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A year after kicking off an initiative to improve nutrition at schools in its hometown of Camden, Campbell Soup Co. is getting high marks. And over the next five years, the soup and snack giant plans to invest $5 million in Full Futures, a sweeping effort to make sure students are well nourished and ready to thrive — both in the classroom and outside of it.
Armed with research linking school meals and healthy diets to academic success, Campbell executives saw an opportunity to effect change by leveraging the expertise and resources of numerous partners to advance developments in nutrition programming and cafeteria infrastructure across a school district that serves 11,000 students.
Working in partnership with the Camden City School District, as well as several nonprofit and corporate entities, Campbell set out to improve how kids eat at school through cafeteria equipment upgrades, expanded meal programs, nutrition education, reformulated menus and equitable sourcing of local, fresh produce.
Campbell recently reported on its progress with Full Futures, as well as next steps planned to keep the momentum going during the next four years of the campaign.
The FirstEnergy Foundation has granted two New Jersey nonprofits with $20,000 "Gifts of the Season," aiding in their mission to make lives brighter within the Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) service area.
Cornerstone Family Programs, based in JCP&L's northern New Jersey region, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County, based in the central New Jersey region, both offer afterschool programs that focus on providing safe, empowering environments for local students.
"We're proud to support these organizations because their missions align with our commitment to a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued, included and respected," said Lorna Wisham, president of the FirstEnergy Foundation. "The winners were chosen by FirstEnergy External Affairs employees who identified organizations in their local areas that do extraordinary work to strengthen the community and enhance the lives of vulnerable and underserved populations."
A coalition of six major journalism funders have announced commitments totaling $36.5 million in emergency grants to public media stations at risk of closure following federal funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
The grantmakers include Pivotal Ventures, as well as the John S. and James L. Knight, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson, Schmidt Family, and Ford foundations. The commitment includes $26.5 million in support for the Public Media Bridge Fund, a philanthropic effort managed by Public Media Company and developed with seed funding from the Schmidt Family Foundation.
In addition to supporting the fund, the MacArthur Foundation is committing $10 million in direct support to public media stations, programs, and organizations. The collaboration is accompanied by an open call to other funders to support local public media; if stations close or scale back, millions of Americans will lose access to free, reliable local news, educational content, cultural programming, and emergency alerts.
This project represents the most extensive independent study on DAFs to date.
Thanks to the collective efforts of 111 DAF programs that voluntarily provided anonymized data to the research team, the dataset covers nine years of activity from more than 50,000 accounts, with over 600,000 inbound contributions to DAFS and more than 2.25 million outbound grants from DAFs.
The DAFRC research team hopes this data will be used to improve best practices, inform relevant regulation, or enhance the field’s use of DAFs as a philanthropic tool for donors, DAF sponsoring organizations, and other sector partners.
Responding to the urgency of this moment in time, Asset Funder Network’s new brief is reimagining and building on past recommendations to map more just paths to economic resilience moving forward.
To bring the framework and recommendations to life, they included eight case stories from local and national funders that are applying an equity lens with a range of strategies to support Relief through Resilience. Four of the funders have employed a two-pronged approach of investing in systems change and programs. Three others are focused on on-the-ground interventions, and another is predominantly investing at the systems level. To support their strategies, they have made changes inward, outward, around, and onward.
High-quality early care and education (ECE) programs have been proven to create positive outcomes for children—especially among those living in poverty. Yet many children from low-income families have a hard time accessing quality child care, and miss the critical developmental growth and foundation needed for academic and life success. Based on Nonprofit Finance Fund's research and analysis of 147 nonprofit child care centers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, the report demystifies the financial, business and systemic barriers to expanding high-quality care—and begins to identify how to increase access for more children.
“A Time for Action: Mobilizing Philanthropic Support for Boys and Young Men of Color” lays out a vision and a bold plan of action to maximize the potential of philanthropy and the private sector to increase opportunity for boys and young men of color that benefits the entire country. While it focuses on systems, policies, and practices that profoundly shape the lives of our sons and brothers, the recommended actions also help to create the conditions for all children and young adults to thrive, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. The plan is bolstered by $194 million in initial investments in key initiatives, including for example programs to enhance school learning environments and reduce the overrepresentation of young people in the justice system.
The effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt all around New Jersey. In order to dig deeper into the impact of the pandemic on certain communities and stay connected during this difficult time, CNJG worked with our affinity group chairs and other members to develop programming that supplemented our COVID-19 Funders Briefing Series and Newark COVID-19 Series. These virtual affinity and interest group meetings were designed for colleagues to update each other on coronavirus response efforts, hear about the greatest needs in their funding area, and share what they have learned. CNJG members can access the recordings of these past meetings to hear what was said.