Samwise Nonprofits and Charities Newsletter
Saturday, July 18, 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.
Protecting Rights Beyond the Game: Nonprofit Advocacy for Human Rights at the World Cup
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup unfolded across the United States, nonprofit organizations mobilized to document a pattern of rights violations that challenged the tournament’s promise of universal celebration. Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan—selected from among roughly 50 official referees and named Men’s Referee of the Year in Africa the previous year—was detained by US authorities upon arrival in Miami, interrogated, held in a cell, and deported. Iran, though it chose to participate, was forced to base its delegation in Mexico due to US immigration restrictions. Amnesty International’s March 2026 report “Humanity Must Win” warned that ICE and other agencies constitute a “chilling threat” to players, officials, and spectators. Advocates at the ACLU, CAIR, the Workers Defense Action Fund, and the Sport & Rights Alliance are pressing FIFA and host city officials to enforce the human rights standards embedded in FIFA’s statutes since 2016.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
The Global South Has Already Solved Your Funding Crisis
With more than 5,000 USAID projects terminated in early 2025, US nonprofits scrambled for funding models resilient enough to survive institutional disruption—only to find that more durable answers had long existed in the Global South. Writing in NPQ, fundraising strategist Farkhanda Zahoor, who has connected practitioners across more than 100 countries, argues that organizations from Kenya to India to Pakistan built community-funded architectures under far greater constraint, and that the sector has systematically declined to treat that knowledge as transferable expertise. In Kenya, 86 percent of the population gave money in 2024, with a fifth giving twelve or more times that year—a rate most US nonprofits are still working toward. India’s Internet Freedom Foundation, funded entirely by Indian citizens, raised the equivalent of roughly $25,000 in three weeks after a 2021 regulatory crisis. “The organizations with community had the floor,” Zahoor writes.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Hewlett Foundation Announces New $100 Million Emerging Technology and Security Initiative
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced a new five-year, $100 million initiative on July 16, 2026, at the Aspen Security Forum, directing philanthropic attention toward the intersection of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and national security. The Emerging Technology and Security Initiative will focus on three priorities: protecting critical infrastructure—including power grids, water systems, and hospitals—against AI-enabled threats; reducing security risks from fast-moving technologies including biotechnology and quantum computing; and helping governments and allied actors develop international governance frameworks. The foundation plans $20 million in exploratory grants during 2026, building on $10 million already awarded in February to early grantees including Stanford’s Hoover Institution and Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security. The formal five-year term begins in 2027, with an annual grantmaking budget of $20 million.
Sources: Hewlett Foundation Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Philanthropy and Community Sharing Power: What It Looks Like from the Field’s Perspective
Six housing organizers, advocates, and practitioners writing in NPQ offer philanthropic funders a direct assessment of what genuine power-sharing with community leaders requires—and where the sector consistently falls short. The authors—including Bebhinn Francis of United Tenants of Albany, Jenay Manley of KC Tenants in Kansas City, and Andreina Kniss of the Alliance for Housing Justice—draw on a year of engagement through a Community Advisors Program at the Fund for Housing and Opportunity, a grantmaking collaborative. Their recommendations include visiting communities in person, paying advisors as any consultant would be paid, offering unrestricted and rapid-response funding, and acting visibly on what communities share. The authors caution against performative grantmaking driven by optics and against funding cycles that sacrifice long-term campaigns for quick wins. “We don’t just want to be heard,” they write. “We want our input to have impact.”
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Buck
Artist nae vallejo (they/he)—Black, Caddo, Mexican, queer, trans, and disabled—presents “Buck,” an oshibana piece made from dried flowers and preserved plant material arranged into the silhouette of a deer, published this week in NPQ. Through the practice of botanical preservation, vallejo explores how memory changes form without disappearing. The deer emerged, the artist writes, as a symbol of tenderness, alertness, and relationship—one that moves through landscapes shaped by both beauty and disruption while remaining connected to the ecosystems that sustain it. The preserved plant materials themselves carry histories of growth, loss, care, and return. “Buck tells a story about our relationships to land, memory, and one another,” vallejo writes. “It is a story that existed long before national borders and continues beyond them.” Vallejo is the founder of naeborhood projects, a practice centered on disability justice, interdependence, and collective care.
Sources: Nonprofit Quarterly Share ↗ ✉︎ Email 💬 Text
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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