Local Economy

Big Dreams, Big Progress

In Nebraska, a group of visionary volunteers got together to do something about supporting community development in the state’s small towns. Their goal was to raise $25 million in ten years. That was in 1993. Today, the Nebraska Community Foundation...

Turn Up Your Dream Switch

Through a growing network of ambitious people, Nebraska Community Foundation uses shared ideas, resources and experiences to help local leaders unleash the abundant assets and talents within their own place. In other words, they help hometowns turn up their...

Let’s Measure What Matters to Well-Being

In 1968 Robert Kennedy critiqued the Gross National Product (GNP) as a flawed measure of progress; he noted that the GNP measures everything (in money terms) "except that which makes worth while." Our work is motivated by Kennedy’s challenge:...

Measuring What Matters

Pioneering economist Mark Anielski outlines the pitfalls of relying on gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of societal wealth. Instead, we need to measure the things that matter most to us to really understand how we're doing. And...

Conscious Simplicity

Here are three major ways that I see the idea of simplicity presented in today’s popular media: 1. Crude or Regressive Simplicity The mainstream media often shows simplicity as a path of regress instead of progress. Simplicity is frequently presented as anti-­technology and anti-­innovation,...

7 Practical Ideas for Compassionate Communities, From Free College to Debt Relief

1. 100,000 homes so far Teams of volunteers across the country hit the streets early in the morning to put a name and a face to the long-term homeless in their communities. The volunteers started canvassing at 4 a.m., combing...

Every Block a Village

When St. Anne's Hospital closed in 1988, Jacqueline Reed was busy as a third-year extended evening program student at , a fellow at the Chicago Community trust and a mother raising four children with her husband, Ronald. But Reed...

The Politics of a Dollar

There is a growing local-living movement that calls for every community to support local businesses, care for the planet, and build local food networks. We are concerned here with local business. We are already investing: We have local business...

The Scarcity Narrative

World-renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann's off-the-cuff observations on how the Scarcity Narrative pervades individual and community life. Running time: 00:01:49 Related: The Food Fight: Accumulation and Abundance (Brueggemann) Home page image: eye of einstein

The Invitation Conversation and the Power of “A Small Group” of Committed People

More than two years ago, Gary Robbins, Meagan Lauer and I got together after an ASG  monthly gathering and decided to work on a few common interests together. One item was to develop a workshop where the three of...

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Corporate Capture: Can We Find a Way Out?

This article, published originally by Nonprofit Quarterly, from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.” The aircraft manufacturer Boeing,...