Grant Writing Confidential

* Do not ever use Paypal; this story from someone who gets their accounts frozen is fairly common. I had a nasty encounter with Paypal that guarantees I will never, ever use them again, and I can tell you from experience that their legal department is just as difficult and cruel as their so-called dispute [...]

[Read more →]

* College has been oversold; notice especially data on student majors: In 2009 the U.S. graduated 37,994 students with bachelor’s degrees in computer and information science. This is not bad, but we graduated more students with computer science degrees 25 years ago! [. . .] In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual [...]

[Read more →]

* The Tyranny of Silly Expense Control Rules; notice the comment from yours truly. * The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time. People are, in other words, repurposing their jobs. A lot of academics in the humanities appear to be completely missing this. In addition, you might want to emphasize this fact [...]

[Read more →]

* How to meet not only your program officer, but the US Attorney as well: “D.C. Government Claims Nonprofit Used Grant Money to Open Strip Club.” This is especially brazen; everyone knows that programs occur a certain amount of indirect costs, but that’s considerably different than out-and-out fraud. * Reminder: in the age of the [...]

[Read more →]

* Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite, mostly overlook low-income students. File this under, “Seems obvious, nice to have proof.” * In California, Many Police and Firefighters Get $100,000 Pensions: Efforts to reform California’s public employee pension system got a boost Wednesday from a Sacramento Bee investigation that unearthed some staggering numbers. “Almost 9,000 retirees [...]

[Read more →]

* “Builders [in California] are lashing out against a provision in Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget that would eliminate the state’s 425 redevelopment agencies, local authorities that pay for low-income housing as well as roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure.” * Microsoft Word Now Includes Squiggly Blue Line To Alert Writer When Word Is Too Advanced [...]

[Read more →]

* Google Finds It Hard to Reinvent Philanthropy. Seliger + Associates unsurprised. * Bureaucrat acts like a jerk and attempts to silence smart guy. News at 11:00. * Southwest Airlines pilot holds plane for murder victim’s family. Wow. * Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period. * FYI: US manufacturing still [...]

[Read more →]

* Isaac was interviewed on Nonprofit Spark Radio. * As Ranks of Insured Expand, Nation Faces Shortage of 150,000 Doctors in 15 Years: “A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.” Limited access to care health care is already here—not because of insurance, [...]

[Read more →]

* What makes our healthcare so expensive? Hint: the answer is not simple or obvious. If you hear people say, “It’s x, and chiefly x,” where x might be greedy insurance companies, clueless consumers, the market, regulation, government, greedy doctors, or any noun preceded by the word “greedy,” * The dangers of Groupon and of [...]

[Read more →]

The October Nonprofit Blog Carnival is setting up camp at Grant Writing Confidential. A couple of thoughts for future writers before we get started: Read Paul Graham’s The List of N Things, because many of the submissions are like wannabe magazine submissions: “Seven Ways to Beat Fat Now!!!!” (The number seven occurs disproportionately). The world [...]

[Read more →]