Sarah Brown, the CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, announced last week that she’s stepping down after 20 impressive years and the board has started a search for her successor. Let me just say: Sarah is a hard act to follow. In founding the National Campaign, Sarah created an organization that …
Congratulations to the hardworking team at the Washington Monthly for an outstanding January/ February issue. Given how this magazine consistently punches above its weight, the Madison Initiative is pleased to be helping underwrite their efforts with a multi-year grant for general support. In this issue I’d recommend you be sure to read Donald Kettl’s “Ten Secret Truths …
The bell has rung. Civil society leaders from India, Pakistan, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Mexico, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania have come together, with optimism and conviction, asking others to join a movement to ensure that all children learn the fundamental, life-changing skills of reading and arithmetic. But will anyone answer? That’s the question I found myself …
Hillary, Jeb, Mitt, Rand—will they or won’t they? When and how will they? Twenty-one months out from the next presidential election, somehow we’re already caught up in the high drama of the campaign. Our democracy has a presidential fixation that rivals that of teenagers addled by the latest pop stars who also go by first …
This post originally appeared on the Grantcraft blog. -ed. One way I mark the passage of another year is the welcome arrival of the latest Blueprint — the annual industry forecast report written by Lucy Bernholz and published by GrantCraft, a service of Foundation Center. This year’s report, Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2015, provides us once again with …
So let’s say you were trying to make a big dent in problems facing people in poor countries, like inequality, poor health and nutrition, illiteracy, and corruption. Let’s say you had big ideas, lots of access to powerful decision makers and the smartest analysts, but relatively little money compared to the scale of the problems. …
According to many newsrooms, fact-checking articles are among the most requested, and most read, content they produce. In recent years groups like Factcheck, Flackcheck, FactChecker (home of the “Pinocchios”), Politifact and Punditfact have emerged to address growing questions of truth in politics. Fact-checking is done with at least three possible goals in mind, each with distinct audiences associated: For the broader public, to …
The Hewlett Foundation gives nearly $8 million each year to get Open Educational Resources (OER) into mainstream use. We believe that one of the natural consequences of widespread OER adoption will be an increase in students’ educational access and success—with the average U.S. college student now spending $1200 each year on textbooks and other course materials on …
Last year around this time, I used this space to offer some predictions for 2014. Every single one of them came true! Now I’m emboldened to go beyond predictions and share my resolutions for 2015—and leave it to you to hold me to them. I resolve to do a better job of ensuring that, even when supporting …
Like a whole lot of other people, I’ve become engrossed by Serial. (If you’ve somehow managed to avoid its seeming cultural omnipresence: Serial is a weekly podcast in which a reporter sifts through clues and patches together fragments of people’s memories to try to solve a long-ago real-life murder mystery—and possibly exonerate the man convicted of the crime.) …