Samwise Nonprofits and Charities Newsletter
Monday, July 6, 2026
Protect Democracy Advocates Call for Proportional Representation as Civil Society’s Structural Answer to Authoritarianism
Playing defense against authoritarianism isn’t enough, argue Protect Democracy advocates Cyrena Kokolis and Farbod Faraji in NPQ. America’s “polycrisis” — cascading failures of civil rights, climate, health, and democratic integrity — has a systemic root: a winner-take-all electoral system that structurally advantages authoritarian capture. Their proposed remedy is proportional representation, which would allocate congressional seats in proportion to votes cast through multi-winner districts, making gerrymandering functionally impossible, expanding minority representation, and reducing political violence. Calling on civil society to lead the charge, the authors urge nonprofits to educate their communities and funders to resource this structural reform.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Democracy at 250: The Cost of Undercutting Youth-Led Movements
Young people have always been “present-tense architects” of democratic change — from Ella Baker’s Young Negro Cooperative League to civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the South Africa divestment movement — yet philanthropy systematically undermines today’s youth-led organizing, writes Dr. Nia West-Bey in NPQ. She identifies three forces hobbling 21st-century movements: “movement capture” by foundations steering activists away from radical demands, fragmented strategy, and collapse of national infrastructure to translate local wins into national change. The result: today’s young people have never experienced a major national win. West-Bey calls on funders to boldly invest in coordinated, disruptive youth-led agendas.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations and Building a Culture of Racial Repair
As America marks its 250th anniversary, philanthropy must embrace reparations for Black Americans as a prerequisite for the racial equity it claims to champion, argues a six-author team writing in collaboration with Liberation Ventures and published in NPQ. The piece urges foundations and funders to move beyond diversity commitments and support formal repair — financial, institutional, and cultural — for the ongoing harms of slavery and structural racism. Framing reparations not as optional but as essential to a thriving multiracial democracy, the authors challenge the philanthropic sector to match its stated values with transformative investment in racial healing.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Gunfire
March For Our Lives Executive Director Jaclyn Corin uses America’s 250th anniversary to trace the full arc of gun violence in American history — from slave patrols and frontier massacres to Reconstruction-era terror, 20th-century political assassinations, and today’s mass shooting epidemic — in this NPQ commentary. Corin argues that gun violence has never been incidental to American life but structural to it: a recurring tool of racial and political control. Yet history is not destiny, she writes. The movement March For Our Lives represents — which has passed hundreds of gun safety laws and registered millions of young voters — shows that policy and culture can change.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Beyond What Is: Reimagining the American Project
Black Innovation Alliance CEO Kelly Burton finds an unlikely hero in Gouverneur Morris — the flawed, peg-legged Pennsylvania aristocrat who fought harder than almost anyone at the Constitutional Convention against slavery, and who is credited with drafting the Preamble’s phrase “to form a more perfect Union.” Writing for NPQ, Burton argues that Morris left behind not merely a political slogan but an orientation toward the future: an acknowledgment that the union was always unfinished. At America’s 250th, Burton contends that the task before civil society is not to restore a past democratic order, but to refound democracy on more honest and durable terms.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
We Were Never Waiting, but This Moment Calls for All of Us
Gen Z’s civic engagement is not a future promise but a present-tense reality, argues Youth250 co-founder Dillon St. Bernard in NPQ. Young people have always organized, marched, and built power — the question is whether established institutions will meet them where they are. St. Bernard introduces Youth250, a national initiative mobilizing the civic energy of the youngest adult generation around America’s 250th anniversary, and calls on nonprofits and philanthropic organizations to shift genuine resources and decision-making authority toward youth leaders. The moment calls for all of us, he writes — not just the young people who have been doing the work all along.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Resilient, Not Shaken: 25 Years Since 9/11 and the Path Forward for the U.S.-Based Sikh Community
Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks sparked a wave of hate crimes against Sikhs in America, Sikh Coalition Executive Director Harman Singh reflects on the community’s transformation from requesting rights to expecting them. Writing for NPQ’s “We Stood Up” column, Singh traces the formation of the Sikh Coalition and decades of civil rights victories — from hate crime prosecutions to workplace accommodation settlements to inclusive school curricula — won through the Sikh principle of sarbat da bhala (“for the good of all”), expanding each win to protect other religious minorities, LGBTQ+ communities, and marginalized groups. The next 25 years, he writes, are about building tables, not simply seeking a seat.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Supreme Court Blocks Trump Birthright Citizenship Order, Reaffirms 14th Amendment
The Open Society Foundations celebrated a landmark Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which blocked the Trump administration’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship and reaffirmed the 14th Amendment guarantee that all persons born in the United States are citizens. The 6–3 decision — won through litigation led by the ACLU, Asian Law Caucus, Democracy Defenders Fund, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund — was described by OSF Managing Director Laleh Ispahani as “one of the most consequential civil rights rulings in decades.” The foundation also noted losses in the same court term, including decisions limiting transgender rights and immigrant due process, and pledged continued support for civil liberties.
Sources: Open Society Foundations Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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