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Take 5: #SocInn News Links: 7/15/14

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Here’s five interesting #SocInn links we’re clicking on today:

  1. Inside Philanthropy: The Bezos Family Foundation is All About Education. Here’s What They’re Doing “As the Bezos Family Foundation has ramped up, its investments have fallen into three main categories: Early Learning, Excellence in K-12 Education, and Youth Leadership and Engagement… On K-12, the foundation has invested in a number of the usual suspects pushing school reform, charter schools, and teacher training. In 2012, it gave large grants to KIPP, Teach for America, the New Schools Venture Fund (a tech-backed ed reform group we’ve written about here), Stand for Children, New Profit, a pass-through funder, and other groups…The motto of the foundation seems to be ‘putting education into action,’ which it is doing through its recent investments across a broad range of investments mentioned above.”
  2. New York Times: The Quiet Movement to Make Government Fail Less Often “None of this work is sexy. Rigorous evaluation, randomized trials and social impact bonds will never stir the political passion that calls for universal health insurance or lower taxes do. If anything, measurement and accountability are destined to provoke more opposition – from interest groups that have something to lose – than support. (This opposition often takes the form of, ‘Measurement is hard,’ as if that were a reason to skip it.) But in a divided country, where Congress only rarely passes far-reaching legislation, a more effective government may be the best way for both sides to get more of what they want: a government that is limited enough to protect individual freedom and ambitious enough to improve people’s lives.”
  3. SSIR: Real World Collaboration in Times of Polarization Mark Edwards & Sarah Beaulieu of Opportunity Nation look at how the newly passed Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act illustrates how organizations can find space to debate and successfully create cross-sector and bipartisan solutions. They also advocate that “every organization should try to establish a goal to spend at least a small percentage of its time, energy, and resources on collaboration—whether through meeting with like-minded organizations, participating in organized advocacy or collaborative efforts, or using tools developed by others that support your work. As Year Up Founder Gerald Chertavian puts it, ‘There is no limit to what we can achieve … once we stop worrying about who gets credit.’ The truth is that collaboration often allows you to share credit for a larger win than you could have achieved on your own.” Opportunity Nation is an America Forward Coalition Member. New Profit is a proud funder of Year Up.
  4. Washington Post: Most with college STEM degrees go to work in other fields, survey finds “People with bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering and math are more likely than other college graduates to have a job, but most of them don’t work in STEM occupations, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Thursday. Nearly 75 percent of all holders of bachelor’s degrees in STEM disciplines don’t have jobs in STEM occupations, according to a survey that reached 3.5 million homes, said Liana Christin Landivar, a sociologist with the Census Bureau. The bureau’s American Community Survey is the largest household survey in the nation.” View the US Census Bureau’s interactive graphic that allows you to explore the relationship between college majors and occupations here.

  5. Huffington Post: 5 Charities Receive Google Glass To Help Empower Women, People With Disabilities, Others Classroom Champions of Jacksonville, Lumberton, North Carolina-based 3,000 Miles to a Cure, Mark Morris Dance Group of New York, Women’s Audio Mission in San Francisco, and Baltimore-based Hearing and Speech Agency were chosen by Google out of 1,300 proposals to receive a free pair of web connected Google Glasses to enhance their work, a $25,000 grant and support from developers.
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