Program Results Ignored
by Congress, Nonprofits Say
ground zero, in a way,” says
Margaret McNamara Pastor, a
member of Reading Is Fundamental’s board.
Her mother—Margaret Mc-
Namara, a former schoolteach-
er and wife of Robert McNama-
ra, the former defense secretary
and World Bank president—
started the organization in
1966. “They’re asking for a re-
ally different kind of organiza-
tion.”
Reading Is Fundamental,
which oversees 17,000 book-dis-
tribution sites and works with
400,000 volunteers across the
country, has received federal
money since 1976, and it now
makes up 75 to 80 percent of its
revenue.
Continued from Page 19
Trouble Raising Money
Kevin Huffman, executive
vice president of public af-
fairs for Teach for America, is
dismayed that the money his
group gets to recruit and train
teachers is considered an ear-
mark. He says the organization
worked for several years to get
Congress to authorize the mon-
ey in the Higher Education Op-
portunity Act of 2008, meaning
it was vetted by multiple Con-
gressional committees.
STATE WATCH
N.Y. Nonprofits Campaign Against Cuts
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has proposed deep cuts to
the state’s budget, including money for health care, education,
and social-service programs. Now a nonprofit network is trying to
get the public to fight back.
Human Services Council, a group of 200 nonprofits primarily
in New York City, has started a campaign called “Who Cares? I
Do” to protest the governor’s plan.
The council hopes to draw protests from people who stand to
lose programs run by organizations that depend on state aid to
help elderly people, the unemployed, the abused, and the indigent.
“Temporary aid to needy families—employment and training,
after-school, alternatives to detention programs, homeless services, and domestic violence—all have been eliminated,” said Allison
Sesso, deputy executive director of the Human Services Council.
The group has created a Web site that directs residents to
write to their elected representatives and sign an electronic peti-
tion that asks lawmakers to “allocate adequate state and local re-
sources to all New Yorkers in need of essential services.”
The legislature must still debate the governor’s proposal before
it passes a budget.
The governor said he had little choice but to curtail state
spending. “New York State has been spending far too much for
far too long, and we simply can no longer afford it,” Mr. Cuomo
said in a statement.
Online Map Documents Arts Budget Plans
A new online map shows how states across the country are
treating the arts as they work to plug big budget holes. By clicking on a state on the map, a viewer can find the current budget
for its state arts agency, along with the proposed budgets from
the state’s governor and legislature for the 2012 fiscal year.
The map—created by the State Arts Action Network, a coalition of advocacy groups—also includes information about arts advocacy campaigns. The group is still working to fill in information
for some states, and it will continue to update budget numbers as
they come in.
The map can be found at: http://www.artsusa.org/get_involved/
advocacy/saan/saan_news/ default.asp.
—SUZANNE PERRY AND SUZANNE SATALINE
Keep up with developments on state budget issues in our State
Watch blog. Go to http://philanthropy.com/extras.
A Nonprofit Devises Smarter Ways
to Help Poor People Save Money
By Nicole Wallace
EARN, a nonprofit group
in San Francisco, has helped
thousands of low-income residents save money to buy a
house, start a business, or go
to college.
But the organization realized it didn’t really know why
it was successful. So EARN
has set out an ambitious research agenda to study its
programs, with the goal of
improving its own offerings
and helping organizations
across the country design better programs to help people
climb out of poverty.
“There’s so much effort and
so much investment in this is-
sue of trying to end poverty
and create prosperity,” says
Ben Mangan, the organiza-
tion’s chief executive. “But
there’s often a real lack of in-
sight and incisiveness on un-
derstanding the root causes
of the poverty and the root
causes of prosperity.”
The group is also using its
research to craft public-policy
proposals, including recom-
mendations for the Obama
administration’s proposed
changes to the Saver’s Tax
Credit.
ALAIN MCLAUGHLIN
EARN runs a matched-savings program that helped
Dametra Williams (left) and her daughter, Yvonne,
Confidence Is Key
Credit for Savers
Ida Rademacher, vice president for policy and research
at the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a non-profit in Washington that
identifies and tests new ideas
to help low-income workers
improve their financial well-being, says she is excited to
see EARN bolster its research
activities.
Organizations that fight
poverty by helping people
build assets have shown that
poor people can save, she
says, but it is still unclear
how best to ensure success.
“There’s a whole research
agenda out there waiting to
be fleshed out,” she says.
EARN believes that developing and advocating for public policies is a natural outgrowth of research.
Last month the organi-
zation received a $300,000
grant from the Rockefell-
er Foundation to help influ-
ence the development of the
Obama administration’s pro-
posed changes to the Saver’s
Tax Credit.
