Erica Williams is the Deputy Director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Washington, DC.
From the Center for American Progress website:
Erica Williams is the Deputy Director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress that develops new ideas for an increasingly diverse America. The project seeks to build a progressive agenda that is more inclusive and reflects the rich racial and ethnic makeup of the nation. Progress 2050 does this by promoting innovative policy ideas, facilitating honest dialogue about the intersection of race and policy, analyzing demographics, and developing new leaders.
Listed by Politico.com as one of Top 50 Politicos to Watch, she is the former Deputy Director and Policy Manager of Campus Progress, the youth outreach arm of the Center where she still serves as a senior advisor. While there, she led the staff and network of young Americans in advancing progressive policy with and for 18- to 27-year-olds across the nation. Her advocacy work focused on economic mobility, equal opportunity, health care, and clean energy.
Before joining the Center for American Progress, Erica worked at the Leadership Conference on Civil Right to coordinate grassroots activity in nearly 45 states to advance effective civil and human rights legislation at the federal level.
She is a past participant of the American University Women and Political Leadership Training Program, a 2008 O Magazine Women Rule Leadership winner, and a 2008 Aspen Institute IDEAS fellow.
Williams has appeared on CNN, C-Span, “The Tavis Smiley Show,” “Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff,” and BBC among others. She has been widely quoted in various print publications such as U.S. News and World Report, The Washington Post, O Magazine, andThe Nation.
See also: Erica on C-SPAN here and here and here (video)
See also: Erica’s “Politics as Usual” podcast (Ep. 1 and Ep. 2) (audio)
Photo credit: Center for American Progress
Geoffrey Canada is the President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone.
From the Harlem Children’s Zone website:
In his 20-plus years with Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc., Geoffrey Canada has become nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform.
Since 1990, Mr. Canada has been the President and Chief Executive Officer for Harlem Children’s Zone, which The New York Times Magazine called “one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time.” In October 2005, Mr. Canada was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News and World Report.
In 1997, the agency launched the Harlem Children’s Zone Project, which targets a specific geographic area in Central Harlem with a comprehensive range of services. The Zone Project today covers 100 blocks and aims to serve over 10,000 children by 2011.
The New York Times Magazine said the Zone Project “combines educational, social and medical services. It starts at birth and follows children to college. It meshes those services into an interlocking web, and then it drops that web over an entire neighborhood….The objective is to create a safety net woven so tightly that children in the neighborhood just can’t slip through.”
The work of Mr. Canada and HCZ has become a national model and has been the subject of many profiles in the media. Their work has been featured on “60 Minutes,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” “CBS This Morning,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” National Public Radio’s “On Point,” as well in articles in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, USA Today and Newsday.
See also: Julian Bond’s 2009 interview with Geoffrey Canada for University of Virginia’s Explorations in Black Leadership Series (video)
See also: Geoffrey Canada’s 2008 Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation leadership lecture (video)
See also: Foundation Center’s 2002 interview with Geoffrey Canada (text)
Photo credit: Harlem Children’s Zone
Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund.
From the Children’s Defense Fund website:
Marian Wright Edelman has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families. The Children’s Defense Fund’s Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
Mrs. Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid-60s when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968, she moved to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People’s Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children’s Defense Fund. For two years she served as the Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and in l973 began CDF.
Mrs. Edelman served on the Board of Trustees of Spelman College which she chaired from 1976 to 1987 and was the first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale University Corporation on which she served from 1971 to 1977. She has received over a hundred honorary degrees and many awards including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings which include: Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change; The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours; Guide My Feet: Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working for Children; Stand for Children; Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors; Hold My Hand: Prayers for Building a Movement to Leave No Child Behind; I’m Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children; I Can Make a Difference: A Treasury to Inspire Our Children; and The Sea Is So Wide and My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation.
She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Association to Benefit Children, and is a member of the Selection Committee of the Profiles in Courage Award of the John F. Kennedy Library, the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Marian Wright Edelman is married to Peter Edelman, a Professor at Georgetown Law School. They have three sons, Joshua, Jonah, and Ezra, two granddaughters, Ellika and Zoe, and two grandsons, Elijah and Levi.
See also: Marian’s blog on the Huffington Post
Photo credit: Children’s Defense Fund
Just about every week, I invite you to tune in to my live internet radio show, which has now been renamed to the more fitting . . . drumroll please . . .
All Nonprofits Considered on BlogTalkRadio
This month, I invite you to join me on your lunch break every Wednesday at 12pm EST for the State of the Nonprofit Union, a series of live (and lively!) discussions about the current state of the nonprofit sector with a special focus on careers, fundraising, and organizational sustainability. This is free, real-time professional development where you will get to learn about what’s happening right now in the nonprofit field, as well as chime in with your questions, thoughts and ideas. Please mark your calendars for the following discussions! Tell all your friends. And your friends’ friends.
February 10, 12:00-1:00pm EST
State of the Nonprofit Union: Careers
Join us as we shed light on how the economy has impacted nonprofit hiring. How should jobseekers be approaching their nonprofit job search these days? This is your chance to get your career questions answered live on the radio, so be sure to log-in to the chat room and ask away!
Guests:
- Lisa Brown Morton, SPHR, President and CEO of Nonprofit HR Solutions
- Mark McCurdy, PHR, “The Nonprofit Career Coach” and President of Jobs in Nonprofits
- Christine John-Fuller, President & CEO for the Lupus Foundation of America, Piedmont Chapter and Consultant for Phoenixfire Solutions
February 17, 12:00-1:00pm EST
State of the Nonprofit Union: Fundraising
Join us as we talk about one of the big fat elephants in the nonprofit room: the current state of fundraising and philanthropy. We’ll take a look at the economy’s impact on leadership and integrity in the fundraising field and examine the combined impact of decreasing foundation dollars, fundraising contests, and increased competition on the nonprofit sector.
Guests:
- Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something
- Pamela Grow, GrowConsultingPA, author of “Five Days to Foundation Grants” and member of the Philadelphia Association of Fundraising Professionals
February 24, 12:00-1:00pm EST
State of the Nonprofit Union: Organizational Sustainability
Listen to perspectives from three different nonprofit voices around what organizations are doing to stay afloat in the economic downturn. Is there increased competition or increased collaboration? We’ll share thoughts on how the economy has impacted leadership decisions and mission integrity in the nonprofit field including layoffs, program cuts, and innovation.
Guests:
- Nelson Layag, Projects Director, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
- Patrick Sallee, Development Director for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City and a Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) national board member
- Joe Brown, Human resources and management consultant to nonprofits at Slope Resources and Taproot Foundation volunteer
P.S. You may want to grab my RSS feed or subscribe by email to make sure you get announcements about upcoming discussions delivered right to your inbox or feed reader. And for more nonprofit links and daily inspiration, you should follow me on Twitter!
Dr. Emmett Carson is the founding CEO and president of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
From the Silicon Valley Community Foundation website:
Hired in 2006 to establish a new, regional community foundation from the unprecedented merger of Peninsula Community Foundation and Community Foundation Silicon Valley, Emmett is responsible for providing the vision for one of the largest community foundations in the United States with assets of $1.7 billion.
Before coming to Silicon Valley, Emmett served as president and CEO of The Minneapolis Foundation for 12 years. During his tenure, the foundation received national recognition for its grantmaking in the areas of housing, immigration and education.
An inspiring public speaker, Emmett has devoted his career to being a catalyst for positive social change and has authored more than 100 works on philanthropy and social justice. He served as the first manager of the Ford Foundation’s worldwide grantmaking program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector and his seminal work on African American giving and volunteering at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is widely seen as helping to spark broad public interest in ethnic philanthropy studies.
In addition to serving on numerous nonprofit boards, he has conducted workshops on endowment building for nongovernmental organizations in southern Africa and participated in international efforts to develop best practices within the field of philanthropy. He has received numerous awards, including honorary degrees from Indiana University, Morehouse College and The National Hispanic University.
A native of Chicago, Emmett received both his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in public and international affairs from Princeton University and his bachelor’s degree in economics, Phi Beta Kappa, from Morehouse College. He is married to Jacqueline Copeland-Carson, Ph.D.
See also: Emmett’s 2007 Interview with the Stanford Social Innovation Review
See also: Emmett’s 2006 Interview with the Foundation Center
Photo credit: Silicon Valley Community Foundation
The doors of the blog are open.
What is an open thread? An open thread refers to a blog post where readers may comment and discuss any topic that they choose.
So, what do you guys wanna talk about? Do you have any burning questions for me to answer? What are you reading right now? What’s on your mind as you go about doing the work of social change?
Let’s talk.
Mary Brown is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, a youth development program that serves young African American males living in Washington, DC. LPTM’s continuing goal is to nurture, embrace, encourage, and elevate African American boys and young men. Daily participation in LPTM’s artistic, academic, spiritual, and mentoring activities help turn the many challenges in the lives of these boys into opportunities for success, self-reliance, and resiliency.
About Mary Brown from the Meyer Foundation website:
Ms. Brown has spent over 22 years of her life serving as a tireless advocate for countless youth. Ms. Brown is currently the Executive Director of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, Inc, an internationally acclaimed arts-based youth development organization serving boys and young men living in low-income and public housing East of the Anacostia River.
Mary Brown received her B.S. from Xavier University in Biology. Over the years, Ms. Brown has been widely honored for her efforts. She has received the Mayor’s Spirit of Neighborhood Action Award; the Augusta Savage Arts Leadership Award; the Monica Davis Show Award for Community Service; the 2007 Washington, DC Economic Partnership Innovators Award; and she was inducted into the Leadership Greater Washington class of 2009. She serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts and is a member of the Board of Directors for the See Forever Foundation/Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools and the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative. Ms. Brown has been selected to be inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Sponsors at Morehouse College based on her unique achievement of excellence in her chosen field, a significant contribution to the Ward 7 Community of Washington DC and society, and the demonstration of ethical leadership throughout her life.
“We help define for the boys something that so often is not defined,” says Mary. “Kids hear ‘just do it’ or ‘you have the power’ but nobody’s ever really defined what their power is. We tell them exactly what their power is. We say, ‘Your power lies in your thoughts, your words, and your actions.’ Over time they really begin to ask ‘what am I listening to? What am I, what are my eyes taking in? How is that being translated in terms of how I’m acting? Is it making me a better person?”
About Life Pieces to Masterpieces from the Meyer Foundation website:
It all began when Mary Brown and her former husband Larry Quick caught a group of four or five boys breaking windows outside of the youth summer program where Mary worked. This same group of kids had “given chase” – pulling pranks so adults would run after them – for weeks outside of the building. Quick understood these boys; he had been one of them in his youth. He told Mary that what the boys really wanted was “in”—they wanted to be part of the program inside. Soon after the incident the boys began waiting for Larry each day; eventually, he began escorting them into the building. That was the start of Life Pieces to Masterpieces and its work with “boys on the edge.”
Fourteen years later, this small after-school program has become a multifaceted youth development organization with over 200 young African American males between the ages of 3 and 21, most of whom come from public housing east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Over half of the “apprentices,” as they are called, are not attending school; many have been victims of abuse or neglect; and the majority face challenges within their households and neighborhoods—domestic violence, substance abuse, illiteracy and unemployment. More than 90 percent have no positive male role model present in the home.
The apprentices attend the program five to six days each week for three to five hours each day where they participate in an arts-based curriculum that also includes athletics, leadership training, and meditation. The name Life Pieces comes from the unique collaborative art projects they create: apprentices paint a canvas, cut it into various shapes, and sew the pieces together as a means of processing real-life experiences.
The accomplishments are significant. Approximately 90 percent of the boys have shown improved behavior at home and in school and 75 percent have significantly increased their grades. Apprentices have created more than 1,000 pieces of art that have been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally.
See also: Life Pieces Artworks, which will soon be available for purchase online.
Photo credit: Meyer Foundation
We knew that the folks over at Blue Avocado and Nonprofit Online News were quite brilliant. Now we know that they also have a keen sense of humor. And timing. They’ve recently announced The Just Awards which will highlight the irrational, the irresponsible, and the irrelevant organizational behaviors that most damage the work of the nonprofit sector. They will announce the “winners” of these awards immediately preceding the annual conference of the Council on Foundations. Which is perfect timing. I have no doubt one of the foundations that “will win” a Justie will be in attendance at the COF conference. Like, I would put good money on it. I love the concept for this project because I do think we really do need to begin thinking more deeply about the behaviors we want to reward in the nonprofit sector and call out bad behaviors when we see them.
From the website:
The Just Awards are the IgNobel Prizes of civil society. With the support of a panel of respected judges and with a particular emphasis on the worlds of philanthropy and the press, we will offer awards each year to those organizations who best exemplify the foibles of our sector.
Some awards of this nature are just for fun. Others are intended to help make change. The Just Awards will be both. In the case of philanthropy, this means looking sharply at how funders behave in ways that separate them from the people they serve, damage the organizations they support, and subvert their missions. In the case of the press, this means calling attention to the worst coverage of civil society.
There will be two “Justies” awarded in 2010:
Narcissism in Philanthropy
Awarded to a foundation, corporation, trust, or donor for displaying amazing narcissism during 2009 in the practice of philanthropy.
Abominable Media Coverage of the Nonprofit Sector
Awarded to a newspaper, magazine, website, radio program or other media reporting on U.S. nonprofit organizations and/or the U.S. nonprofit sector, for abominable press cover in 2009.
Anyone may submit nominations and your name will be kept confidential. The awards will be announced during the week of April 20, 2010, immediately preceding the annual conference of the Council on Foundations. The Just Awards is a joint project of Blue Avocado and Nonprofit Online News.
Read more about the awards here and nominate someone!
If you run in social justice philanthropy circles, you’ve probably heard of Erica Hunt, President of the Twenty-First Century Foundation in New York. What you may NOT know is that Erica Hunt is also a marvelous poet. A woman after my own English major, free verse-loving heart.
From the Twenty-First Century Foundation website:
Erica Hunt, a leading expert on Black social justice and economic issues, was a Senior Program Officer with the New World Foundation, before joining 21CF in 1998 where she has led new work in the field of Black philanthropy. During her tenure, 21CF has sought to strengthen Black giving and community-based philanthropy through donor education; grant making through donor-advised funds and special national initiatives; and applied research to document trends in Black philanthropy and community impact. Under her supervision, 21CF has grown from an all volunteer organization, to a premier national $8 million public foundation. Hunt holds a B.A. in Literature from San Francisco State University, and is a past Fellow in the Duke University/University of Cape Town Center for Leadership and Public Values. She currently serves as a participant to Diversity and Effectiveness in Philanthropy; the International Working Group on Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace; and Rye Collaborative National Progressive Foundations. Her past professional leadership affiliations include: the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers; National Center for Black Philanthropy, and the Coalition for New Philanthropy. Hunt, a published author of numerous articles and essays on Black philanthropy, was the 2008 recipient of Spelman College’s award for National Community Service.
From the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania:
Erica Hunt works at the forefront of experimental poetry and poetics, critical race theory, and feminist aesthetics. She has written three books of poetry: Arcade, with artist Alison Saar, Piece Logic, and Local History (Roof Books, 1993). Her published and forthcoming essays include “Notes for an Oppositional Poetics” (The Politics of Poetic Form,, ed. Charles Bernstein), “Parabolay” (Boundary 2), and “Roots of the Black Avant Garde” (Tripwire, forthcoming). Hunt’s poems can be found in Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women (ed. Mary Margaret Sloan), Iowa Poetry Review, and the Virago Anthology of Women’s Love Poetry. Hunt has also worked as a housing organizer, radio producer, poetry teacher, and program officer for a social justice campaign. She is currently president of The Twenty-First Century Foundation which supports organizations addressing root causes of social injustice impacting the Black community.
See also: A complete audio archive of Erica Hunt reading her poetry hosted on the PennSound website
Photo credit: BMoreNews.com
W.E.B. Du Bois with delegates from the Junior NAACP, Cleveland, 1929
W.E.B. Du Bois is probably best known as a scholar and author, but he was also one of the founding board members of the NAACP.
From the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst:
At a time when Booker T. Washington counseled acceptance of the social order, [W.E.B.] Du Bois sounded a call to arms and with the founding of the Niagara Movement and later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People entered a new phase of his life. He became an impassioned champion of direct assault on the legal, political, and economic system that thrived on the exploitation of the poor and the powerless.
The Niagara Movement emerged out of years of struggle against racial oppression in the United States and frustration with the slow pace of change on the one hand and the moderate, accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington on the other. In February 1905, W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter helped call together an all-black “national strategy board” to chart a new and more radical course toward social and racial justice. Inviting fifty nine like-minded intellectuals and activists to a conference on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in July 1905, twenty nine of whom attended, they established the Niagara Movement, an early and strident voice for equality.
From the outset, the Niagara Movement defined itself against both racial oppression and Washingtonian conciliation, demanding immediate freedom of speech and press, full suffrage, the “abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color,” a “recognition of the principal of human brotherhood as a practical present creed,” and a belief in the dignity of labor. Their demands were simple, but radical for America in 1905: “We want to pull down nothing but we don’t propose to be pulled down. We are not ‘knockers’ save at the Door of Liberty & Opportunity. We are ‘out after the Stuff’ but that ’stuff’ includes education, decent travel, civil rights, & ballots. . .”
With Du Bois as General Secretary, the Movement grew rapidly, establishing chapters in twenty one states by mid-September and reaching 170 members by year’s end. Symbolically, they selected Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. — the site of John Brown’s raid — for their second annual conference in 1906, and they met subsequently in Boston, Oberlin, and Sea Isle City, N.J. Through its committees and branches, the Movement organized against segregation in travel and education and worked to secure voting rights and civic equality.
Weak finances and internal dissension, however, increasingly hampered the effectiveness of the organization. After a bitter feud within its Massachusetts branch and continuing conflict with Washington, the momentum of the Movement slowed and by 1910, it was disbanded altogether. Their work, however, was not abandoned. Du Bois and most of the original members were instrumental in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, a less radical movement that nevertheless shared the same basic goals.
More history of W.E.B. Du Bois’ involvement in the NAACP:
1905-1909 Founder and General Secretary of The Niagara Movement.
1910-1934 Director of Publicity and Research, Member Board of Directors, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
1910-1934 Founder and Editor of The Crisis, monthly magazine of the NAACP.
1920 Receives the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
1934 Resigns from the NAACP.
1944-48 Returns to NAACP as Director of Publicity and Research.
1945 Attends founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco as representative of the NAACP.
See also: Will the NAACP Be Here in 2009? (or Where is a Du Bois When You Need One?)
Image credit: W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst
