Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Accountability
Community Foundations
Foundations
Nonprofit Sector
Participatory grantmaking
Image Credit: treety on iStock Participatory grantmaking begins with a deceptively simple question: What would happen if people directly affected by funders’ decisions helped decide how resources were used? Some foundations involve community members in setting priorities, evaluating applications, and making funding decisions. Others invite communities to shape a fund and recommend recipients while retaining final authority through an executive or board. Both may involve participation, but they distribute institutional power differently. The Participatory Grantmaking …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Activism
Disasters and Recovery
Global Issues
Policy
Politics
Image Credit: tiyeh Fathi For Unsplash+ At a campaign rally this October, with the November 3 midterms approaching, Donald Trump explained why he insisted on calling Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, “Mohammed.” Someone had corrected him and Trump told the crowd, “I’m the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want.” Mohamed is part of El-Sayed’s full name, though Abdul is the name he uses. Trump knew the distinction and …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Liberation
Philanthropy
Social Movements
Image Credit: unique bash Creative on Pexels The first Muslim ban was not signed under the Trump administration in 2017. On Christmas morning in 1521, on a Hispaniola plantation governed by the violence of Christopher Columbus’s son, roughly 20 enslaved Africans, many of them Wolof Muslims from Senegambia, a region in West Africa that spans Senegal and The Gambia, staged the earliest recorded slave revolt in the Americas. In the decades that followed, the Spanish …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Accountability
Capacity Building
Executive Leadership
Organizational Culture
Image Credit: A. C. For Unsplash+ A telephone-company troubleshooter called me. She was five years retired and asked about volunteer work at the nonprofit hospital where I was employed. Buried in work, I needed someone to read an audit report that suggested a contractor had misused restricted funds for three years. It was boring, dense, technical work that required knowing what “routine” looks like well enough to spot when something wasn’t. Leaning on her willingness …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Immigration
Racial Justice
Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash As immigration returns to the center of the US political debate, the Supreme Court is preparing to decide a case that could fundamentally reshape the nation’s immigration detention system. At issue is whether the federal government can hold immigrants in deportation proceedings without granting them a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Immigrant rights advocates argue that what is at stake extends far beyond an administrative procedure. The decision …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Civic Infrastructure
Liberation
Racial Justice
Structural Racism
WetheCivic
Image Credit: Şeyda Nur Uğur on Pexels It’s hard to convey the power of witnessing two groups, often hidden and made invisible, be seen and centered. In 2025, I was facilitating a cycle of New Profit’s Unlocked Futures program, a cohort-based portfolio investing in transforming the US criminal legal system, where we convene and provide strategic support for organizations led by formerly incarcerated and directly impacted leaders. That year, we chose to hold our final …
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Author:
Coty Poynter
Categories:
Foundations
Nonprofit Sector
Philanthropy
Credit: Zac Gudakov on Unsplash The High Desert Community Foundation (HDCF) has announced it will end its fiscal sponsorship program on December 31, 2026, with operations expected to cease by the end of June 2027. This means the foundation’s sponsored projects will need to establish their own independent nonprofit status or find another fiscal sponsor. HDCF’s decision, announced on July 30, affects more than just the foundation itself. The foundation had previously stated that its …
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Author:
Coty Poynter
Categories:
Civil Society and Democracy
Health Equity
Health Justice
Credit: Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash+ This piece is part of a narrative series around the case for co-governance led by Race Forward and Partners for Dignity and Rights. As the United States continues in its 250th year, public health is part of a broader national reckoning about democracy, what it means to be free, and on how power is shared and exercised. If the future of health equity is our goal, then the way governance …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
As told to Brian Calvert | Photography by Stella Kalinina Farming 250, A Series with Civil Eats focuses on the question is being asked: What does America look like right now? In this new series, Farming 250, Civil Eats seeks to answer that question from the soil up. The newsroom is partnering with NPQ for the #WeTheCivic America 250 campaign. This piece was originally published on Civil Eats and can be read here. We thought …
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Author:
Coty Poynter
Categories:
Community Organizing
Food Justice
Social Movements
Credit: Photography by Stella Kalinina As told to Brian Calvert | Photography by Stella Kalinina Farming 250, A Series with Civil Eats, focuses on the question is being asked: What does America look like right now? In this new series, Farming 250, Civil Eats seeks to answer that question from the soil up. The newsroom is partnering with NPQ for the #WeTheCivic America 250 campaign. This piece was originally published on Civil Eats and can …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Disability Inclusion
Disability Justice
Health Justice
Policy
Photo by Robert Harkness on Unsplash On September 23, 2026, a federal court removed six provisions from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations that spelled out how federally funded programs are supposed to protect community-integration rights: the rights of people with disabilities to live, work, and receive public support in the most community-integrated setting possible. This was the Texas v. Kennedy order—and it applies nationally across the United States. Federal disability law …
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Author:
Aine Creedon
Categories:
Food Justice
Indigenous Communities
Indigenous Voices
Rural Voices
Social Movements
Tiffany St. Goddard on her ranch in Pendroy, Mont. on June 5th, 2026. As told to Brian Calvert | Photography by Tailyr Irvine Farming 250, A Series with Civil Eats focuses on the question is being asked: What does America look like right now? In this new series, Farming 250, Civil Eats seeks to answer that question from the soil up. The newroom is partnering with NPQ for the #WeTheCivic America 250 campaign. This piece …
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