Philanthropy Today

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From senior editor Drew Lindsay: Rich Harwood has worked in communities for nearly 40 years, from Michigan to Alabama to Connecticut. His chief lesson for those who want to make change happen: Put away your sophisticated programs and strategies and work on the things that matter most to people. In the town of Red Hook, N.Y., it was the stoplight that was broken for so long that residents gave up on local officials. In Reading, Pa., it was the lack of classes for residents who needed to learn English.

In both places, Harwood writes in The Commons this week, fixing these little things set off a chain reaction, with one success begetting more as people came to see that they had the power to make their lives and their communities better. “Momentum builds, and the work spreads like a positive contagion,” he says.

Read the essay from Harwood, who’s the founder of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, and see his full prescription for philanthropy.

In an age when the nation’s leaders routinely label opponents as “evil,” can we find a way to disagree better?

Tim Shriver believes so. In recent years, the chairman of Special Olympics International has turned his attention to the idea that division in America is not the result of our differences. Rather, he thinks it’s a byproduct of how we treat each other when we disagree. Shriver is the co-creator of the Dignity Index, which ranks rhetoric — particularly that of politicians — on a scale to measure the contempt or respect we show one another.

Shriver joins Chronicle of Philanthropy deputy opinion editor Nandita Raghuram to talk about the index and how demeaning discourse deepens our polarization and increases the risk for violence.

Register now for this free, live event on LinkedIn on Tuesday, September 23, at 12 p.m. ET.

Texas, California, Illinois, and other states are lining up to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections — potentially the first shots of what New America scholar Lee Drutman describes as “gerrymandering wars,” akin to what the country saw in the 1830s. Drutman and dozens of other nonprofit leaders and advocates — many of them highlighted in this pre-election Commons story — have worried about such a moment for years.

Here are some of the analyses — and warnings — from these advocates:

“Mid-decade redistricting was once rare. I predict states will now draw their lines every two years.”
— Lee Drutman, author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America, on his Substack Undercurrent Events

“It’s very hard to maximize seats without undermining the political power of communities of color.”
— Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, in the Texas Tribune

“The ultimate solution to the redistricting arms race is to pass federal laws banning partisan gerrymandering and strengthening the Voting Rights Act.”
— Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, on LinkedIn

Public domain, via Wikicommons

Last week, we published “34 Summer Books, Movies, and Podcasts to Mend America’s Divisions,” a compilation of recommendations from nonprofit leaders, advocates, and thinkers. We received so many great suggestions that we have more to share in this and upcoming issues of the newsletter.

This week: Layla Zaidane on a 16th century painting that has shed light on her work:

“Earlier this year, I traveled to The Hague and Amsterdam as a part of the Aspen Institute’s Civil Society Fellowship to study international examples of democratic norms and rules. One of the most memorable moments from the trip was reflecting on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Tower of Babel, a painting that Jonathan Haidt also referenced in a recent Atlantic essay on thefracturing of shared civic language. His thesis: “Our society isn’t suffering from too much disagreement — it’s suffering from mutual incomprehension.”