Steve Sampson

Several members of the Arabella Advisors team attended last week’s Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) 2019 national conference, Stronger Philanthropy. The three-day gathering featured dozens of expert speakers and practitioners sharing ideas on how to improve philanthropic efforts spanning a range of issues. As our colleagues returned, we had a chance to catch up with them about what they saw and heard.

Philanthropists can help address over-incarceration in America and the serious harm it does to communities by supporting efforts to better understand and confront the network of companies that currently profit from the US prison and detention system—what criminal justice experts call “the prison-industrial complex.” With 2.3 million people in confinement and nearly three percent of its population under some form of correctional supervision, the United States imprisons far more of its people...

To help build a sustainable and equitable future within and beyond America’s rural and small-city communities, funders will have to look past geographic, racial, cultural, and ideological divides. As lifelong residents of the Midwest, we have seen firsthand the impact that 25 years of accelerating economic disinvestment and cultural isolation have had on rural families, communities, and economies.