Why is it that when a set aside for affordable housing is announced by a developer the range of income is $35,000-80,000 and dependent on family size. Affordable housing should mean individuals able to own a home base on a living wage set for a community.
The definition of a living wage should be set by regions within a state and reflect the lowest wages of jobs in a community.

The living wage of a community should be the standard bearer for setting any housing goals for any income level. To keep housing affordable and not dependent on the market place requires some level of control of the housing stock that starts out affordable. Cooperatives are the best way to keep the initial idea of affordable within the grasps of community’s living wage individuals.

Cooperatives help to enforce the longevity of affordable housing for more than the 20 years that a government may have placed on a project as a restriction for its financial support.

Donated land, seized property, energy efficiency grants or environment grants government should provide. The philanthropic sector should provide endowment funds for maintenance and repairs to keep mortgages and rents low but to address minor repairs and maintenance. Volunteers within a community can provide the working labor to build and renovate the housing.

Owning a home is a great accomplish and dream for most people. The subprime problem provides a lengthy story about greed in a free market society. Trust is the first and foremost what that individual believes when being told what they hope to achieve. Telling a person exactly what they want to hear and they just about believe every word the person says. It is not education or money that make the individual less likely to fall for the deceptions.

The trust has to be at the community level in which a whole community is invested in the outcome. In cooperatives the ownership and their community belongs among the owners of the cooperative. While the community brought the cooperative life, the owners are its breath and spirit.

Bring more partnerships to the table to create affordable housing cooperatives. Support your employees to become members of a cooperative and have a place they can call their home on the wages your organization pays them.

Millions are being sent by the US government and donors to address a health care crisis in other regions of the world. Yet millions of people are not insured and not receiving health care in the US. There are thousands of organizations servicing to the health care needs of many who cannot afford health care, but there are many they turn away each day. Each month there is a story of hospitals reaching across the world to donate or for a small price do major surgery for an individual, usually a child. At the same time these same hospital send a persons debt to a collection agency.

Clearly the time is now to have a marketing campaign to bring the problem to the forefront to have the philanthropic community and government to create affordable health care solutions through out the US.

Who in the philanthropic community is ready to lead to endow a solution state by state? Is it the Bill Gates Foundation? Is it the Warren Buffet Foundation? Who out there is prepared to lead and make the difference? Health care costs in the US have not created better results in health care. Therefore, help make the community health care system a much stronger option not completely dependent on government.

Who among the health care providers is willing to step to the challenge to market for a solution? Let’s stop the complaining and put money on marketing for the change and looking for that leadership in the world of philanthropic giving. The millions are there to really make the system changes.

Changing behavior is a key to reducing medical costs.  The designing of a wellness program for your organizations employees that treats everyone equally increases it effectiveness.  The question is to know the key behaviors that affect your organization employees, so that your wellness program deals with them.  There is no reason to have an emphasis on an area currently not affecting your employees.

So what is an organization to do to collect the information?  Require a health survey run by your health care provider to be issued to each employee and be a requirement for each covered member.  To ensure all are treated equally mandate that anyone including dependents for which coverage is requested is required to have a completed survey.  Make the survey required for coverage.  The information captured will allow your organization with the health care insurer to offer incentives for individuals to be more proactive in increasing healthy behavior.

The other aspect to the health survey is to find ways to reduce the stresses in a person life. The Family Medical Leave Act provided protection from discrimination to care for a family member, etc.  It does not address the fact that your organization needs to complete the work while the person is gone.  The individual knows it and is under lots of distress already dealing with the family health issues.  Stress increases the likelihood of illness in body of the employee.  Some organizations have begun to recognize the burden and are working to reduce the care burden by offering geriatric care managers, childcare coordinators or employee assistance programs.

The choice for your organization is to pay a little now or lot more later.

The increase in productivity and keeping inflation low can be greatly attributed to the Internet. The cell phone can be attributed as the second factor. The degree to which your organization has lowered its cost of doing business is dependent upon its level of use in telecommuting, teleconferencing, VOIP calling and the sharing of data. In the past seven years the use of bandwidth has increased to a daily consumption of the same amount used by the whole Internet in 2000. Today there is concern for the need to quickly create more capacity.

While the technology meltdown of recent years wiped out companies and many investors, it left in its wake lots of newly laid bandwidth that was left idled. No one really knows how much of this bandwidth today lays in wait to be used.

The same argument was once said about the ability of computers to keep up with the demand. I remember the first PC I had, the second and third. At first my use of the computer matched the ability of the computer. Later, my abilities exceeded the computer’s ability to be faster or could not handle all of the screens I had open. New and old companies created the technology to allow me to work even more efficiently and share more information.

Organizations need to make web-based tools a focus of communicating their mission, sharing internal information and seeking to have others participate in their organization. The concerns of tomorrow’s capacity should not slow down your commitment to bring your organization into the technology of today.

Does your organization have a web site?
Does your organization accept donations on line?
Does your organization have a web-based internal communication feature?
Does your organization share data via the web?
Does your organization have telecommunicating employees?
Does your organization have employees accessing their files via an external connection?
Does your organization post its philanthropic needs on the web?

These are just a few questions to assess your organization’s web status and direction?

When is information gathering and censorship by one entity too much? MA Bell was broken up when their monopoly controlled price and access. Standard Oil was broken up when they controlled too much. Microsoft was force to open access when they controlled to much.

When trying to market or promote your brand does Google give you a fair shake? If you are placed 10,000 in a search is that a form of censorship? Laws have been passed to protect your personal information, stop marketers from calling and sets standards for gathering information but the Internet has not been regulated. Is it time to make the Internet a mandated required open source service to all? What is the basic level of privacy and access everyone should expect. Today, there is no limit.

The depth of choices and the quality of an education by a persons state university and college system varies from state to state.  However, a person should not feel limited to his or her own state in selecting a publicly run college or university.  Whether paying an in state rate or an out of state rate the cost benefit of receiving an education through the public higher education system when compared to a private college or university wins hands down.  Another measure a person should take in comparing schools is the relevance of the courses the school has to offer and the infrastructure of the campus.

A state needs to dedicate a specific amount of its tax receipts to its higher education system if it wants to support the economic growth of its state.  Each year the percent of the tax receipts should be handed over to the education fund.  The use of bond issues by certain states does not provide for the ongoing support of the education system.  The higher education system needs to be able to plan and offer the educational experience that students need to graduate with the credentials that the many industries need and new skills to create change in industries.

Some of the state higher education systems have begun to utilize the same business techniques of its private peers in creating endowments, royalties from licensing patents, fund raising to build facilities and obtaining grants.

I have emphasized the need for a states commitment to its higher education system.  These nonprofit education systems are a great resource for every nonprofit.  The strength of your organization ultimately lines in the strength of your employees.  If you do not partner and work with the public colleges and universities in your area make plans to create a partnership this year.

If the majority of one’s peers have a criminal record and are excluded from serving as a juror does that set up the system against all defendants?

Discretionary or peremptory challenges to jurors are viewed as slated towards the prosecutors when the law has created such.

I would propose allowing anyone to serve on civil cases who has completed their required sentence, does not know the defendant and has not been arrested for any possible crime in 3 years from the last date of their sentence being completed.

Diverse opinions are important in every argument and presentation of facts, especially when weighing the evidence for one party or another. Everyone has a preference or bias on something and everyone has those moments in their life that effects whom they are today.

To say that those once convicted of a crime are no longer valued for their view or opinion is short sighted and a bias in itself. There are many points in our history where biases caused death, pain and even wars because of the difference of opinions.

An ex-con’s right to employment and the right to be treated equally without malice is no different than what each of us should expect. If a person is considered a risk to someone and is to register wherever they live I would not consider their sentence completed.

Organizations need to help reduce the stigma of ex-cons by being leaders in the employment of those who have completed all obligations of their sentence. If your organization does not value their input and work, how can you expect legislation to be passed to allow them to participate in the juror system?

As non-profit organizations, most religious organizations that provide spiritual worship times can increase their economic value to their community. In return, there is opportunity for increasing the return on their assets, building assets and promoting their belief system and mission.

Monday through Friday most organizations have little activity occurring within their organization. If your organization is one of them, then there is opportunity for you to make an even greater impact in your community and those you serve.

You do not need to run the programs yourself. You can have a partner who will provide the service, comply with regulations and abide by your ground rules as a landlord and partner.

Here are four of the top areas to consider: Housing, childcare, adult care, and youth programs.

A living wage for an individual is very different than a living wage for a family. Medical costs, food costs, and health care insurance are higher; additional bedrooms add to housing costs; and childcare is necessary usually to work.

Childcare comes in many forms and is dependent upon family, community, government and paid resources. The age of the child influences the amount of coverage the parent needs to coordinate. A parent’s ability to pay influences the choices the parent has access to. If the child is attending school there will be less of an expense. If the child is junior high and high school age there will be a lesser childcare expense. Employees with children under the age of 5 will most likely need to incur the highest level of childcare expenses; with the next tier being those parents with children 6-13 years of age.

Due to the nature of a parent’s support system and to generate equal access to childcare I find the governments approach probably the fairest way to compensate for the cost. The federal government allows for every person to set up a dependent care Flexible Spending Account to cover childcare expenses up to $5,000. However, $5,000 only buys $416.66 a month, which averages out to $20.88 a day for 20 days a month. I do not know of any childcare service provided at that rate.

The advocacy that organizations should be providing to its employees is the tax benefit of using the accounts to lower their tax burden.

The second advocacy role for organizations to take is to have the amount increased. The $5,000 ceiling has not kept pace with the increase in the mandated minimum wage. In some states the minimum wage is higher. In Massachusetts the minimum wage is $8 an hour.

If an employee hires an individual at minimum wage for 8 hours that is $64 a day and an average of 20 days a month is $1,280 a month, which is $15,360 a year. If an employee uses a family day care providing paying a flat $850 a month that is $10,200 a year. If an employee uses a centered base childcare at a government set rate of $33 a day, that is $660 per month for $7,920 per year. Due to the provision that the employee must spend the money or lose it I would advocate that the maximum amount of the Dependent Care be increased to $15,360. It is up to the employee to set the amount each year.

An appropriate level for Dependent Care Account set by an employee to adequately address their childcare needs, resources and equal access is the best way to support families and their access to economic independence.

In 2006 the federal government gave $1.3 billion in subsidies to people to not farm.

$164.7 billion has been spent from 1995-2005 in subsidies. 73% of the subsidies have gone to the top ten percent of the recipients, large conglomerates.

People are going hungry, cannot afford to buy enough food, and food pantries are unable to meet demand. Most of your employees make less than a living wage and worry about feeding their family. The paying of these subsidies has not stopped small farmers from going out of business, it has not made food affordable, and it has not made food available to the poor.

The federal government is giving billions to not grow food and people cannot feed their families. Organizations need to be better educators to improve public policy that does not hurt individuals.