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Practical Guidance: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Lobbying in Nebraska

February 23, 2023

Bolder Advocacy's Practical Guidance – What Nonprofits Need to Know About Lobbying state law resource series is designed to help nonprofits determine if lobbying rules in their state might apply to their state or local work, and if they do, how best to navigate them!Each Guide Includes:Summary of lobbyist registration and reporting triggers in the stateKey critical takeaways for nonprofit organizationsFAQs – giving practical perspective on how to interact with the state rulesCase study for a hypothetical small student voting rights organizationList of helpful additional resourcesWho are these Guides For?Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations: Leaders and staff of nonprofit organizations that work on (or are thinking about working on) advocacy initiatives at the state or local levelLawyers: Lawyers and compliance professionals interested in working with nonprofit advocacy organizations doing state and local level workFunders: Funding organizations working to ensure strong organizational capacity and infrastructure for the groups they fund doing advocacy work at the state and local level

Southeast Nebraska Development District Strategic Food Systems Financing Plan

February 1, 2023

CDFA worked with Southeast Nebraska Development District (SENDD) to establish a set of recommendations that position SENDD to be the leader in supporting the further restoration of the regional food system. The Strategic Food Systems Financing Plan focuses on how SENDD can use development finance tools to unlock capital for food and agriculture-related businesses, projects, and infrastructure to generate economic prosperity while advancing racial and social equity.

Clean Jobs Midwest 2022 Report

December 12, 2022

Clean Jobs Midwest is an annual report based on survey data on clean energy employment in 12 Midwestern states.These states include Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The Midwest's clean energy industry employed 714,323 people in sectors including renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, advanced transportation, grid and storage, and clean fuels at the end of 2021. 

Immigration Law Intersections with Case Law in Nebraska: A Snapshot of Nebraska Supreme Court Cases

March 9, 2022

This report from the ACLU of Nebraska is a resource for attorneys and advocates who work on behalf of Nebraska's immigrant communities. It explains influential Nebraska Supreme Court cases and their effects on immigrants' daily lives, rights to state benefits, and rights in the civil and criminal court systems.

Key Funding Streams to Keep Families Supported, Connected and Safe

February 14, 2022

The Family First Prevention Services Act provides an important opportunity for child welfare leaders to support families with Title IV-E funding. However, Family First is just one piece of the puzzle.Developing an array of services to meet family needs requires child welfare leaders to understand funding that is administered by other agencies and to work across sectors to support a broad range of services.This quick, four-page brief highlights federal funding streams that can support a continuum of services to prevent children from entering the child welfare system and foster care. It also shares examples of how communities are leveraging such funding streams at the local level. 

Six Strategies for Keeping Families Supported, Connected and Safe

February 14, 2022

In recent years, two concurrent factors have led to an increased focus on how child welfare leaders can work with partners to support families to stay together: the 2018 passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act, which created new approaches to a child welfare funding stream to prevent the need for foster care, and a heightened awareness of how discriminatory policies and practices within child welfare lead to unnecessary disruption and separation of families of color.Many states are expanding their efforts to support families and creating new partnerships to fund those efforts. The Annie E. Casey Foundation profiled six innovative efforts across the country. While the focus and stage of development of these partnerships vary, six strategies emerged as important to successful and effective coordination of resources to prevent system involvement and keep families supported, connected and safe.

Marginal Effects of Merit Aid for Low-Income Students

September 1, 2020

Financial aid from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (STBF) provides exceptionally generous support to a college population similar to that served by a host of state aid programs. In conjunction with STBF, we randomly assigned aid awards to thousands of Nebraska high school graduates from low-income, minority, and first-generation college households. Randomly assigned STBF awards boost bachelor's (BA) degree completion for students targeting four-year schools by about 8 points. Degree gains are concentrated among four-year applicants who would otherwise have been unlikely to pursue a four-year program. Degree effects are mediated by award-induced increases in credits earned towards a BA in the first year of college. The extent of initial four-year college engagement explains heterogeneous effects by target campus and across covariate subgroups. Most program spending is a transfer, reducing student debt without affecting degree attainment. Award-induced marginal spending is modest. The projected lifetime earnings impact of awards exceeds marginal educational spending for all of the subgroups examined in the study. Projected earnings gains exceed funder costs for low-income, non-white, urban, and first-generation students, and for students with relatively weak academic preparation.

School Enrollment: A Fundamental Right

August 22, 2019

The Nebraska State Constitution promises a free education to all persons between the age of five and twenty one years. Unfortunately, accessing a public education can be difficult for a new immigrant or refugee as well as for children experiencing homelessness or living in the foster care system. As documented in this report, school enrollment policies vary widely from district to district. Some districts' current practices can create barriers that could discourage or prevent a student from accessing their education. In order to ensure all children receive the education they deserve, we've outlined the concerning trends in some districts and given a roadmap for providing better education to all students.

Equality Before the Stop: Analyzing Racial Bias in Traffic Stops and Identifying Solutions to End Racial Profiling

August 1, 2019

To better understand the Nebraska landscape on law enforcement agencies' efforts to end racial profiling, the ACLU of Nebraska utilized census data to identify 12 of Nebraska's most populous and racially diverse counties. We sent an open records request to every law enforcement agency in those 12 counties, for a total of 23 agencies that included city police, county sheriffs, and the Nebraska State Patrol. Note that two of the 23 law enforcement agencies did not respond to our request: Johnson County Sheriff's office and Schuyler Police Department. Our open records request sought two categories of information: 1) whether the agency had an anti-racial profiling policy and 2) information about any anti-bias trainings or implicit bias trainings attended by any member of the agency in the last two years.

From the Classroom to the Courtroom: A Review of Nebraska's School Police Programs

December 1, 2018

Nebraska has 244 public school districts educating nearly 324,000 children. Approximately twenty-four percent of Nebraska public school students are people of color. Consistent with national trends, students of color are disproportionately overrepresented in schools contracting with law enforcement agencies to place police in schools. According to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) data, during the 2015-2016 school year, 1,502 Nebraska students in public schools with school police were referred to law enforcement by their school. Additionally, some counties in Nebraska have schools with police, but no counselor, social worker, or nurse.In Nebraska, consistent with national trends, there is a growing practice of using police officers in our schools. Despite this trend, there is no state-specific data on school police aside from the federal data collected by the OCR. The OCR requires schools to report the demographic data of those students referred to law enforcement and the number of law enforcement officers found in each school district, yet it does not track other important metrics. As reflected in this report, we have an incomplete, yet disturbing picture of these programs. 

Profiles in Parole Release and Revocation Nebraska

April 24, 2017

Nebraska employs both indeterminate sentencing (for offenders convicted of serious felonies) and determinatesentencing (for offenders convicted of relatively less serious felonies and misdemeanors). The state does nothave a sentencing commission or sentencing guidelines. Parole in Nebraska was established in 1893 with theGovernor possessing the sole power to parole. Nebraska's Board of Parole has been operating since 1968 as an independent constitutional agency.

Exploring the Green Infrastructure Workforce: Jobs for the Future

March 28, 2017

How many people work in green infrastructure? What are the jobs? What level of compensation do they offer? What are the educational requirements? How much potential is there for job creation as green infrastructure investments increase? How is the green infrastructure workforce within the six U.S. cities examined for this report similar to—or different than—that in the nation as a whole?This issue brief attempts to answer these and other questions about current and emerging workforce trends related to the rise in green infrastructure activities. It summarizes the results of research conducted by Jobs for the Future (JFF) as part of NatureWORKS, a national initiative to understand the jobs, careers, skills, credentials, and potential of the U.S. green infrastructure workforce. The study was funded by the U.S. Forest Service's National Urban and Community Forestry Grant Program as recommended by the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, NUCFAC.The research focused on occupations involved in the direct installation, maintenance, and inspection (IMI) of the green infrastructure (GI) and their first-line supervisors. This report describes the GI-IMI involvement of occupations whose work includes green infrastructure activities. It also discusses the emerging movement to certify green infrastructure workers in the stormwater management field as a way to both raise the quality of GI work and promote green infrastructure implementation, thereby expanding the workforce.