Philanthropy Today

Visit The Commons for our latest content and sign up for The Commons LinkedIn newsletter.

From senior editor Drew Lindsay: “Trusted messengers” are a staple of nonprofit campaigns to introduce new ideas or behaviors to a community. And their work may be all the more important — and more challenging — in this age of polarization.

Senior editor Ben Gose explores this tension through his reporting on efforts by the gun-safety movement — whose roots lie in mass shootings in suburbs like Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla. — to reach rural America. Ben, who lives in Lander, Wyo., population 7,600, writes about suicide-prevention campaigns that encourage gun owners to store firearms safely. Advocates — often health-care professionals unfamiliar with rural life — are turning to gun-owning community members as their ambassadors.

I invite you to read Ben’s story for a look at how this work is playing out and the opportunity it offers gun-safety as well as suicide-prevention funders.

Policy advocates increasingly ask supporters to do little more than sign petitions and write checks. The result? Groups “are leaving an enormous amount of power on the table,” says Independent Sector CEO Akilah Watkins.

On Wednesday, March 19, at 2 p.m. ET, I’ll join nonprofit leaders in a practical discussion of how to turn citizens into true advocates — and strengthen democracy at the same time. We’ll lean into the ideas of Commons contributor Sam Daley-Harris, author of Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy and the founder of RESULTS and Civic Courage.

Register for this free event, which will be online and in person at the RESULTS headquarters in Washington, D.C.

How can we reverse the trend of declining trust in institutions? Philanthropist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is looking for answers with a $10 million open call for organizations working to build faith in government, the media, public health, universities, and more. He joins Chronicle of Philanthropy editor-in-chief Andrew Simon for The Commons in Conversation on Wednesday, March 26, at 1 p.m. ET along with Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change. Conrad has managed philanthropy competitions for MacKenzie Scott and the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change program.

Register for this free event on LinkedIn.

News and other noteworthy items:

• In Time magazine, writer Tharin Pillay writes about ways to redesign social media to, as one expert puts it, strengthen “the connective tissue or civic muscle of society.” One blue-sky idea: Users could pay to boost stories that connect people or provide content that balances another viewpoint.
  
• Only 34 percent of Americans are satisfied with how democracy is working — a figure that’s led to a Gallup polling project, supported by the Kettering Foundation, to conduct an annual audit of American democracy for the next 100 years. “The goal of the Gallup-Kettering initiative is to provide the most accurate data and, with your help, reverse the declining trend,” writes Gallup chairman Jim Clifton.
  
• Commons contributor Rachel Kleinfeld draws on the collapse of civil society in Hungary and other autocracies to predict what nonprofits and philanthropy can expect in the coming days. “The closing of civic space is already affecting corporations and religious institutions as well as professional nonprofit organizations … [and] affecting both the right and the left,” writes Kleinfeld, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.