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Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series of posts featuring NCRP nonprofit members.

Prosperity Now logoThe classic American dream comes with a lot of promises. Things like going to college, owning a home and saving for retirement. All this and more is available to those who buckle down, work hard and save as they go.

Most of us know this “dream” is really a fantasy for millions of people in America. The unequal distribution of wealth in this country keeps those with the most access to financial resources on top, and those shut off doomed to barely get by. The top one percent of Americans holds 39 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 90 percent only holds 23 percent.

Prosperity Now has been shouting about this injustice for almost 40 years. The organization, formerly known as the Corporation for Enterprise Development, has been picking up steam as wealth inequality has exploded into an issue of national importance. Between its 2017 rebrand and a host of tried-and-true wealth-building projects targeting low income Americans and people of color, Prosperity Now is a full-blown economic justice powerhouse.

But the power lies in using many of the same tools and strategies that have worked for decades, which isn’t something philanthropy seems too keen on funding. Instead of parceling out grants for new projects every few years, what if foundations supported projects that not only have a long track record of success but also continue to work today?

They might not be new and sexy, but things like the coordination and support of a 1,600-member community tax preparation network can transform the financial security of a household. Located in community centers, schools and libraries across the country, this network of volunteers helps low income families file their taxes and apply for money-savers like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, all for free.

Prosperity Now mobilized this group of preparers to restore funding for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program in the most recent Congress – a significant feat. Americans earning under $54,000, disabled Americans and limited English speakers all benefit from the service. To ensure volunteers are maximizing their time with these groups, Prosperity Now has a host of toolkits and guides advising preparers on everything from broaching the savings conversation to navigating software changes.

That’s not to say there aren’t new ventures too. Just this month, Prosperity Now released its latest Scorecard, a comprehensive look at American financial wellbeing across the country that’s easily sortable by topic. Two recent publications, The Ever Growing Gap and The Road to Zero Wealth, demonstrated how it would take centuries to equalize wealth disparities between white Americans and Americans of color without concerted policy actions. The Racial Wealth Divide project invests in the expansion of policies to reduce this divide and in the capacity-building of organizations of color to lead this effort.

Partnering with other nonprofits has always been an area of particular focus. Whether in health care, affordable housing, education or social services, Prosperity Now has made inroads to integrate financial services into the work these groups are already doing as a means to increase impact and financial security.

One large housing organization adopted a children’s savings account program after serving one generation of families, only to have a second and then a third eventually appear at their door no more financially stable than their grandparents. Aside from children’s savings accounts, Prosperity Now also has highly interactive guidebooks on integrating financial capability and one-on-one financial coaching.

When you believe the main thing distinguishing the wealthy from the poor is not ability but opportunity, you find ways to meet people where they are. That’s why Prosperity Now is also trying to build relationships with corporate social responsibility leaders – to work with institutions that serve significant portions of low income Americans, particularly those of color.

The case for doing so is relatively simple: Building the financial security of low income workers is good for business. Henry Ford famously paid his employees competitive wages not because of altruism, but because he wanted someone to buy his cars. The argument remains the same today.

That said, philanthropy still comprises roughly two-thirds of Prosperity Now’s funding. The rest is government contracts with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department, but contract renewal isn’t guaranteed. Foundations and individual donors are the ones who drive the resources for Prosperity Now’s work.

Currently, only one out of Prosperity Now’s 70-odd grants provides three years of flexible funding. As much effort as it has put into securing financial viability for those who need it most, Prosperity Now is owed long term security of its own. We know what they do works. We know what they advocate could transform. So, what are we waiting for?

Troy Price is NCRP’s membership and fundraising intern. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

The last few years have been complicated and challenging ones for the country. The three and a half years since the Ferguson Uprising have brought a renewed national focus on the depth, breadth and cost of pervasive structural racism, as well as a resurgent white supremacist political movement whose chief proponent holds our nation’s highest office.

A reinvigorated national movement for racial justice has gained steam, and other broad-based movements for gender, economic, climate and immigrant justice are successfully moving their agenda into the mainstream of progressive politics.

I have been encouraged by the reaction of many philanthropic institutions – both foundations and the organizations, such as the one I lead, that monitor and support them. It’s clear our diverse sector mostly agrees that systemic racial bias and inequity are the challenges of our time, challenges that philanthropy must wrestle with just as the country does. Many in the sector now agree that sitting on the sidelines during this national reckoning is not a viable option.

So I was pleased to read from my colleague Kathleen Enright, CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), that in October 2017 GEO’s board adopted a new position on the centrality of racial equity to their organization’s mission.

“In the years ahead,” Kathleen wrote, “we are committed to supporting racial equity in philanthropy in ways that are aligned with the GEO community’s identity, [and] we are committed to helping develop a new concept of effectiveness … that integrates racial equity.”

I think it’s a good and healthy development for our sector that GEO has entered this space. For too long, effectiveness has been divorced from justice and equity.

NCRP agrees with GEO that “sound management” and “strong governance” – two key facets of its definition of organizational effectiveness – are fundamentally subjective, and therefore vulnerable to implicit bias. We also agree that executing programming well is only a public good if those programs are not based in what Kathleen called “false narratives” about the root causes of injustice.

We agree that these factors are undoubtedly at play in a nonprofit and philanthropic sector where whiteness – and white-dominated definitions of what effectiveness looks like – have always been the driving force behind the movement to identify and invest in effective organizations.

I am grateful to hear GEO name these contradictions and challenges in its work. They are the same contradictions and challenges that NCRP, also a white-led organization seeking to influence the philanthropic sector, has been wrestling with for decades.

During that time we’ve learned that the philanthropic sector’s understanding of effectiveness will never be complete or just without true responsiveness to communities harmed by inequity. Such responsiveness demands we examine our own privilege and how it distorts our understanding of effectiveness and impact.

Our research on grantmaking in the Southeast, the site of some of the most stubborn racial disparities in the country, confirms one of Kathleen’s observations: “[N]onprofits deemed ‘effective’ are often those most skilled at navigating the thicket of hurdles, requirements, and processes put in place by philanthropy,” and this dynamic converges with philanthropy’s white-dominant culture to disadvantage organizations led by and serving communities of color.

As we noted a year ago in As the South Grows: On Fertile Soil, “when funders expect a college degree or a polished grant proposal to justify an investment, they exclude organizations in need of philanthropic resources that are led by people who are most capable of organizing their communities. Funders often misconstrue signs of privilege for signs of capacity.”

“In New Orleans at the Unity Summit,” Kathleen wrote, “amazing and effective leaders who have been working for racial equity for many years – often at considerable personal risk and sacrifice – told us from the podium that they are not getting the support they need from philanthropy.”

NCRP has been documenting this woeful underinvestment for decades, helping under-resourced communities speak truth to power, and we’ve concluded that to truly advance equity, philanthropy needs to share its power with community leadership, especially leadership from communities of color.

Funders must embrace an ideal of responsiveness that cedes the power to define what is effective and what impact looks like, and shares the power to determine who is worthy of foundation investment with those communities directly affected by the challenges we confront. We must acknowledge that to continue to define effectiveness within the white-dominated halls of philanthropy is to perpetuate the racial injustice we deplore.

This aspirational responsiveness, which is difficult to achieve because philanthropy holds more power and privilege, has been and will continue to be at the center of NCRP’s work to change the sector. I cannot say that it comes easily to us: We operate in a space of contradictions – very much a creature of the sector we hope to hold accountable to people with whom we don’t always share lived experiences.

But the aspiration is at the heart of all our work. It drives our Philamplify initiative, whose objective has been to elevate grantee feedback as a tool for greater justice and equity in the field. It drives our As the South Grows campaign, which spotlights Southern grassroots leadership and challenges grantmakers to shift their understanding of Southern capacity and potential for progress.

I hope that a radically responsive perspective on grantmaking will also find its way into GEO’s push to implement racial equity values in its work. I’m optimistic it will, given GEO’s boldness in striking out into this new and challenging territory, Kathleen’s leadership and the strength of GEO’s board of directors (two of whose members also serve on NCRP’s board).

If, however, the GEO community doubles down on a definition of effectiveness that centers foundation voices and foundation perspective on the public good, they will have missed the mark.

I welcome GEO to a movement within philanthropy that has many visionary leaders. You are not in this alone.

Ultimately, all of us in the sector must move beyond a closed loop of redefining organizational effectiveness within a white-dominant framework. Until grantmakers cede the power to define what works to those for whom we work, racial equity grantmaking will remain beyond our reach.

Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Progressive foundations want to empower liberal activists. Aaron Dorfman, chief executive of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, says: “If we’re going to win on policy, we’ve got to change strategy, we’ve got to build a movement, we’ve got to fund the grass-roots.”

Read the entire article (paywall) in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series of posts featuring NCRP nonprofit members.

The Center for Medicare Advocacy logo.Glenda Jimmo, a blind woman confined to a wheelchair after diabetes took her right leg, required multiple weekly home health services for her condition.

A woman living with ALS who lost the user of her arms and hands required extensive care services in her home.

A World War II veteran stricken with Parkinson’s disease fell in his home and needed access to a skilled nursing facility for his recovery.

All three were denied Medicare coverage, the national health insurance program for which Social Security recipients who are over 65 or permanently disabled are eligible, because their conditions were “not improving” and thus not worthy of coverage.

Another woman was left helpless and alone after Medicare deemed her multiple sclerosis “not improving.” Bedridden and shut off from essential in-home nursing care, she went four days without food or water.

This “improvement standard” pervaded all of Medicare, informing the decisions of health care providers, contractors and even administrative law judges.

For decades, it was used to save money and deny coverage to the Americans who most direly needed care. But there was no regulation on the books that supported this practice. In fact, Medicare rules stipulate “the restoration potential of a patient is not the deciding factor in determining whether skilled services are needed.”

Put another way: The improvement standard was illegal. Medicare providers had conjured up a standard out of thin air, and to devastating effect.

The Center for Medicare Advocacy (CMA), a Connecticut-based organization that fights on behalf of older and disabled Americans to improve their access to and the quality of their health care, refused to abide this misguided practice.

Since its founding in 1986, CMA has taught Medicare administrators that the elderly and disabled need not show improvement to retain coverage if their current treatment is still the best way to care for them, e.g. if other options would lead to worse health outcomes.

This helped individual cases, but did little to stem the tide of wrongful coverage denials. Having exhausted all other advocacy options, CMA did what it had to do and took the federal government to court. They won.

This was literally a life-saving victory for people like Glenda Jimmo. And it’s not the first time CMA has used the courts to protect some of the most vulnerable among us.

The organization represents thousands of Americans in appeals of Medicare denials, and advocates on their behalf in administrative, executive and legal settings. Legal services have proven to be an effective arrow in the organization’s quiver.

But it’s only one arrow among many. Connecticut has contracted CMA to provide legal training and support for its health insurance and assistance program. CMA produces a host of educational materials and resources related to Medicare, and everyday Americans nationwide rely on CMA for expert Medicare information and insight.

In the National Medicare Advocates Alliance, CMA is joined by a network of attorneys, Medicare-related advocacy organizations and state health insurance providers for bimonthly conference calls on specific topics in Medicare, elders’ rights and elders’ health care.

The National Medicare Advocates Alliance began as a foundation-funded project more than a decade ago, but its national impact was so great that it felt compelled to continue the endeavor even after the original grants expired.

But the cost of managing CMA hasn’t gone away. Nor has the cost of fielding the hundreds of calls CMA receives each year from outside Connecticut when older or disabled Americans need expertise and counsel. Philanthropy has heretofore shown little interest in funding these services, and funders have been even more reticent to fund legal work, according to CMA.

The threats to Medicare access and quality continue to grow. CMA won an inspiring victory on the improvement standard, but that just pushed Medicare to enforce existing law correctly. Bigger, systemic perils like privatization of the program or a winding down of Medicare altogether endanger far more of our seniors and disabled.

Bigger, systemic problems require bigger, systemic solutions. Philanthropy needs to invest in long-term capacity so those working on this issue can build up the staffing necessary to hold the line on Medicare access and quality.

When they devise successful programs like the National Medicare Advocates Alliance, funders shouldn’t cut support after a year or two and ask for something new. Place the emphasis instead on enriching and broadening what has already proven to work.

Advocacy is a matter of using the best resources to tell the best stories in the best place possible. The Center for Medicare Advocacy has the stories and has the places. Imagine what they could do if they had the resources too.

Troy Price is NCRP’s membership and fundraising intern. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Through the As the South Grows initiative, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and Grantmakers for Southern Progress have periodically reminded foundations that funding in the South does not match either its need or potential, but if last month’s voter turnout in Alabama did not convince you of the wastefulness of ignoring that message, maybe nothing will.

Read the entire article in Nonprofit Quarterly.

For Immediate Release

NCRP: Calling for Grantmakers to Step Up to Help Secure a Positive Future

“Responsive Philanthropy” looks at ‘outrage giving’, The Emerson Collective, racial disparity in environmental philanthropy and participatory grantmaking

Washington, D.C.  (2/08/2018) – Many working for a fair, equitable and just future for our communities are bracing for a tough year ahead. Divisive rhetoric will continue, as will attempts to rollback progress on critical social, economic and environmental issues.

“But there’s room for hope,” says Aaron Dorfman, chief executive of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) in a letter published in the latest edition of the organization’s journal. “Hope that, with unity, hard work and passion for what is good and just, tides will turn. And hope that [donors] will step up as essential partners of that work.”

The January 2018 edition of “Responsive Philanthropy” features new articles on some of the various ways that funders can use their resources to protect democracy and help those who are underserved and marginalized.

Amplifying the impact of outrage giving

Jason Franklin, co-founder and co-chair of the Solidaire Donor Network and chair of the Proteus Fund, writes about the tremendous wave of small donations and activism in support of progressive social movements and resistance efforts. He offers five concrete ways for major donors and grantmakers to build on this momentum in the year ahead.

Learning from Emerson Collective’s ‘philanthropic recipe’ for these times

Andrea Levere, chief executive of Prosperity Now, lifts up Emerson Collective’s approach to supporting its grantees beyond the grant. She encourages other funders to provide “the right kind of capital with high-quality training and services designed to strengthen the leadership and the organization’s ability to meet its goals on its own terms.”

Confronting the evidence: Addressing racial disparity in environmental grantmaking

In 2014, a landmark report forced the mainstream environmental movement to recognize how it has been marginalizing men and women of color. Michael Roberts, program manager at Schmidt Family Foundation’s 11th Hour Project, shares three important lessons from the fund’s own racial equity journey spurred by the report’s findings.

Equitable participatory grantmaking in trans communities: A Q&A with Gabriel Foster

There’s a growing interest among funders in community-led grantmaking. NCRP’s Caitlin Duffy interviewed Gabriel Foster, co-founder and executive director of the Trans Justice Funding Project, to discuss how the fund is putting members of trans communities across the country at the center of its grantmaking processes.

This edition of the journal also highlights NCRP supporter The California Wellness Foundation. Cal Wellness asked its grantees what they needed as a result of the 2016 elections. Learn how the foundation responded and what it’s asking other funders to do.

Responsive Philanthropy articles are available at no cost on NCRP’s website.

About NCRP

For more than 40 years, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy has been amplifying the voice of nonprofits and the communities they serve in the philanthropic sector. Through research and advocacy, it works to ensure that grantmakers and donors contribute to the creation of a fair, just and equitable world. For more information, visit www.ncrp.org.

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Contact:

Yna C. Moore, ymoore[at]ncrp.org or (202) 557-1381

The surge in big gifts comes at a time when average Americans are curtailing their charity, according to a Chronicle analysis of tax data. The decline in giving since the Great Recession has raised fears that the country’s economic divide is being replicated in philanthropy, with nonprofits increasingly having to rely on the wealthy.

“A larger and larger share of the philanthropic pie is coming from fewer and fewer donors,” says Aaron Dorfman, head of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

Read the entire article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

I was born and raised in North Carolina, and Southern values of community, hospitality and mutual aid run deep for me. Even though I no longer live in the South, its ways of being infuses my organizing.

I first learned what community organizing is through my internship with Southerners on New Ground (SONG) in 2008. SONG is a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender and sexuality in the South.

After being steeped in Southern organizing, I was disappointed when I moved to Washington, D.C., and experienced firsthand many national advocacy organizations either ignoring the South entirely or only wanting to parachute in to push short-term, top-down campaigns that undermined the place-based, relationship-based organizing that already existed.

I experienced time and again people who identify as liberal and progressive disparaging the South, expressing contempt by using classist slurs like “rednecks and hillbillies,” dismissing any potential for transformation or power-building or writing off the entire region as a “lost cause” because of entrenched Republican control.

My stomach always twists in anger whenever I hear this rhetoric, which is rooted in racism and classism, and erases the power of Southern movement organizing – from the Civil Rights Movement to successful Alabama voter mobilization.

Unfortunately, this dismissal of the South is replicated in too many philanthropic spaces. That is why I was thrilled to see the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) and Grantmakers for Southern Progress issue their in-depth As the South Grows reports, making the case for why it so important for funders to make long-term investments in grassroots organizations in the South.

As they say in the introductory letter to the As the South Grows series: “Our new national reality of unified, reactionary antidemocratic government has been a reality for Southerners off and on for more than a generation. Therefore, national and non-Southern organizations have much to learn from their Southern counterparts.”

Many families’ wealth is tied to the legacy of the Southern slave economy, or to extractive fossil fuel industries that have devastated the South’s natural resources and harmed its communities.

A national community of progressive young people with wealth, my organization, Resource Generation, has an important role to play as proactive and just partners to Southern grassroots organizations on the frontlines of struggles for racial and economic justice today.

Funding in the South is one way to start to repair the harm caused through extracting wealth from the South, and, as individuals, we have more flexibility to give multi-year funding to support long-term capacity building.

The country’s largest foundations gave the equivalent of $41 funding per person in the Alabama Black Belt and Mississippi Delta – the Deep South – from 2010-2014. Compare this to the national funding rate of $451. Source: Foundation Center.

We can be part of reversing institutional philanthropy’s systemic disinvestment from the South. As this chart demonstrates, the South, and especially the Deep South, receive pennies to the dollar in charitable contributions when compared to funding in the North. 

One of our members, Olivia Woollam, is part of a family foundation that has been giving in the South for almost 80 years. Her great-grandfather moved to Louisiana and took advantage of the legacy of the plantation and slave economy in the 1900s that made sugar the backbone of the Louisiana economy.

Although he wasn’t from a planter background, as a white man he benefited from the existing sugar industry infrastructure to create one of the largest Coca-Cola franchises in the country. Olivia’s ancestor created the Rosamary Foundation because he recognized the importance of philanthropy staying in the South.

Today the Rosamary Foundation’s endowment is $52 million, and it grants $2-$3 million annually. The only requirement the foundation has on its giving is that it goes to organizations in the greater New Orleans area.

The foundation has established relationships and is able to fund local organizational leaders who represent and have the trust of the people they serve (which is one of the core “do’s” from NCRP’s recommendations of do’s and don’ts for funding in the South).

However, because of the lack of money coming into the South, especially now that the money that poured in to New Orleans post-Katrina is drying out, “there’s a sense of tenuousness and that we have to be really careful,” Olivia said. “That doesn’t lead to risk-taking in funding which is very in vogue with big foundations – funding early-stage visionary leaders.” 

Olivia also emphasized how, because there are no rules for philanthropy besides tax rules (unless they are restricted by the charter), every philanthropic institution is a site for potential organizing and change. Those who don’t fund in the South “are making a decision not to,” she said.

I’m proud to be a monthly donor for SONG, and I’d like to respond to Olivia’s call to action by increasing my giving to the Southern organizing I hold dear. Will you join me in incorporating a lens around solidarity with the South in your giving plan this year? NCRP’s list of resources and partners is a great place to start. 

Southern grassroots leaders have been making do with what they have and leading in innovative organizing – from bailouts to Moral Mondays to creating co-ops and alternative economic systems – for decades. They have shifted culture, consciousness and power on shoestring budgets.

I can only imagine the impact they would have if leaders had the resources to reach their full potential. I hope to be a part of a fundamental shift towards robustly funding Southern social justice organizing, because as the South transforms, so do we all.   

Iimay Ho is executive director of Resource Generation. Follow @iimayho and @ResourceGen on Twitter. Resource Generation has two chapters in the South: Raleigh-Durham and New Orleans. Reach out to their organizers (Yahya Alazrak and Kirin Kanakkanatt, respectively) if you’d like to get involved.

Photo by Jloranger, used under Creative Commons license.

Four years ago, the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers (SPFT), along with parents and community members, committed ourselves to ensuring that students in Saint Paul, particularly students of color, receive a quality education. 

While we’ve made great strides to improve public education in Saint Paul, there is much more that still needs to be done. Class sizes are still too big; there are not enough nurses, counselors or social workers; and we need to include more schools in programs that have proven effective in disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline, such as restorative practices and teacher home visits.     

However, like many school districts across the country, the Saint Paul Public School system is financially broke. It’s become an annual tradition that they announce how big the deficit is and then make the needed cuts.

SPFT decided to do something different in our current negotiations. We are using our contract campaign to show that corporate philanthropy is not an adequate substitute for corporations paying their fair share of taxes for public education and that there are serious problems with the way corporations carry out their philanthropy for our schools.

Our campaign is challenging the myth of scarcity. We have highlighted how changes in state law have resulted in Minnesota’s largest corporations paying lower state tax rates than they did previously and that many of those same corporations use loopholes and tax havens to pay even less taxes. 

For instance, we calculated that UnitedHealth and US Bank avoid paying a total of $25 million a year in Minnesota state income taxes. Ecolab, the largest corporation based in St. Paul, is holding $2.1 billion in offshore accounts to avoid paying income taxes in the U.S.

School districts are so underfunded and desperate for money, that they have developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome, in which they honor and praise the very same corporations that are starving our schools by not paying their taxes. SPFT proposed that the St. Paul school district join us in seeking increased funding from these corporations, but the district instead issued public statements defending those corporations.

Charity is not a replacement for government. When we fund schools through taxes, we have democratically elected representatives who decide how to best spend those funds for the common good. In contrast, with charitable contributions, corporations decide what is best for our schools and dictate how to use their donations.

Corporate donors can – and often do – make applicants jump through numerous hoops to receive funding. For instance, contrary to NCRP’s Philanthropy at Its Best criteria, the Ecolab Foundation has burdensome application requirements for minimal grants. Ecolab Foundation gave $244,000 to the Saint Paul Public Schools last year through the company’s Visions for Learning grants, which require individual teachers to each fill out a five-page application for grants of about $2,000 to buy classroom equipment and materials.

Some corporate donors also tie their funding to consumer spending:

  • Target gave the Saint Paul schools $124,000 through its now discontinued “Take Charge of Education” program, in which the company donated 1 percent of Redcard holders’ total purchases to a school of their choice. This means that customers who designated a specific school in Saint Paul made $12.4 million in Target purchases on their Target Redcards.
  • General Mills donated $4,800 from its Box Tops for Education program, which rewards schools at a rate of 10 cents per box top. Saint Paul parents collected box tops from almost 50,000 General Mills products to earn this amount of money.

There is a clear imbalance of power between the school district and the corporations. The “power of the purse” has made the district grateful for corporate donations of any amount, regardless of how the funds are designated to be used. A true partnership in which the grantmaker and grantee are working towards the same goals would involve real conversations between the corporate donors and the district, along with teachers and parents, to identify the most pressing school needs and the best avenues for the corporate involvement.

The “power of the purse” is also responsible for the school district deliberately ignoring the leadership role that the district’s corporate donors play in opposing tax increases for public education. Ecolab CEO Doug Baker is on the Executive Committee and chairs the Fiscal Policy Committee of the Minnesota Business Partnership, which is made up of the CEOs from the state’s 100 largest employers. 

Baker, who received $25 million in total compensation last year, led the Business Partnership’s opposition to an increase in the Minnesota state income tax rate for the wealthiest households. Despite their opposition, the legislature raised the top tax rate in 2013, which allowed the state to invest an additional $350 million a year for K-12 education.

Minnesota is a rich state. Our large corporations are making huge profits, while contributing less and less to the community. We need those corporations to pay their fair share so that all of our children can receive the education they deserve.

Nick Faber is president of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers. Follow @SPFT28 on Twitter.