Ethics and Nonprofits Series

Social entrepreneurs. Microfinanciers. Practical Idealists. These are just of the few of the titles given to the new nonprofiteers and venture social capitalists starting up and charging up the world to make it a better place over the last two decades or so. 

Charitable gift-giving is complicated. And charities are facing the toughest year in our memory. What should charitable giving be about?

Our interview with Laurie Atwood (Kidz in Need Scholarship Fund), Jane Talcott (Campaigns Director,The Salvation Army), Katie Richards-Schuster (Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation Youth Council Adviser) and Martha Bloom (A2ethics Board of Directors and Vice President, Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation). Listen in.

A few weeks ago, Michael Pollan, author of several works on the food industry and its social and moral impact on our lives, penned a letter to the president-elect, urging the new commander in chief to move to the top of his executive and legislative agenda the issue of food security. The article was entitled: Farmer in Chief. (www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?scp=1&sq=mi)

It is a common enough complaint. You generally hear it just before the holidays around the Ann Arbor area. When people are getting annual giving appeals by mail, online or lately, by text message. The complaint? "There are too many nonprofits around here. And don't some of them overlap and aren't they offering similar programs?" Why don't they collaborate and work better together?