Philanthropic practice

"The way the charitable tax deduction is set up, lower-income Americans can’t really take advantage of it. Unless you earn a lot of money, it makes no financial sense to do your taxes in a way that lets you claim the charitable deduction," states an article in Vox.

An article in Forbes offers ideas on approaches a resource-constrained endowment or foundation could take to develop a sustainable investing program.

"As more and more cultural philanthropists face scrutiny over the sources of their wealth, the economic scaffolding supporting American museums is being tested, and artists are facing difficult questions about complicity in the system," details a recent article in Artsy.

Ford, Hewlett, MacArthur, Open Society, and Packard, five of America’s wealthiest foundations, pledge "to do more to help grantees pay for rent, decent wages, technology, and other overhead," The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported.

The Plough Foundation announced it will close down operations within the next four years, The Associated Press reported. The Memphis, Tennessee-based foundation informed in a news release, it will grant its remaining assets to local nonprofits.

Philanthropy New York is piloting a new leadership program for experienced program officers and directors tailored for those who have chosen to work in philanthropy to help bring about change and want to push themselves to be effective champions within their roles, as the initiative's webpage explains.

A pledge by Ethical Storytelling, a community of practitioners "engaging the messy yet beautiful conversation around storytelling in the social impact space," seeks to focus the lens on the “how,” not just the “what” of the stories we encounter in the work we do, writes Rachel Goble, co-curator of Ethical Storytelling, in a recent post published in the blog of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

On July 1, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, formerly the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, marked the official transition and launch of the new department.

Last year, six of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund’s arts grantees merged or were acquired, as Frances Phillips, program director of the Arts & the Creative Work Fund at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, writes in a blog post. Phillips interviewed staff and board members at each of these organizations to learn what shaped their decisions and to ask what advice they have to offer others.

A consortium of four foundations — the Andrew W. Mellon, Ford, and MacArthur foundations and the J. Paul Getty Trust — recently announced the acquisition of a historic African-American photographic archive, pending court approval and the closing of the sale.