Issue Highlights
Jane Goodall Reveals 90th Birthday Plans (Exclusive)
Even as she approaches 90, Goodall's schedule remains busier than ever. According to the Jane Goodall Institute, the tireless advocate — who travels about 300 days a year sharing her passion for chimpanzees and environmental issues — “will continue to spread her message of hope through action” in various parts of the world this year.
Eight Questions for Shelby Chestnut, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center | Inside Philanthropy
IP spoke with Chestnut about their background, work at Transgender Law Center, and hopes for philanthropy.
LGBT Ugandans won't be allowed to join together to fight for their rights
The Uganda Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court ruling that the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) was right to reject official registration of the LGBTQ rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).
LGBTQ Social Justice
IMF Warns Uganda’s Anti-LGBTQ Law Risks Program Objectives - Bloomberg
Uganda’s harsh law outlawing homosexuality is undermining foreign direct investment and tourism inflows, hurting attempts by authorities at meeting objectives under an International Monetary Fund program, the lender warned.
Hate crimes targeting LGBTQ people at schools have sharply risen in recent years - The Washington Post
The Post analysis found that the number of anti-LGBTQ+ school hate crimes serious enough to be reported to local police more than doubled nationwide between 2015-2019 and 2021-2022. The rise is steeper in the 28 states that have passed laws curbing the rights of transgender students at school and restricting how teachers can talk about issues of gender and sexuality.
Massive Defeat For Anti-Trans And Anti-LGBTQ+ Riders In Spending Bill As Dems Hold Firm
These policy riders included bans on coverage for gender-affirming care, DEI bans, sports bans, and more. Despite some indications that Democrats might compromise due to the sheer number of conservative policy riders, it appears those fears did not come to fruition. Democrats held firm in negotiations, and the most impactful anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ riders were nowhere to be found.
Biden to ban LGBTQ pride flags at US embassies in spending bill deal to avert shutdown | South China Morning Post
The decision was part of a US$1.2 trillion spending deal to keep most US government agencies open through September 30
New Survey Shows Broad Support for LGBTQ Rights Nationally, Despite Overall Declines in the Past Year
For the first time since PRRI’s American Values Atlas began tracking nationwide support for three key policies — nondiscrimination protections, religiously based service refusals, and same-sex marriage — PRRI found a decline in support for LGBTQ rights across all three measures in the past year. However, strong majorities of Americans, including many Americans of faith, continue to support nondiscrimination protections and same-sex marriage rights for LGBTQ individuals, and oppose allowing small business owners to refuse service to LGBTQ people based on their religious beliefs.
LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6%
The current figure is up from 5.6% four years ago and 3.5% in 2012, Gallup’s first year of measuring sexual orientation and transgender identity.
David Mixner, Fierce Fighter for Gay Rights, Is Dead at 77 - The New York Times
He persuaded Ronald Reagan to help defeat a proposed ban on L.G.B.T.Q. schoolteachers in California in 1978, and he sparred with his friend Bill Clinton over “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Sexual orientation, gender ID can be talked about in Florida classrooms under lawsuit settlement
The settlement clarifies what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of a state law that critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”
Florida book bans: Moms for Liberty members create librarian training
Moms for Liberty members made up three of six members of a Department of Education workgroup that met Thursday in Tallahassee to redevelop an online training program for school librarians and media specialists following a 2023 state law focused on book challenges.
North Carolina Ruling Shows the Price of Outdated Parentage Laws - Mombian
A North Carolina Appeals Court has ruled that a nonbiological mother, despite sharing custody of the child she and her former partner had via IVF, does not owe child support because she is not a legal parent and did not agree in writing to provide support.
Great Apes & Gibbons
UN probes controversial forest carbon agreement in Malaysian Borneo
questions arose as to whether the state’s Indigenous peoples, who collectively account for more than half its population, had been adequately informed about the agreement’s plans for 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of Sabah’s forests
To detect illegal roads in remote areas, AI comes into play
Illegal roads, which fall outside the purview of environmental governance, often cut through dense forests and cause harm to the biodiversity living in fragile ecosystems.
Can Europe Save Forests Without Killing Jobs in Malaysia? - The New York Times
The European Union’s law, which was passed last year, bars products that use palm oil and other commodities like rubber and wood that come from forestland that was converted to agriculture after 2020.
Philanthropy
Who Is Binaifer Nowrojee, the New President of Open Society Foundations? | Inside Philanthropy
Born in London to an Indian family and raised in Kenya, she is perhaps best-known for her central role in the grantmaker’s multi-year restructuring, under which the once-massive operation has laid off staff, shuttered programs and closed offices, even as it has maintained its grantmaking levels.
Four Big Takeaways from MacKenzie Scott's Open Call Grant Drop | Inside Philanthropy
Will her latest round of funding convince her peers to adopt trust-based practices like unrestricted support and participatory grantmaking panels? Will she expand her footprint in the systems change space? And to what extent will she channel future giving through what she calls an “ongoing” open call effort?
Time will tell how that all plays out. In the meantime, let’s look at a few more definitive takeaways from Yield Giving’s open call results.
One Year After ChatGPT4: Where is Philanthropy? - The Center for Effective Philanthropy
48 percent of funders and 66 percent of nonprofit respondents claim their organization currently utilizes some type of AI. While the nonprofit field often lags industry in technology adoption, in this instance, grantmakers are trailing their grantees.
Nonprofit Boards Remain Predominantly White. Do Funders Care? | Inside Philanthropy
The majority of nonprofits serve populations of color, at least in part, but a full 78% of nonprofit board members are white — and 22% of organizations say that they don’t have a single person of color sitting on their board, according to BoardSource’s 2021 “Leading With Intent” report.
Response to Sommer: How to miss the point of board members - Alliance magazine
In his article on staff relations with boards, Simon Sommer makes three central claims, and they come one right after the other:
The primary role of a board is to ensure that every action taken by the foundation aligns with its charter and the law. Deep expertise in the programmatic areas of a foundation does not fall within this remit. Education of the board by the team, in this context, is therefore not a requisite. The only problem with this argument is that the first part is too narrow, the second part ignores the positive changes in foundation governance over the past two decades or more, and the third part is an unnecessary restriction on good organizational communication. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Learning from Grantee Feedback: Policy, Process, and Cultural Changes That Make a Difference - The Center for Effective Philanthropy
just under three years later, on our next survey, our scores improved markedly.
What made the difference? We believe three overarching factors enabled the change: shifts in grantmaking policy, grantmaking processes, and, lastly and most especially, grantmaking culture.
Not Sure Where to Start With Participatory Philanthropy? There’s a New Tool to Help | Inside Philanthropy
The interactive self-assessment lets funders gauge their level of participatory practice in all facets of their operations, such as grantmaking, governance and leadership, and communication, and lays out a series of questions to facilitate goal-setting so leaders can take that next step.
Power does not shift easily - Alliance magazine
Early in our process, we realised the need for internal clarity on what we meant by ‘decolonising our work’ and ‘shifting power’. These are big concepts, often open to interpretation, which meant it was important to create collective understanding on their meaning in the context of who we wanted to be. For us, decolonising and shifting power means disrupting the dominant funding system especially in the disability justice space.
Demystifying Candid data
to demystify how exactly Candid goes about collecting better and more timely data and numerous ways we offer data that will help nonprofits achieve their missions for free or at a discount
The politics of reparations: The path to racial equity requires more philanthropic investment - Alliance magazine
The Bridgespan Group, a global non-profit that advises philanthropy, NGOs and impact investors, and Liberation Ventures, an intermediary organisation and donor committed to reparations, collaborated on a report on the role that philanthropy could play in the movement for reparations and building a culture of racial repair