me last year.

Full-text post by Catherine Rampell is available via The New York Times, 10/15/09.

Regular Checkups of Green Buildings Can Yield Millions in Savings

Some universities have begun to hire energy consultants to go through campus buildings to look for inefficiencies. Experts say regular checkups on the buildings could save colleges thousands or even millions of dollars a year. And while such maintenance has so far been optional, LEED officials are considering a proposal that would necessitate more-frequent monitoring of building systems.

Full-text post by Scott Carlson is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/12/09.

M.B.A.s Seek Social Change

The growing popularity of social entrepreneurship is prompting business schools to increase their offerings for students interested in building for-profit companies that serve socially responsible ends. Oxford, Cornell, and Dartmouth are among the universities seeing greater demand for instruction in social entrepreneurship among MBA students. Along with concerns about the shrinking market for traditional business jobs, “there’s also a sort of underlying sense of guilt about what happened during the crisis,” said Colin Mayer, dean of Oxford’s Saiid Business School.

Full-text post by Diana Middleton is available via The Wall Street Journal, 10/15/09.

NCSU sacks head of alumni association

The interim chancellor of North Carolina State University has fired Lennie Barton, associate vice chancellor for alumni relations, citing stagnant alumni-association membership and problems with the association's finances. Supporters of Mr. Barton believe his firing had more to do with the publication of an article in the university's alumni magazine that took a critical look at the university's role in a recent scandal over the hiring of the governor's wife.

Full-text post by Jay Price is available via The News & Observer, 10/13/09.

Senate Committee Passes Health-Care Bill with Charity Provisions

The Senate Finance Committee Tuesday passed health-care legislation that would allow small charities to receive a tax credit to help them provide health insurance to their employees.
The bill, approved by a 14-9 vote, would also require nonprofit hospitals to conduct “a community health needs assessment” at least once every three years and take other steps.

Full-text post by Suzanne Perry and Grant Williams is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 10/13/09.

Schmidt ’76 donates $25 million for technology fund

Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has committed $25-million to establish a technology-innovation fund at his alma mater, Princeton University. The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund will primarily provide support to professors to research new technologies or acquire innovative equipment that could have a major impact on the development of a particular field.

Full-text post by Andrew Sartorius is available via The Daily Princetonian, 10/14/09.

Senator Invokes Waterboarding in Debate Over Political-Science Grants

Federal grants for political-science research are wasteful and unnecessary, and they fuel a deficit that will "waterboard" America's children, a Republican senator declared on Tuesday. The comment came as the Senate took up debate on an amendment offered by Sen. Tom A. Coburn, a Republican of Oklahoma, that would cut off money for the National Science Foundation's political-science program. The measure would amend HR 2847, the annual appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce and Justice and the federal science agencies.
Full-text post by David Glenn is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/14/09.

Penn and Southern Cal Top Ranking of Good-Neighbor Colleges

The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California are the higher-education institutions most engaged with their local communities, according to survey results presented today at a conference in Philadelphia. The survey, called "Saviors of Our Cities: 2009 Survey of College and University Civic Partnerships," ranked 25 colleges and universities in terms of their contributions to the communities surrounding their campuses.

Full-text post by Simmi Aujla is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/12/09.

World’s poorest farmers now offered insurance

The U.S. branch of the global development charity Oxfam is offering drought insurance to farmers in Africa to support agriculture and lessen the impact of climate-triggered famines. The program, supported by the Rockefeller Institute and the insurance giant Swiss Re, has thus far made coverage available to about 200 Ethiopian households, 38 percent of them headed by women. With a new $565,000 Rockefeller grant, the effort is set to expand from one village to five.
Full-text post by James F. Smith is available via The Boston Globe, 10/13/09.

Despite Verdict, Fate of Astor Fortune Is Uncertain

The fate of the late Brooke Astor’s $180-million estate, and of charitable bequests in the tens of millions of dollars, remains cloudy following Thursday’s conviction of her son on fraud charges. A key issue was whether Mr. Marshall took advantage of Ms. Astor’s deteriorating mental state to secure changes in her will, boosting his control of her money and reducing bequests to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and other organizations she had long supported.
Full-text post by A. G. Sulzberger is available via The New York Times, 10/8/09.

Massachusetts gets high marks in health care report

Massachusetts is among the top states in the nation when it comes to access to and delivery of health care, according to a study by The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System's second state scorecard report. The “state health care scorecard” by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund detailed sizable differences among the states in the cost and quality of health care, as well as in access to care and health outcomes. Where the Bay State ranked highest was in the areas of insurance coverage for non-elderly adults and children, which is notable in a widely varied states report.

Full-text post is available via The Boston Business Journal, 10/8/09.

For access to The Commonwealth Fund's report see Science Daily, 10/9/09.

Harvard Losing Money Externally Helps Mendillo Return to Roots

As losses prompt Harvard University’s shift from external fund managers on the heels of its heavy endowment losses last year, the university is returning to its investing roots. The new strategy used by Harvard Management Company’s chief executive officer, Jane Mendillo, reverses that pursued by Jack Meyer, who headed the endowment from 1990 to 2005 and increased the portion in the hands of independent managers from 15 to 50 percent. The endowment grew sixfold during Mr. Meyer’s tenure but dropped from $36-billion to $26-billion in the most recent fiscal year.

Full-text post by Gillian Wee is available via Bloomberg, 10/8/09.

Donations to cancer institute hit $1b

A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fund-raising campaign has hit the $1 billion mark a year earlier than expected, despite the economy. The campaign is setting what is believed to be a record for New England health care institutions, as the institute has collected more than 1.7 million gifts since the campaign began in late 2003.

Full-text post by Stephen Smith is available via The Boston Globe, 9/9/09.

ACORN Losing Funding From Big Foundations

In the wake of a series of embarrassing allegations, political-organizing group ACORN has lost the support of major funders, including the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Case Foundation and Bank of America. Videos of ACORN employees providing questionable advice surfaced recently, and the group is accused of financial mismanagement and fraud.

Full-text post by Susan Kinzie is available via The Washington Post, 10/3/09.

Pharmaceutical executive donates $100 million to St. John's Health Center

Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of Abraxis BioScience, and his wife, Michelle Chan, have pledged $65 million to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. The gift comes on top of the $35 million the couple donated to the hospital two years ago. Soon-Shiong reported that, among other things, the gift will be used to help link doctors and patients to hundreds of other hospitals as well as researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.

Full-text post by Molly Hennessy-Fiske is available via the Los Angeles Times, 10/1/09.

Annie E. Casey Foundation Official Tapped to Head National-Service Agency

President Obama announced on Friday he plans to nominate Patrick Corvington, a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and an expert on nonprofit leadership, as chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service. The nomination now must be approved by the Senate. The selection comes at a critical time for the corporation, which manages AmeriCorps and other national-service and volunteer programs.

Full-text post by Suzanne Perry is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 10/5/09.

Community Colleges Begin $1-Million Project to Improve Graduation Rates

With money from two foundations, eight two-year colleges are starting a pilot project to produce more graduates at a lower cost per student. The project will begin by identifying a set of common data that community colleges need to collect to determine their effectiveness. The project's goal is to have a voluntary accountability system in 20 community colleges by 2011.

Full-text post by Eric Kelderman is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/6/09.

Updates on Billion-Dollar Campaigns at 32 Institutions

There are 32 American universities that are seeking to raise at least $1-billion and these schools collected a total of $244-million in gifts and pledges during the last month for which they had data available. The campaign with the largest gain in the last month is the University of Illinois system, with $20-million. Each university is recognized, along with its most recent total, last month's increase, the original goal, and the planned completion date.

Full-text post by Marisa Lopez-Rivera is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/4/09.

Red Cross to Auction Off Little Pieces of Its History

The American Red Cross will sell off dozens of the historic and art treasures it has kept stored near Washington as part of its effort to close a $50-million budget deficit. The auction, including a Cartier clock lamp, original Christmas Seals, and a wax doll raffled off in 1864 to raise money for the care of Union soldiers, will begin next month and aims to raise $200,000. The charity will also save $3-million by shuttering its warehouse in Lorton, Va., and contracting out storage and archival operations.

Full-text post by Stephanie Strom is available via The New York Times, 10/2/09.

America Falling: Longtime Dominance in Education Erodes

The United States still leads the world in higher-education rankings, but the world is catching up. As American suffers from the worst recession in a generation, budget cuts threaten higher education at every level, as one result of this period of retrenchment is students stuck in overcrowded classes. In Asia, by contrast, some countries are investing in colleges to spur growth.

Full-text post by Karin Fischer is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/5/09.

Charitable Gift Annuities - A Cautionary Tale

When it comes to charitable gift planning, it is wise to know the rules and talk with the experts, advises James S. Hohn, Principal of Planned Giving Resources (http://www.pgresources.com/), who has more than three decades of knowledge and experience in planned giving and gift annuity development and administration. A few months ago, Hohn met with the Director of Development of a large nonprofit organization headquartered in New York State (NYS) to discuss their mature Charitable Gift Annuity (CGA) program established more than ten years ago.

Full-text post by James S. Hohn is available via onPhilanthropy, 10/2/09.

In China, Philanthropy as a New Measuring Stick

Jack Ma, chief executive of the Alibaba Group, and other board members took to the earthquake-ravaged regions of Sichuan province in late March 2009, donating supplies to villagers and school children. With $11 billion of the 2008 philanthropic donations in China going to relief efforts in the earthquake aftermath, the Alibaba Group is contributing the initial $5 million to start making modest loans to farmers and other small-business people in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, two of the poorest provinces in China. Alibaba’s donation is the latest example of a change in attitude by corporations in China toward philanthropy.

Full-text post by Julie Makinen is available via The New York Times, 9/22/09.

Some States Substitute Stimulus Dollars for Their Own Education Aid, Inspector General Says

A provision in this year's economic-stimulus law aimed at preventing states from cutting their education budgets may be having the opposite effect, according to a new memorandum by the Education Department's Office of Inspector General. The memorandum urges the Education Department to track state spending on public education to determine whether the "maintenance of effort" requirement is backfiring and encouraging states to cut education spending. See, new memorandum.

Full-text post by Kelly Field is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1/09.

Majority of Local United Ways Report Declines in Donations

In what officials said was a “stark” trend, the number of local United Ways reporting a decline in contributions shot up to 57 percent last year, from 34 percent in 2007, according to figures released by United Way Worldwide. The recession cut a deep swath in contributions to more than 300 of the nation’s largest United Ways last year, with the largest decline for the local United Way in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Full-text post by Holly Hall is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 9/30/09.

Cash Squeeze Said to Deny Legal Aid to Poor

Financially strapped legal-aid clinics will be forced to turn away nearly 1 million low-income people this year, The New York Times reports, citing a new study by the nonprofit Legal Services Corporation. The federally financed corporation said requests for aid are rising at the more than 900 offices it supports nationwide. Local legal clinics are turning away two people seeking help for every client they accept, a ratio that has changed little since the national organization’s last “justice gap” report four years ago.

Full-text post by John Schwartz is available via The New York Times, 9/29/09.