Samwise Nonprofits and Charities Newsletter
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Saturday Deep Dive
Today we step back from the daily news cycle and surface the best recent research and long-form analysis on nonprofit impact, philanthropy, and sector policy. Worth a slower read.
Idaho Nonprofit Argues Rural Democracy Work Requires Relational Infrastructure, Not Just Mobilization
Adrienne Evans, executive director of United Vision for Idaho, argues that democratic erosion does not begin in cities but in rural and conservative communities abandoned for decades by both philanthropy and political movements. Long before rural disengagement became a national news story, her statewide organizing network was doing the work in Idaho — where authoritarian groups had been quietly building for years. Evans contends that winning elections or mobilizing voters is insufficient; what is needed is reinvestment in the relational infrastructure that makes civic participation possible. Her organization's United Vision Project has reached 1.4 million people across 12 states, generated 107,000 authentic conversations, and shifted political sentiment across divides at a measured rate of 32.7 percent since launching in 2021. Her core argument: democracy requires rebuilding trust and sustained cross-difference relationships — not just transactional outreach campaigns that count doors knocked and calls made.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly
Advocacy Groups Call on Foundations to Divest Endowments from Fossil Fuels, Weapons, and Private Prisons
Funders4Palestine and Funding Freedom issue a sector-wide challenge: philanthropic institutions controlling trillions in assets must stop claiming to serve public good while their endowments remain invested in fossil fuels, weapons manufacturers, private prisons, and surveillance technologies. Current law requires foundations to distribute only 5 percent of assets annually; the remaining 95 percent sits in financial markets often funding the very crises philanthropy claims to address. The piece documents major foundations — including the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust — holding billions tied to systems of harm, from climate disruption to military occupation. The authors call for five concrete actions: building collective accountability pressure, mandatory endowment disclosure with binding divestment policies, disrupting legitimizing narratives, collective withdrawal of partnerships from non-compliant foundations, and ultimately building community-controlled economic systems that reduce dependence on philanthropic capital entirely. The argument is structural: divest from harm, invest in life.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly
Caribbean-Born Domestic Worker Organizer Wins Philadelphia Law Protecting Nannies and Caregivers
Adriana George immigrated from the Caribbean at 21, worked as a nanny in New York and Philadelphia, and found community with other caregivers who gathered in local parks and shared accounts of abuse and wage theft. Rather than accept those conditions, she began documenting her colleagues' testimonies and eventually left caregiving to become a full-time organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance's We Dream in Black program in Pennsylvania. Her organizing led to a landmark Philadelphia ordinance expanding domestic worker protections: a public registry of employers with a history of mistreatment, worker restitution, and proactive investigation of abusive employers. Author Errin Haines frames George's work as part of an ongoing American Revolution — the generational effort of excluded communities forcing the nation to close the gap between its founding ideals and lived reality. Co-published with The 19th.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly
Broadcast TV Aired Just Eight Hours of Climate Coverage in 2025 as Corporate Networks Cut the Beat
Corporate broadcast networks aired just eight hours of climate coverage across all of 2025 — a 35 percent drop from the prior year — even as climate disasters intensified and federal rollbacks accelerated, according to new analysis by Media Matters for America. Shilpi Chhotray of Counterstream Media traces the decline partly to structural changes in major newsrooms, including CBS dismantling much of its climate reporting capacity after installing Bari Weiss as editor in chief. Coverage that remains is event-driven and episodic: frontline communities are almost entirely absent as expert voices, White men dominate guest slots, and the systemic causes of climate change are rarely examined. Independent and movement-rooted outlets — among them Prism, Capital B, Scalawag, Convergence, and NPQ — are filling the gap with justice-centered reporting. Chhotray argues nonprofits must treat sustained investment in independent journalism as a core component of climate work, not a peripheral strategy.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly
Twenty Nonprofits Sue to Restore EPA Endangerment Finding After February 2026 Rescission
In February 2026, the EPA finalized the rescission of its 2009 Endangerment Finding — the foundational determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The move dismantles the legal basis underpinning vehicle emission standards, power plant rules, and decades of federal climate regulation. Nearly 20 nonprofits — including Earthjustice, the American Lung Association, NRDC, and the Sierra Club — have filed suit demanding reinstatement, arguing the EPA ignored established science and binding Supreme Court precedent. Twenty-four states, cities, and counties are expected to consolidate a parallel challenge into one of the largest legal confrontations yet with the administration's environmental rollbacks. Congress has also voted to open Minnesota's Boundary Waters to copper-nickel mining, and Senator Mike Lee has initiated a similar review of Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, galvanizing coalitions across environmental, Indigenous, and recreation communities.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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