Social Service/Public Welfare/Human Services

One of the biggest fallacies of philanthropy is the expectation that money will solve everything and that more money equals greater results. Trillions of dollars are spent globally on social and environmental issues, and very few problems have been solved. Why is that? We’ve been focused on the wrong things. Our assumptions, traditions and self-interest…

A group of service providers who contract with Illinois state government sued Gov. Bruce Rauner and members of his administration last week for stiffing them on bills for services that they've provided since the state budget impasse began in July. In a lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court, the Pay Now Illinois coalition of…

States have faced record-breaking budget impasses this year, with nonprofits having to do their best to continue their missions without much-needed funding. Tensions increasingly are occurring in some states with political battles between governors and opposite party-controlled general assemblies, resulting in reduced or withheld funding that limits social service agencies’ abilities and could have dire effects on the communities they serve...

Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has been making a big global push this year to aid the 1 billion people around the world living with disabilities. To further that goal, it has awarded $20 million to the 30 nonprofits it believed could benefit most from its tech and data-driven approach to charitable giving. From open-source electric wheelchairs…

The area around the 3800 block of Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia offers limited choices for dining out. There's a run-down pizza shop, a bulletproof Chinese take-out joint and not much else. But that's about to change. And Donnell Jones-Craven wants to tell the world. He is standing in front of the freshly painted facade…

No. You should not. But that's what happened at a Goodwill location in Franklin, Wis., on Saturday. According to WISN Milwaukee, employees at the store found three hand grenades while sorting through donations, prompting an evacuation of the building...

Those perfectly good Starbucks "protein bistro boxes" and "PB&J" sandwiches won't be languishing in a landfill anymore. Starbucks announced this week that it's aiming to donate 100 percent of its unsold food to those in need. The coffee giant said its employees, or "partners," came up with the idea to donate the food that doesn't…

The payday loan industry generates $11 billion in revenue. It is also a hated, predatory sector that uses its size to influence legislation in order to keep it alive and growing. It goes where banks are afraid to tread and preys on the "unbanked"—nearly one-third of the U.S. population is "unbanked" or "underbanked." That’s a lot of people in need of affordable financial services. Much of this population is also the population that the nonprofit sector serves...

For most charities, there's no such thing as too many donations. But what if those donations are all used copies of "Fifty Shades of Grey," the best-selling 2011 erotic romance novel? What if it's enough copies to build a fort? That's the sad state of affairs at an Oxfam International thrift shop in Swansea, South Wales...

A year after Federation and Employment Guidance Services (FEGS), a $250 million health and human services behemoth in New York City, went bankrupt, the city's human-services sector is struggling to serve an estimated 2.5 million people, a report from the Human Services Council found. The report, "New York Nonprofits in the Aftermath of FEGS: A…