Andy Slavitt misled Congress on Obamacare state health exchange spending, House panel says – Washington TimesReal-time results and news from the West Virginia and Nebraska primariesTop health official misled Congress on Obamacare exchange spending, House panel saysFeds can point to only about $21 million in money they kept from being spent on struggling state health exchanges far less than the $200 million Andy Slavitt, acting administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), …

A House panel said Tuesday that a top administration health official misled Congress last year by seeming to suggest that the government had already recaptured hundreds of millions of dollars from struggling state exchanges under Obamacare.

Instead, federal officials can point to only about $21 million in money they kept from being spent far less than the $200 million Andy Slavitt, acting administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said had been recouped during testimony last year to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

All told, the government doled out some $4.6 billion to states that decided to set up and run their own health care exchanges, including the states that botched their rollouts, leaving customers in the lurch and forcing the federal government to prolong enrollment and grant exemptions from the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans have demanded that the administration try to get back some of the money they say the states wasted on badly run exchanges.

Many of the drives, including in Kitsap and Seattle, worked with online fundraising company Kimbia, which experienced problems accepting donations.

The Great Give fell just short of its goal of $1.5 million. But Kol Medina, executive director of the Kitsap Community Foundation, said he thought the event could have exceeded the goal if the technical problems hadn’t happened.

“It was phenomenal to see the community rally and come back to the website” May 4, after the deadline had been extended, Medina said.

Donors were patient and supportive, which wasn’t the case with all of the fundraising events across the country.

Several donors and organizations lashed out at Kimbia on its Facebook page.

As frustrations rose and negative news spread, some drives ended early, Medina said.

That wasn’t the case in Kitsap, where Medina said the community had “a moment of growth,” raising 27 percent more than last year’s donation total, which was just over $1 million.

Some organizations sent donors directly to their websites during technical problems on the Great Give website.

Since then, only a few niche experts have emerged and proven capable of sourcing and managing investments.

While mainstream asset managers have invested in listed bonds and debt instruments issued by charities, we have yet to see significant resources deployed to source, analyse, invest in and monitor a wider range of unlisted social impact investment opportunities.

We suspect that the reasons for the relatively slow development of the market are:

Investment skills: at this relatively early-stage, it is unlikely that mainstream fund management firms have employed individuals capable of sourcing, managing and monitoring the unlisted, one-off, early stage opportunities that make up much of the social impact market. Monitoring skills: reporting on the progress of social impact investments is not just about measuring the financial performance: at least equal time will need to be spent on measuring the social impact and if necessary, explaining the tradeoff between financial and social impacts. Scaleability: while the demand for social-impact-investment capital has grown, to date it appears there is more capital seeking investment opportunities than there are investment opportunities seeking capital. If social impact investment is going to become mainstream, then the number of people seeking capital needs to grow, as does the average size of investment sought.

A longtime community activist and supporter will be honored by the Women’s Foundation of Colorado Pueblo Region during its annual Pueblo Summer Soiree.

“She’s done just that by establishing the Southern Colorado Community Foundation and serving as the foundation’s executive director; co-founding the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center; and creating the Kathy Farley Fund for grants targeted to the needs of women and children in Pueblo County,” said Rochelle Kelly Wristen, spokeswoman for the WFCO Pueblo Region.

Additionally, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Historic Arkansas River Project Foundation, El Pomar Foundation, Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education and Women’s Forum of Colorado also have benefitted from Farley’s benevolence.

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Dallas Chamber Symphony Will Use $50,000 Grant to Take Classical Music to the Streets | Dallas Observer
EXPANDFor last season’s opener, Dallas Chamber Symphony collaborated with SMU’s dance department on a performance set to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Since it was founded by artistic director and conductor Richard McKay in 2011, the Dallas Chamber Symphony has enlivened Dallas’ classical music scene with innovative programming. Now that work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which announced yesterday that the Dallas Chamber Symphony will receive a grant of $50,000 as part of the NEA’s “Our Town” initiative to fund performances in downtown spaces across the country.

For the Dallas Chamber Symphony this kind of community engagement is a continuation of what they’ve already been doing. “Seeds” events will take the symphony into facilities such as The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center and The Wayman Learning Center for children with autism and other developmental disabilities, which cater to groups that would not ordinarily visit traditional performance venues like the Dallas City Performance Hall, the symphony’s home. The program will continue through the spring of 2018.

“Projects such as the one led by the Dallas Chamber Symphony help residents engage the arts to spark vitality in their communities,” NEA Chairman Jane Chu said in the press release announcing the grant.

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Over 158,000 has been injected into affordable housing in Glenrothes to bring long-term empty properties back into use as homes for people who have experienced homelessness or are in housing need.

YMCA Glenrothes has received a grant from the Nationwide Foundation to go towards creating homes for eight people from empty properties in the town.

This new funding is awarded against a backdrop where the Scottish Government is being urged by the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership at Shelter Scotland and the Nationwide Foundation to introduce a 5 million Scottish Empty Homes Community Grants funding programme so that more affordable homes can be created this way.

The proposed programme would build on the success of the English Empty Homes Community Grants Programme and would see more empty homes brought back into use by local organisations and charities. As a way of encouraging new skills and creating a sense of ownership over their homes, the new tenants will be given the opportunity to take part in the design of their new homes.

The funding from the Nationwide Foundation is part of over 1m which the independent charitable funder is awarding around the UK as part of its commitment to help create homes for people in housing need by renovating long-term empty properties.

Leigh Pearce, the Nationwide Foundation’s chief executive, said: “Across Scotland there are thousands of empty properties which could be transformed into decent homes for people in housing need. We will learn from this fantastic opportunity and would be happy to share the knowledge gained with other voluntary organisations in the future.”

Kristen Hubert from the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership, which is hosted by Shelter Scotland and funded by the Scottish Government, added: “This funding for YMCA Glenrothes is great news and adds to the on-going good work around Scotland to address the problem of empty homes, including projects already funded by the Scottish Government.

“I look forward to seeing the finished project and sharing their success with our network.

“We know there are many community based organisations and social enterprises in Scotland who would jump at the chance to work on a project like this and they’ll be eager to hear more about how it was achieved.

The Waukee School Board revealed new details on plans to build a second high school in the district at last night’s meeting.

Development funding is already starting to diminish or to become more directly associated with countries’ commercial interestsLocal philanthropic sectors are emerging in many parts of the world that were traditionally considered purely “aid recipient” countries, as Zoe Gudovic has pointed out about Serbia. As Linda To writes in her piece about Hong Kong, in many countries a growing middle class has its own disposable income and an appetite for giving to social causes through organized and participatory platforms.

Raising money locally can be hard work, as Jenny Barry and Okeoma Ibe have discussed about Mexico and Nigeria, respectively. It’s far easier, of course, to submit a proposal to an eager external donor who shares your goals, and, let’s not deny it, your jargon.

Local funding is a crucial and sadly overlooked part of a larger strategy for getting people to learn and care about your cause.But local funding is not just about the money. But there is already a powerful body of evidence and practice from a growing set of institutions in the global South including community foundations, community philanthropy organizations, women’s funds and other types of local grassroots grantmakers that offers some important insights into the debate.

The truth is that there is no better time for those concerned about development approaches that build local constituencies and local supporters to listen more closely to the voices quiet, passionate, credible and deeply-rooted of the emerging global field of community philanthropy.

In recent years, local institutions of community philanthropy around the world from Zimbabwe to Romania, from Uruguay to China have begun to develop a collective voice and to demand attention as an essential, but often missing piece, not just of civil society architecture but also of healthy, inclusive communities.

Most importantly of all, this small but growing field, which emphasizes multi-stakeholder governance and local asset development, and local philanthropy as key to constituency building, has a particular relevance for civil society sectors more generally in the context of shrinking spaces for civil society, the criminalization of activism and the overall reduction of resources in many parts of the world.

Over the past ten years, the Global Fund for Community Foundations has built up a network of over 160 community philanthropy organizations in more than 60 countries: while each organization might look different depending on where they are based, what unites them are some core beliefs around how development will be stronger and more lasting when local people see themselves as co-investors and participants. And yes, it turns out that when a funding base is made up of lots of different of contributions from local individuals, companies and foundations as well as international sources and when an organization is embedded in a community, it is able to address certain issues that outsiders might not receive well.

Community foundations in Central and Eastern Europe, for example, have started to engage around issues affecting the Roma and, even more recently, around refugees from Syria, in ways that wouldn’t be possible if they hadn’t been there working across a range of other local issues for many years.

Prom and graduation are common rites of passage for Montrose area high school seniors. But another event that celebrates the best and the brightest is rapidly becoming a staple as well.

Olathe and Montrose High Schools are both planning scholarship celebrations Wednesday and the following Wednesday respectively.

aThese events really showcase the accomplishments of the high school seniors, and itas amazing to hear where the kids will be going to school and what their goals are,a said Sara Plumhoff, executive director of Montrose Community Foundation.

The event also offers a great opportunity for the scholarship sponsors to meet the recipients.A

The Olathe celebration Wednesday is a luncheon beginning 11:30 a.m. at Olathe American Legion.

Around 20 students are expected to be recognized for the awards they have received from scholarships administered by the Montrose County School District and other organizations and families.

Community scholarship sponsors are planning to attend, Plumhoff noted.

Lunch is at 11:30 a.m. and the program begins shortly after noon.A

Montrose High School will host the second-annual MHS Scholarship Celebration Breakfast 7:30 am to 9:30 pm at Friendship Hall at Montrose County Fairgrounds May 18.

In addition to local and regional scholarships, state and national awards will also be acknowledged as well as college merit-based awards.A

The goal of hosting the breakfast is four-fold, according to Plumhoff.

First, the high school would like to recognize and celebrate the achievements of Montrose High School students in earning scholarships to help pay for their postsecondary education.A

Second, the district would like to continue to develop the culture at Montrose High School of academic achievement and pursuit of postsecondary education by creating excitement and conversation about the success of our students as presented at the breakfast.A

Third is the opportunity to provide community scholarship sponsors with the opportunity both to visit with theA scholarship recipients and to publicly honor the people in whose memory the scholarships are offered.

Finally, the breakfast is an opportunity to recognize the sponsors for the event: The Montrose Education Foundation, the Academic Booster Club and the Montrose Community Foundation.A

A light breakfast will be served at 7:30 a.m.

We’re always interested in hearing about news in our community.