Social Change

Today, American Express, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Main Street America announced the winners of the 2018 Partners in Preservation: Main Streets campaign. The 11 winning historic sites will receive a total of $1.6 million in grants to fund their respective preservation projects. At the outset of the campaign, an additional $400,000 was allocated to the 20 Main Street communities that participated in the program to increase public awareness of the importance of these historic places and build grassroots support for the participating Main Street districts.

212 companies—including Okta, Tiffany & Co., Rackspace® and Major League Baseball—have joined Benevity's growing community of over 500 enterprise clients since this time last year.

Wondering how to create even more purpose and inclusion in your workplace? Get the scoop on how to go beyond giving, volunteering and grantmaking to create next-level engagement through your #CSR program through positive actions.

Public-private partnerships that align around the single goal of reversing opioid misuse and heroin use are needed now more than ever to produce comprehensive approaches that change the trajectory of the future of health. It’s with this shared goal in mind that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Discovery Education have joined forces to launch Operation Prevention—a nationwide initiative to educate and empower students with facts to help them better understand the science behind opioids’ impact on the brain and body.

Keep America Beautiful, the nation’s iconic community improvement nonprofit organization, has selected 11 high school students from across the country to serve on its seventh national Youth Advisory Council. Keep America Beautiful’s National Youth Advisory Council provides a unique opportunity for high school students to participate in a service-learning and leadership development program focusing on environmental stewardship and sustainability.

Last year we debuted a concept called The Knitting Factor, which helps explain how skills-based volunteering knits together the expertise from the corporate and nonprofit sectors to create sustainable solutions that don’t come undone when partners part ways. We also introduced three key ingredients to the success of The Knitting Factor: Panoramic Perspectives, Skill Sharing and Sticky Relationships. In celebration of Pro Bono Week, we wanted to share a quick review of how the Knitting Factor has worked in practice over the past year.

The term “capacity-building” tends to be thrown around quite a bit in the nonprofit sector. And as jargon, it has the unfortunate fate of being pretty obscure outside of our sector—not to mention losing its meaning when overused within the field. But at the heart of it, nonprofit capacity-building is one of the most exciting and inspirational ways to support an issue. Quite simply, it’s about achieving a multiplier effect—creating more change in the world by helping to strengthen the organizations that are tackling society’s greatest challenges. At Taproot, we are driven by a strong belief in the exponential impact that can come from supporting nonprofits in this way.

Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, released the “Global Volunteerism Journey Report,” a first-of-its-kind study that examines the similarities and differences in family volunteering from five countries around the world. Underwritten by The Walt Disney Company, the study was commissioned to assess the global state of volunteerism and key barriers to overcome, identify solutions and opportunities to increase family volunteering, and understand the best ways to communicate opportunities.

eBook: The top three CSR trends that are changing the way companies engage their people in purpose-driven workplace cultures. Actionable tips you can use to engage more people and create bigger impact along with examples from companies such as Levi’s, Prudential, QVC, TripAdvisor and more who are leading the way.

Voting. It’s the fundamental premise underpinning our governmental system. There shouldn’t be disagreement about that, irrespective of political party, right?