The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families (ACF) developed a Guide to Resources and Funding for Community and Faith-based Organizations as an effort to inform the public about the wide range of programs and resources provided by them. This Guide contains an overview of the agency, basic information about finding and applying for federal funds, specific information about ACF's grant opportunities, and numerous resources and toolkits available for community or faith-based organizations.

The Faith-Based and Community Organizations Collaboration Institutes were designed to increase collaboration of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) agencies by leveraging existing community resources to help low-income participants attain economic self-sufficiency. Five institutes across the country brought together regional and State TANF leaders, as well as their local FBCO partners, with a goal of enhancing outcomes for TANF-eligible individuals and families. The Institutes create an incubated learning environment to apply the collaboration concepts learned in the early phases of the project in an effort to strengthen existing and newly formed partnerships. This report summarizes each event along with the evaluations and feedback received from a series of post-event follow-up calls.

From Georgetown University's Center for Education and the Workforce, this report highlights the importance of certificates for workers in the labor market. Specifically, certificates recognize completion of a course of study in a specific field. Certificates can help advancement in the labor market because individuals with certificates earn 20 percent more than high school graduates without postsecondary education, on average. However, increased earnings vary based on a variety of factors, including the field of study. In this report, authors provide information on the population earnings certificates, the earnings return, and the institutions where they are earning certificates.

This video is from the directors of the Office of Head Start and the Office of Child Care within the Administration for Children and Families. The directors discuss a joint letter that offers innovative approaches for making partnerships between Early Head Start and family child care work for Early Head Start grantees and other communities.

This resource guide was authored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, its Child Welfare Information Gateway, the FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention, and the Center for the Study of Social Policy—Strengthening Families. The guide was designed to help community-based service providers better work with parents and children to prevent child abuse and neglect, and authors provide information on protective factors, how to engage the community, why child abuse and neglect occurs, and tips on strength-based approaches for working with parents and caregivers.

From the Lumina Foundation, this video clip provides information on a public-private partnership in Louisville, Kentucky. The partnership has set a goal of adding 55,000 bachelors and associate degrees by the year 2020. The partnership is a collaborative effort of Louisville employers, educators, and civic leaders, who are focused on building a well-educated, innovative, and productive workforce. This video is the first in a series that will be released by the Lumina Foundation.

The Foundation Center issued this report on foundation giving trends in 2009. Education and health have the greatest shares of foundation grant dollars, which included areas of education, health, human services, and public affairs/society benefit. Human services had the most number of grants, but grantmaking did decline 2.1 percent from 2008 to 2009. Eight out of ten major fields experienced funding declines between 2008 and 2009 due to the economic recession.

In 2009, the United States ranked fourteenth in college graduation rates among industrialized countries, and this research highlights ways to improve college attendance and graduation rates at 4-year colleges. This working paper, through the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, provides a review of 38 studies on the relationship between assets and children’s education attainment. Then, authors discuss Child Development Accounts (CDAs) policies, which have been proposed as an asset approach for helping to finance college.

This resource was authored by the Alliance for Children and Families and was designed to help non-profit organizations plan for the future. The report identifies “disruptive forces” that will fundamentally change and transform the non-profit human services sector. Pulling from research, authors provide an overview of six “disruptive forces” to help organizations become adaptable to change, which include: purposeful experimentation, information liberation, integrating science, uncompromising demand for impact, branding causes, not organizations, and attracting investors, not donors.

Annually released by the Giving USA Foundation, this report details trends in charitable donating throughout 2010, the types of organizations giving money, and which charitable causes are receiving the funds. In 2010, contributions totaled $290.89 billion, which was a 3.8 percent increase over 2009, and 35 percent of the total was given to religious organizations and 14 percent to education.