Clear all

19,285 results found

reorder grid_view
Featured

Landscape Study of Women’s Funds and Foundations – Part 1

October 21, 2022

The central aim of this study is to add necessary insight into what we know about who, what, and how women's funds and foundations - within the WFN alliance - approach their work. This subgroup is important because WFN member funds not only share values, but they also share the ability to create the local enabling partnerships and resources that scale successful prototype projects and catalyze short, and long-term success. Further, WFN's operating premise is that large scale social change comes from collective impact and catalytic leadership versus the isolated efforts of individual organizations. WFN creates a deliberate space for learning, reflection, and dissemination of the most promising practices. Specifically, at this moment of global change, it's necessary to examine this subset of women's funds and their activities at the intersections of racial and gender justice.This report is the first a series of three reports. Part I focuses on the people and organizations in our alliance; Part II will examine programming strategy including advocacy and grantmaking priorities; Part III will discuss how women's funds shift power through equitable community-based grantmaking.

A New Vision for Domestic Intelligence: Fixing Overbroad Mandates and Flimsy Safeguards

March 30, 2023

Built from 22 agencies with disparate missions, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) routinely gathers intelligence to guide its strategic and operational activities. But in the two decades since its inception, scores of incidents have undermined the legitimacy of its intelligence programs.Congress and the department's own general counsel and inspector general, among others, have shown that DHS intelligence officers abused their counterterrorism authorities to suppress racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. In support of the Trump administration's goals to undermine the Black Lives Matter movement and spin an election-season story of anarchy, DHS sent intelligence officers to Portland, Oregon, to surveil protestors, create dossiers on dissidents, and enable U.S. Border Patrol special forces to whisk demonstrators away in unmarked vehicles. DHS's Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) also surveilled prominent national security journalists and issued intelligence reports on their tweets. This political targeting was enabled by expansive intelligence authorities and a lack of meaningful checks on discretion.The time has come to rethink DHS intelligence operations and build safeguards that permit the department to provide its leadership with the information it needs while protecting civil rights and civil liberties. This report charts a course for doing so. It focuses initially on I&A, explaining how the office has veered from its counterterrorism mission into tracking social and political movements, often distributing shoddy information and analysis. It then turns to other parts of DHS's intelligence infrastructure, highlighting significant operations run by CBP and ICE as well as situational awareness initiatives, which have often targeted Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. Finally, it explains why the departmental oversight bodies created by Congress to protect civil rights and liberties consistently fail to prevent intelligence abuses at DHS.

The Next Reconstruction: Examining the Call for a National Reparations Program

March 30, 2023

In this brief, we examine the evolution of reparations proposals in the United States, connect a national reparations program to the United Nations' international human rights standards around reparations, and discuss the potential of a national reparations program to close long-standing racial gaps in wealth, housing, education, criminal justice, and other areas. We focus in part on the reparations commission proposed by H.R. 40, the most comprehensive reparations legislation in US history. We also make recommendations for strengthening the research and policy-development infrastructure for reparations.We argue that in addition to compensation for past harms, conceptualizations of reparations should involve looking at present practices, policies, and barriers to economic security and wealth building for Black Americans. We can account for historical injustices and prioritize how they have contributed to and exacerbated present inequalities while considering how current policies continue to exacerbate and reproduce those inequalities.In addition to exploring early reparations efforts in the United States, we review selected policy proposals that have involved efforts to make progress on reparations for Black Americans, analyze the current reparations policy landscape, and recommend ways researchers can identify approaches to make reparations effective at eliminating key racial gaps for Black Americans. This research can inform policy discussions and analyses of reparations, especially as governments continue to explore them.

How Long Do States Let Children in Foster Care Wait for Permanent Families? Timely Permanency Report Cards

March 23, 2023

Children need safe and permanent families for healthy development. Therefore, states are tasked with moving children in foster care to permanency through reunification with the family of origin, adoption, guardianship, or other custodial arrangements with relatives. Federal laws that guide states emphasize timely permanency, but states exercise substantial discretion in implementation.This report summarizes a new analysis of states' performance on four permanency measures—overall, by the child's age at entry, and by race or ethnicity. Performance across measures is summarized by an overall ranking, from 1 to 51. Complete project results are available at www.aei.org/foster-care-report-card. The analysis demonstrates that children's chances of permanency, especially through adoption, depend largely on where they live.

How Structural Racism Shapes Black Americans’ Sense of Self: Understanding Meta-Oppression and Its Effects in the Credit System

March 23, 2023

For many Black Americans the doors to critical wealth-building tools that easily open for their white counterparts are locked or obstructed because of centuries-long discriminatory policies and practices. Without these same opportunities, Black Americans are often left behind, perpetually playing against a stacked deck.Structural racism not only shapes the outcomes that people experience in all sectors of life, but it also has psychological effects on what Black Americans think is possible. This psychological stress from dealing with persistent structural racism across society is called meta-oppression, a concept developed by Dr. Jacqueline Scott.Through a study of Black Chicago residents' experiences with the credit system, we found that Black Americans internalized feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and despair, all of which hindered their willingness to further engage with the credit system. By illuminating the diverse effects of structural racism on the lives of Black Americans, we hope to reveal key opportunities for policy and practice to interrupt meta-oppression and advance racial equity across society.

“It’s Not For Us”: Understanding How Meta-Oppression Influences Black Americans’ Experiences with the Credit System

March 23, 2023

For many Black Americans the doors to critical wealth-building tools that easily open for their white counterparts are locked or obstructed because of centuries-long discriminatory policies and practices. Without these same opportunities, Black Americans are often left behind, perpetually playing against a stacked deck.Structural racism not only shapes the outcomes that people experience in all sectors of life, but it also has psychological effects on what Black Americans think is possible. This psychological stress from dealing with persistent structural racism across society is called meta-oppression, a concept developed by Dr. Jacqueline Scott.Through a study of Black Chicago residents' experiences with the credit system, we found that Black Americans internalized feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and despair, all of which hindered their willingness to further engage with the credit system. By illuminating the diverse effects of structural racism on the lives of Black Americans, we hope to reveal key opportunities for policy and practice to interrupt meta-oppression and advance racial equity across society.

The Connected Arts Learning Framework: An Expanded View of the Purposes and Possibilities for Arts Learning

March 22, 2023

The benefits of teaching art to young people have often fallen into two camps. Children study or practice "art for art's sake" to develop a particular skill. Or they approach "art for academics' sake" to enhance their other studies. But this report comes at arts learning from a different angle: What if learning about or practicing an art could help young people connect more directly to their communities and the world they live in? And how might that change the experience and outcomes for both students and communities? The report, led by Kylie Peppler, an expert in arts learning, and her team at the University of California, Irvine, begins with a connected learning framework. In connected learning, educators seek to create meaningful learning experiences based on young people's interests and then connect these experiences to real-world issues and communities. The authors put art within this context to discover how arts education can help young people build connections with their culture, identity, home lives, communities, professional artists, and future aspirations. 

Community Colleges and Workforce Development: Are They Achieving Their Potential?

March 21, 2023

At the roughly 1,000 public community colleges in the US, millions of students enroll in courses and programs that prepare them for either academic pursuits (such as transferring to a four-year college or university to pursue a bachelor's degree) or direct entry into the workforce. Those in the latter category gain occupational skills and credentials that include associate degrees and certificates; cer-tificates can be for academic credit or not and for varying lengths of time, and certificates and associate degrees can be for fields with diverging skill needs and varying amounts of regional demand for labor at any time. Employers in key regional industries generate this labor demand, and meeting their skill needs is an important workforce development role for community colleges.While community colleges meet a wide range of student and industry needs, are they meeting their potential—in terms of serving as an accessible point of entry to good jobs in the labor market and generating opportunities for high-quality skill development and workforce preparation at scale? For whom do they work more or less effectively? And what might be done to improve opportunities and outcomes there? What is the role of short-term versus long-term and for-credit versus noncredit programs? And how can we make sure that they adapt when labor markets evolve and are shaped by technological and global factors?In this report, we argue that community colleges provide millions of students, including people of color and those from low-income backgrounds, with the skills to prosper in the US labor market. At the same time, improvements are clearly needed on several dimensions. Community colleges are experimenting with a range of innovations to improve student performance and their programs' labor market value, and many such efforts are being rigorously evaluated. College administrators should implement the most promising practices broadly, while policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels should support their implementation.

Perspectives from the Field: Developing the Enhanced Care Management Workforce

March 21, 2023

The CalAIM initiative is an ambitious effort to transform California's Medi-Cal program. CalAIM includes a major new benefit — Enhanced Care Management — provided through Medi-Cal managed care plans working with a team of community-based providers to address the needs of 10 specific California populations with complex needs, including health-related social needs, as well as physical and behavioral health conditions.The whole-person model of care envisioned by Enhanced Care Management (ECM) requires providers to develop significant new capabilities to develop the trust and relationships needed to successfully navigate across Medi-Cal's different delivery systems on behalf of their clients. ECM teams must possess skills related to outreach and engagement, care planning, care coordination, health promotion, transitional care support, member and family education, and social services coordination.Staffing up for this work has proved to be a heavy lift for organizations providing ECM. To better understand what will be required for long-term success, the Camden Coalition conducted interviews and focus groups with numerous California-based frontline care managers, supervisors, program directors, organization leadership, and managed care plan representatives from organizations participating in ECM.While the interviewees recognized the need for high-quality, ongoing training for ECM staff, they also said they were prioritizing other challenges over the establishment of training protocols and programs, especially hiring and retaining staff. Yet they also described their approaches to training and provided thoughtful insights into the types of training that had been effective in their organizations.In Perspectives from the Field — Developing the Enhanced Care Management Workforce, hear directly from frontline workers and managers at organizations participating in ECM. Learn about the challenges they face in recruiting and retention, and the types of training they think are effective for new staff.

Nontraditional-Hour Child Care in Austin/Travis County: Insights from Interviews, Focus Groups, and Analyses of Supply and Demand

March 21, 2023

This report presents findings from interviews, focus groups, and analyses of survey and administrative data to describe nontraditional-hour (before 7:00 a.m. and after 6:00 p.m. during the traditional workweek and anytime on weekends) child care demand, supply, and preferences. Findings are based on analyses of data from the American Community Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, Texas Workforce Commission administrative data, and analyses of data collected through interviews and focus groups with Austin/Travis County community leaders, employers, child care providers, and parents.

Balancing Act: Asian American Organizations Respond to Community Crises and Build Collective Power

March 20, 2023

The Building Movement Project (BMP) supports and pushes the nonprofit sector by developing research, creating tools and training materials, and facilitating networks for social change. BMP's movement building work provides tools, trainings, and narratives to foster cross-racial solidarity among movement leaders and social change organizations.This report is part of BMP's Movement Infrastructure Series which offers ideas, approaches, and practices to strengthen individual organizations and broader social movement ecosystems. Balancing Act: Asian American Organizations Respond to Community Crises and Build Collective Power is a collaboration between BMP and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus (ALC). ALC brings together legal services, community empowerment, and policy advocacy to fight for immigrant justice, economic security, and a stronger democracy, with a specific focus on serving low-income, immigrant, and underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area. ALC coordinates the Asian American Leaders Table (AALT), a network of local and national organizations that came together in March 2020 to respond to the increase in bigotry and violence targeting Asian American communities during the pandemic through information sharing, narrative change, and advocacy. Since 2020, BMP has supported the AALT through strategic facilitation, guidance for frontline response, co-learning sessions, and solidarity workshops.

Dismantling the Pre-School to Prison Pipeline Through Black Literacy and Education for Transformation: Recommendations for school leaders, parents and policymakers

March 18, 2023

Literacy has been weaponized against Black families and children since the first Europeans began kidnapping Africans for the purposes of enriching themselves through chattel slavery. This study is an examination of how that weaponization of literacy has evolved, manifesting in our contemporary world as a system of interlocking oppressions that we shorthand here as the "Pre-School to Prison Pipeline."While the challenges we identify, document, and analyze in this paper are ancient, we propose realistic solutions, all of which revolve around the need for increased effectiveness and investment in literacy and educational opportunity for Black children.The African continent and the many peoples who live in its diaspora have always enjoyed rich literary traditions. While those traditions were upended by enslavement, obfuscated by the plantation, constrained by Jim Crow, and further marginalized by an ever-expanding system of mass incarceration, there has never been a moment in that history when the candle of our great literacy traditions was extinguished.This paper examines the various tools that oppressors have used to suppress Black literacy; the ways in which Black families have resisted that suppression; and the policies, practices, changes, and investments that we need now to ensure that our children, and their children, can thrive, no matter what the future holds