From the Editor’s Desk: A Year-End Thank You

A Year-End Thank You from The Chronicle. Dear John,

Before you take a break to ring in 2022, I want to thank you and your colleagues for all you have done to make a difference. In a time of upheaval, nonprofits and foundations have kept communities strong.
Over the past year, we’ve connected you to others who are advancing the common good so you can see what your peers are doing and learn new approaches. They include:

Innovators like Andrea Welsch, who worked out a deal to house a charter school at the Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac, where she is executive director, providing much-needed revenue to the institution and offering the school new ways to reimagine education. Crusaders like Hop Hopkins, who persuaded the Sierra Club to recognize that the traditional environmental movement can’t achieve its goals unless it locks arms with the racial-justice movement. Leaders like Jen Ford Reedy, who spearheaded the Bush Foundation move to channel $100 million to efforts to build the wealth of Black people and Native Americans — and to let community groups decide where the money could best be used. Thinkers like Elijah Goldberg, who spent six years mustering the data to demonstrate that most nonprofits are highly successful — and cost-effective — at improving the lives of those they serve. Creators like Dan Borelli, who used his artwork to demonstrate that a chemical dye plant in Ashland, Mass, was producing cancer-causing toxins — and used a foundation grant to rally citizens to persuade the Environmental Protection Agency to mount a multimillion-dollar cleanup effort.

Other stories that have stuck with me focus on the strain hitting individual nonprofit workers.
My colleague Jim Rendon marked the first anniversary of the Covid lockdown by talking to Greta Faworski, a food-bank fundraiser in Kalamazoo, Mich., who spent 10 hours a day packing groceries for people in need, then at night caught up on her development work, writing grant proposals and reaching out to as many of the group’s 1,800 new donors as possible. She kept a change of clothes tucked in a bag under her desk for the nights she didn’t make it home.
That kind of extended stress on the nonprofit work force worries many experts about what’s ahead and whether enough people will stay committed to work that advances the common good.
We’ll continue to explore solutions to such challenges in the year ahead and keep you on top of the latest thinking that will help you innovate, crusade, create, and lead.
But before we do that, we’re taking a two-week break from sending our daily and weekly newsletters, During this time, we’ll be highlighting articles on our website that you may have missed in the midst of caring for your organization, your staff, and your family and community.
I hope you’ll turn to our site often for more articles that inform and inspire.
Stay safe and stay strong.
Stacy Palmer

Editor
Chronicle of Philanthropy
1255 Twenty-Third St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037
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