Spring(?) Cleaning

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In this issue:

• Three—count'em, three—What's Most Good items (it was a good week for nonprofit innovation).
• An AI prompt that I used on my basement, but you can use in your office spaces.
• Two quirky stories showing nonprofits are able to innovate with furry fundraising ideas and deal with unexpected explosives.

University Pays Students' Nonprofit Internship Salaries

Ball State University in Indiana launched Humanities in Action, funded by a $2.5M Mellon Foundation grant, to place humanities students in paid nonprofit internships, with program funds covering student wages and a stated target of 75+ students per year (with a pilot cohort planned for fall 2026). This innovative program tackles two bottlenecks at once—talent pipelines for nonprofits and paid experiential learning—by removing the wage burden from nonprofits. Nonprofits everywhere should push to replicate this model.

International Development Fund Prioritizes Innovation

​The DIV Fund has launched as an independent nonprofit built on USAID’s former Development Innovation Ventures model—explicitly designed to source ideas, test them rigorously, and scale only what proves cost-effective. Reporting notes $48M raised to date and an intent to support a pipeline from pilots to scale. This is “infrastructure innovation” for global development—an institutionalized mechanism for evidence-gated scaling, which is replicable in other fields (housing, workforce, public health) where funders struggle to separate promising ideas from proven ones.

Money for Financial Health

The Citi Foundation announced its 2026 Community Finance Initiative, a $35 million Request for Proposals that will support community-based nonprofit organizations across the U.S. working to improve household financial resilience through services like financial coaching, credit building, and emergency assistance. It’s a sector-wide investment program designed to catalyze new or expanded nonprofit approaches to financial health. By making large, targeted grants with specific outcome areas, this initiative encourages organizations to design and scale innovative solutions to economic instability. I know there are NGN subscribers who could take advantage of this grant opportunity. Good hunting!

Marie Kondo the S**t Outa This!

As I sit here in Wisconsin in mid-February, I know I'm courting inevitable disappointment by talking about spring. But after record-low temperatures for a couple of months, yesterday was relatively balmy, and we awoke this morning to the following three-day forecast:

I know there will still be a measurable snowfall this March and April It's happened every year since we moved to Wisconsin from northern Virginia in 2022. But with weather like that, Jenni and I were busy yesterday and today (Sunday) with projects that just couldn't be done in sub-zero weather. That included, in my case, dealing with items in the unfinished portion of our basement.

Those of you who personally know me are aware that cleaning and organizing are not my natural defaults. That was compounded over the past few months by some work we had to get done in the finished portion of the basement. This led, as it always does, to Pilemageddon on the "workstation" I have in a corner of the unfinished space. To say it was a mess would be to unfairly stigmatize messes. You couldn't even see the white top of the workstation. You couldn't even approach the workstation.

This had bugged me for months, but it is amazing what one can put up with when it is usually behind a closed door. Doing outside work, however, required me to use tools--tools that could only be reached if Pilemageddon was involved. So I turned to AI with the following prompt:

PROMPT: Act in the role of Marie Condo. Suggest the best way to group items in and around a workspace that I have in my basement. I will provide you with photos of the workspace so that you can gain information about the space, the purposes to which I want to devote the space, and the items I want to organize.

I fed it four photos from different perspectives, and it gave me solid, actionable advice about what to do, including four items to do in 15 minutes that would give me momentum. As I continue, I'm going to feed it additional photos to get its advice about how to continue to tame the beast. I will report back on this.

Look around your nonprofits' workspaces. Where would this prompt do the most good? I'm going to use it on my home office next.

Dog Mayor Fundraiser

Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance ran a Dog Mayor election—complete with campaigning, voting, and fundraising—then swore in the winning pup, Opal. This delightfully absurd civic theater raised real dollars (over $6,000) for a nonprofit’s downtown programs.

Our boy Coqui would win this, paws down, in Madison. (Apologies to NGN's Madison subscribers.)

Not to be outdone, a cat cafe launched a full-on “mayoral race” photo contest: enter a cat with a donation, then buy votes with more donations. The winning cat becomes “Mayor” for the year, and proceeds support Whiskers Without Borders’ rescue work—democracy, but with more whiskers and fewer speeches. (Coqui would not be amused.)

Although I know that this entry is not in the "AI Insights" section, I couldn't help myself, so here's a prompt:

PROMPT: Act in the role of an expert in hosting online nonprofit fundraising events and in-person award ceremonies. Perform deep research to create an easy-to-execute, detailed plan to create a Dog Mayor Fundraiser in [city, state]. Perform independent research to find models (e.g., https://www.gogophotocontest.com/whiskersandwinebar and https://virginiamainstreet.com/2025/07/09/harrisonburg-unleashes-its-first-dog-mayor/), but brainstorm at least three force-ranked ideas that innovate off existing models. Include ways the fundraiser could tie into our nonprofit's (insert URL) mission and unique aspects of our city. As part of the research, force-rank the top ten businesses that would be great candidates to serve as sponsors (identifying only organizations that are not currently donors to the nonprofit), and propose at least three venues that would be appropriate for the swearing in ceremony. Also, in your output, do not use a table to list the potential sponsors; provide the information in bullet point or paragraph form, instead.

Goodwill Evacuated After Someone Donates Hand Grenades

In Augusta, Maine, a Goodwill store had to evacuate after employees discovered what appeared to be grenades and mortars mixed into donations—prompting a bomb squad response. The punchline (after the stress): officials said there was no ill intent and that antique weapon donations are “oddly common” in the region—still, a wild day at a nonprofit thrift operation.

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Keep up the good work! Nonprofits are the best things going in the United States right now!

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Ted

Founder and CEO Risk Alternatives, LLC 202.758.7572 (cell) 608.709.0793 (office) Website​ Author of ​​Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience​​​ We help nonprofits thrive by providing practical tools and support to address uncertainty and improve risk management.

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