Cascade Alliance

Five Headline Friday (3/30/18)

It’s Friday and time for some headlines!  This week we’re featuring articles on:

• Opportunity Zones: areas eligible for community development financing, for low-income urban areas
• Scaling up social enterprise projects by advising other organizations who can replicate them
• A federal prison reform bill that promotes employment and other measures to reduce recidivism
• Landfills as sources of raw materials
• Research findings on the use (or not) of nonprofits’ written mission statements.

Mission, Money & Markets: “Opportunity Zones” encourage investors to put unrealized capital gains to work in distressed neighborhoods.

The Kresge Foundation examines the recent tax overhaul as it relates to incentives for investors to finance community development in low-income and economically depleted communities.   The Opportunity Zone Program creates incentives for investment, but lacks measurements or requirements for impact standards.  The Foundation offers some “first principles” in investing in low-income communities.

From Direct Action to Advisory Services: A Pathway to Scale for Social Entrepreneurs

From the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “By taking on an advising role, an organization can scale a core innovation with less demand on its resources than would be required through direct action alone.”

A federal bill, the the Prison Reform and Redemption Act, provides funds to “evidence-based initiatives” to reduce recidivism through prison-based programs providing educational support, vocational skills development, substance abuse rehabilitation, mental health care, and other resources.

What the staff does matters more than what’s in an organization’s mission statement

David Berlan reports his findings on factors influencing how staff view and carry out the mission of their nonprofit, and that senior leaders/board members and staff do not necessarily have the same view of the agency mission.