WHAT WE’RE READING ELSEWHERE
Large national foundations from across the political spectrum are working together to counter a possible attempt by the Trump administration to revoke their tax-exempt status. Philanthropies including the Ford, Gates, and Charles Koch foundations “are discussing possible ways to respond,” such as whether to “seek legal representation as a class or individually should their tax status come under fire,” sources told the Wall Street Journal. The effort began after President Trump signed a Jan. 21 executive order targeting for possible investigation large foundations that support diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “Part of the goal is to make foundations an unattractive target for the administration because they are organized,” sources said. (Wall Street Journal — subscription)
House Republicans are considering levying hefty taxes on foundation endowments and increasing the taxes on university endowments, as they draft legislation for a sweeping tax overhaul. One proposal would institute a graduated tax, starting at 1.4 percent on investment income for foundations with assets under $50 million and reaching 10 percent for foundations with assets of more than $1 billion, sources told Politico. Another draft bill would replace the current 1.4 percent rate on university endowments with a tiered set of rates as high as 14 percent to 21 percent, sources told Bloomberg. One source said Republicans want “to ensure that universities spend their endowments on their students and not on other initiatives disfavored by conservatives, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts or on challenging the Trump administration’s policies.” (Politico and Bloomberg — subscription)
Many arts groups in underserved communities relied on now-rescinded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to make up a large chunk of their budgets. They also served vital functions that will not be taken on by larger, better-funded organizations. An arts center on a poor reservation in South Dakota paid artisans to teach its young people, who have a high suicide rate; a mid-Autumn festival for Asian Americans in Philadelphia gave performers a showcase they are not likely to find on a mainstream stage. Many groups had projects already underway. Some have appealed the terminations, while others are looking for alternative sources of funding, but most will have to devise new long-term plans. (Guardian)
A venerable national sorority is waging a careful campaign to support a nonprofit that has suffered a major funding cut under the Trump administration. Kappa Alpha Theta is a longtime supporter of CASA/GAL, which advocates for abused or neglected children in the court system. The nonprofit has lost about $16 million, amounting to 70 percent of its funding for local programs. While trying to remain outside the political fray, the sorority put out an unusual call to action, urging its members “to contact local representatives and ask them to ‘immediately inquire’ about CASA/GAL funding.” And in an exception to their usual approach to anything political, some chapters have issued statements on the cuts. (Wall Street Journal — subscription)
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropic corporation has suspended grants to nonprofits across California in what it says is a shift to more science-based grant making. But current and former employees say leaders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are trying to avoid undue attention, and possibly litigation, from the Trump administration over anything that hints of diversity, equity, and inclusion work. CZI was founded with the mission of “advancing human potential and promoting equal opportunity” but has recently turned away from social advocacy work. A spokesperson for CZI said the philanthropy’s “organizational strategy is driven by our science vision to cure, prevent, and manage all disease by the end of this century.” (San Francisco Standard)
A group of former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development is helping philanthropists figure out which abandoned foreign-aid projects to support. Using a spreadsheet of tens of thousands of programs that had been funded by USAID before it was gutted by the Trump administration, the Project Resource Optimization group recommends recipients based on geography, impact, urgency, and other factors. So far it has found funders for 13 of the 54 programs it deems “urgent and vetted.” Supported by the Center for Global Development think tank, the PRO will probably run for only four or five weeks, before many of the programs in its database shut down. “This is very time sensitive,” said an economist working on the project. (NPR)
Facing a loss of nearly $3 billion in federal grants and contracts for research, Harvard University is pulling $250 million out of its general fund to fill in some of the gaps. University president Alan M. Garber has also announced he will take a 25 percent pay cut. Nine agencies have frozen funding to Harvard, at the behest of the Trump administration’s task force on antisemitism, and the university has sued the administration in turn. Garber and the university’s provost told the Harvard community that the infusion is meant to help the university weather a transition period as it searches for other sources of funding. The move comes as Congress considers legislation that would place an additional tax on nonprofit leaders’ annual compensation greater than $1 million. The university has not disclosed Garber’s salary, but his predecessors each earned roughly $1 million a year. (Boston Globe)
Elon Musk’s DOGE team unsuccessfully sought to embed a member with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the day after President Trump attempted to fire three members of the corporation’s board in April. CPB’s executive vice president and general counsel rebuffed DOGE’s overture, explaining in a letter that because the CPB is an independent agency, “neither DOGE, the GSA, nor any other component of the executive branch has any role supervising or having any activity relating to CPB.” The corporation is suing the administration over the attempted firings, and it argues that a subsequent executive order to end federal funding for the organization is also illegal. (NPR)
AmeriCorps volunteers have often been “the first to respond and the last to leave,” when disaster strikes, but the Trump administration has gutted the program heading into hurricane season. At the order of Elon Musk’s DOGE team, the agency has placed 85 percent of its staff on leave, canceled nearly $400 million in grants and “effectively ended the service of an estimated 32,000 AmeriCorps workers.” A scholar of service programs and disaster recovery said AmeriCorps’ nationwide connections ideally placed it to coordinate efforts and predicted the program’s loss “will be disastrous to communities.” Two dozen states and some grant recipients have sued the administration to block the cuts. (Grist)
One of the country’s largest crisis hotlines for victims of sexual violence has stopped providing specialized resources for LGBTQ callers or other marginalized groups, in an effort to keep its federal funding amid the Trump administration’s campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Volunteers for the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network’s hotline can no longer refer callers to more than two dozen resources, including specialized mental health hotlines for gay and transgender people, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and more. Volunteers have protested the exclusions, but the organization’s leaders have said they had no good options while trying to protect RAINN’s core mission. (New York Times)
Your Chronicle subscription includes free access to GrantStation’s database of grant opportunities.
Career Training: The Teshinsky Family Foundation is dedicated to helping people in the United States develop skills to enter sustainable careers. The Foundation’s Career Pathways Training Grant supports direct service training programs for post-secondary career pathways in manufacturing, building trades, welding, and select other high-demand, high-wage fields. Grants are provided to nonprofit organizations in the continental United States serving participants ages 18 and above to support training or equipment costs. Grants range from $25,000 to $100,000; inquiry forms due June 23.
Visual Arts: The Wyeth Foundation for American Art provides financial support to encourage the study, appreciation, and recognition of excellence in all aspects of historic American art. Support is provided to nonprofit institutions for research, conservation, and exhibition programming in American art. Grants range from $5,000 to $25,000; deadline June 15.
