What makes a nonprofit grow like a tech startup? The right partners—and more. Turner House, once a small clinic in Wyandotte County, Kansas, knows a bit about growth. In 2017, the clinic served 5,000 patients in Wyandotte County, Kansas. Five years later, the number...
Community foundations often lead projects involving several nonprofits. Here’s what they look for. Every partnership is unique but here’s one thing that they all share: the belief that working together will jump-start success. Partnering, at its core, is a leap of...
Teaching kids to think critically can and should top the education agenda—an interview with William Hughes William Hughes is a leader with a deep background in education and strong beliefs. “I believe in a science of thinking,” is one of them, he says. Others include:...
Trained in principled leadership, our Fellows face plenty of opportunity—and fraud. In 300 BCE, a sea merchant named Hegestratos secretly planned the world’s first fraud. It involved a shipment of corn. When his crew found out, they rebelled, and he drowned trying to...
For single mothers making multiple transfers a day on public transportation, there’s hope. There was a time when Dan Georgopulos led an effort in help single mothers repair their homes, hence the name of the Denver-area organization he founded: Hands of The Carpenter....
A dangerous neighborhood prompts a pre-school program to build something really big. It’s hard to learn in Austin, Chicago’s largest neighborhood. Austin is thick with barriers—poverty, domestic abuse, street violence. In fact, it’s so hard to attend classes and stay...
A McGowan alum finds a professional home in a company that walks the walk For Adam Davis, choosing an MBA program was fairly easy. Not only was Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business one of the top-ranked schools in the country, but also, he says,...
As it reopens to in-person learning, Vertus High School chooses a Word of the Year Vertus High School in Rochester, New York, was never fully remote during the pandemic year. Half the students whose families agreed to a hybrid model had in-person learning Monday and...
A McGowan alumna takes on gender imbalance and tech leadership in stressful times As a kid, Brigid Johnson fell in love with programming. “You change a few lines of code and make what you want to happen happen,” she says, as if writing code is akin to casting a magic...
A tumultuous 2020 yields streamlining, new planning, more collaboration For a nation already mired in problems of poverty, racism, and inequity, 2020 brought fresh storms. With COVID threatening lives and communities, nonprofits staggered under increasing demand,...
A young girl makes the case for wraparound services and forgiveness Jason Branch was the kind of father who taught his daughter to fish and borrow books from the library. “Then he didn’t come around for a while,” she wrote a few years ago. Her mother told Jaslyn that...
Late in the fall of 2019, 10 talented second-year MBA students from 10 top-tier programs across the country tackled the notion of social identity. Working independently from their perches in Philadelphia (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania), Durham, North...
A McGowan alum sees opportunity in the COVID era and other crises Jon Erdtsieck loved his job at United Airlines. Among his duties: negotiate fees and contracts and address legal issues at 65 small airports. Among the benefits: the chance to learn and work across...
For those awash in uncertainty, scenario planning can help What if, with a vaccine for COVID, the economy returns to normal, but leaves us scrambling to reconnect with donors and constituents? What if the economy continues to suffer and landlords in the area—including...
Are there housing lessons to be learned from the pandemic? In late March, Dr. Thomas Huggett spent much of his time scouring homeless shelters. A physician who works for Lawndale Christian Health Center, he was recruiting residents to live in Hotel One Sixty-Six...
In the age of COVID, Cristo Rey’s tuition-free schools face more challenges than most For Elizabeth Goettl, CEO of the Cristo Rey Network, the COVID pandemic is raising tough questions. She’s facing the operational questions most educators are facing—How do you social...
With COVID-19 mounting, a food program buys, bargains, and packs anew When COVID-19 closed down ski operations and restaurants in Vail, Colorado, recently, truckloads of food that were headed for upscale restaurants suddenly had nowhere to go. Eagle Valley’s The...
It’s a grocery store—and much more Tom Shicowich felt powerless to reclaim his life from the type 2 diabetes that seemed to have taken over. He was more than 100 pounds overweight and on a tight budget due to $200,000 in medical bills incurred from diabetes-related...
David Vawdrey, then chief data informatics officer at Geisinger’s Steele Institute for Health Innovation, addresses the intersection between disease and the challenging world patients live and work in. Watch more videos on the McGowan Charitable Fund YouTube...
Jason Jay, senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, offers insights into the power of conversation and ways to achieve open discussion in a divisive time. Watch more videos on the McGowan Charitable Fund YouTube...
