THE IMPACT EDIT | July 27, 2026

Every week, I gather what’s useful and worth paying attention to.

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For nearly a decade, I’ve written the stories philanthropy wants told about itself as a comms and PR professional. Now, I get to ask who those stories actually serve. That being said, I’m excited to announce that I have my own column with Proximate Press!

This column, On Media, will explore how philanthropy and nonprofit work are represented—by funders, journalists, and grassroots organizations themselves—and how those narratives shape what ultimately gets funded.

Voice belongs to the people on the ground who lead movements through their own ways of organizing and are accountable to their communities. Yet, visibility is granted on the philanthropic media ecosystem’s terms. Until this misconception is corrected, every time you read a story, I want you to ask: who edited the story, and what was left out in the process? Read the first piece here.

ICYMI: Fighting Back Means Looking Beneath the Surface

On July 25, over 330 communities nationwide held vigils for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Guerrero, and all others lost to ICE. Since the Trump administration took office, there have been 53 deaths in ICE custody. This past weekend’s vigils may be over, but the fight for accountability continues. You can find ongoing actions through the Disappeared in America campaign, urge your local and state officials to stop all cooperation with ICE, and support organizations leading this effort, such as NDLON, Detention Watch Network, The Workers Circle, and LULAC. Learn more from Public Citizen.

California's new state budget allocates $116 million to help schools identify and support students without stable housing, marking the largest state investment of its kind in the country. This funding focuses on identifying students, a task previously managed by goodwill and volunteers in most districts. Once identified, students can enroll without documents, remain at their current school even if they move, and access meals, counseling, and a dedicated liaison. Last school year, districts reported over 298,000 homeless students, and prior short-term funding has shown that with proper resources, absenteeism decreases and graduation rates improve. Learn more from the Citrus County Chronicle.

• Amid a big hiring push, police experts question ICE officer vetting, NPR

• Data centers are booming. Indigenous leaders want help protecting their lands., Grist

• On Keeping Sanity and Purpose While Higher Ed and DEI Are Under Attack, Inside Higher Ed

• Public transit is a lifeline for countless Americans. Trump is derailing our protections, The Guardian

• Saving Black Mothers Starts Outside the Hospital, Word In Black

• Disability Rights and Inclusion by Design: Built In, Not Bolted On, Save the Children

• Beyond Captive Care: Philanthropy, Revolutionary Love, and the Risk of Solidarity, Nonprofit Quarterly

• The UN’s Black Agenda Is Growing. That’s Exactly Why It Is Being Attacked, Amnesty International

• Advocates Welcome Inclusive Democracy Act as Congress Debates New Voting Restrictions, The Sentencing Project

• ​​New Polling: 56% of Americans Highly Trust Nonprofits as Trust in Government, Corporations Remains Much Lower, Independent Sector

• State Court Judges Can Protect the Rights the Supreme Court Won’t, Balls and Strikes

• Trump Administration Moves to Stop Collecting Demographic Data on U.S. Workers After 60 Years, TIME

• The Need For Reproductive Rights Funding Is More Urgent Than Ever, Inside Philanthropy

• My Maddening Quest to Find Out if Blueberries Come From Farms Where Workers Were Harmed, ProPublica

• Democrats Lack a Unified Plan to Counter a Republican Refusal to Seat Midterm Winners, Glass Empires

• In the premiere episode of The Giving Habit, host Hannes Schmid tells the origin story of Smiling Gecko, a 1,500-hectare social enterprise in Cambodia that houses a school, a farm, fish farms, carpentry workshops, and 34 small businesses. Schmid argues that traditional NGO approaches create dependency rather than lasting change. The conversation examines how Gecko’s alternative model holds up, from financial sustainability to trust, and the tension between philanthropy and social enterprise.

• Check out The Invite, a Black-led documentary film series inviting artists and community leaders across music, film, dance, theater, poetry, culinary arts, and more to share their recipes for liberation. The series is modeled after Soul, one of the first Black television shows in the US, which aired on public television from 1968 to 1973 and blended uncensored music, dance, poetry, and conversation.

• In this episode of Highly Visible & A Little Misunderstood, Jonathan talks with Amity Paye, VP of Narrative Change at Liberation Ventures, about why reparations are about far more than money and what building a culture of repair requires. Paye breaks down the four components of reparations under international frameworks, where the U.S. movement stands today, and why narrative change matters as much as legislation in shaping what people believe is possible.

• The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer finds a world retreating into insularity. As economic anxiety, geopolitical tension, and technological disruption intensify, people are narrowing their lives to smaller, like-minded circles. The report argues that this retreat undermines economic and societal progress and charts a path to restore trust and rebuild collaboration across society.

• This case study documents the impact campaign behind Silky Shah’s Unbuild Walls, a book arguing for the abolition of immigrant detention, which adapted tactics from documentary impact production and launched in 2024 as anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated ahead of the election. It offers an introduction to impact production, a walkthrough of the campaign’s strategy, and recommendations for organizers, cultural workers, and funders interested in using books to build narrative power.

• Interrupting Criminalization has released Don’t Be a Copagandist: Health Care Workers Edition, a guide for challenging pro-police, pro-ICE, and anti-migrant propaganda in how we talk about criminalization in hospitals and health care spaces. The guide arrives amid an unprecedented surge in ICE and Border Patrol presence around hospitals and schools, which expands policing and surveillance into spaces meant for care and risks deputizing care workers as agents of criminalization.

• The Partnership Toolkit from the Center for Partnership Systems is a free guide that offers research-based questions to examine existing winner-take-all constructs and discover new possibilities for moving forward differently. The values-based framework applies to raising a family, finding purposeful work, or building resilient communities, guiding readers toward a more partnership-based future.

• ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer lets you browse millions of annual returns filed by tax-exempt organizations, including details such as executive compensation, revenue, and expenses. You can search for an organization or a person, search the full text of filings, and download Form 990 documents going back as far as 2001. The database also links to federal audits for nonprofits that spent $750,000 or more in federal grant money in a single year, making it a go-to tool for anyone researching where money moves in the sector.

• The Economic Body is a five-week series from The Labora Collective that traces the economic forces behind the women’s health crisis, from the destruction of the Black middle class to the ACA subsidy cliff, childcare costs, housing, and domestic violence, with maternal health as the throughline. Each week unfolds in three registers: a data Signal, a policy Briefing, and a first-person Viva Voce. Week 1 is live now, with new installments publishing weekly.

• IRIS, the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling, is building narrative infrastructure for social change through its partnership with the Skoll Foundation, funding storytellers and field builders across Latin America, MENA, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Its Narrative Change Hub and Narrative Directory will relaunch in 2026 as a global knowledge platform for narrative practitioners.

• On Courage by Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer is a practical manual for defying authoritarianism, drawing on interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across five continents to show how ordinary people have taken serious risks to resist repression and how anyone can do the same.

• LANDBACK Action Network is an Indigenous-led organizing and narrative framework, powered by NDN Collective, that advances collective liberation by reclaiming stolen lands and all that colonization took, exercising Indigenous sovereignty, and restoring just relationships with Mother Earth and one another.

• The Oxygen Project is a nonprofit that protects the natural systems that produce Earth’s oxygen through bold campaigns, education, and storytelling, working toward a regenerative and climate-resilient future.

• On Wednesday, July 29, at 12 p.m. PT, JustFund is hosting a free workshop on what reparative philanthropy looks like in practice. The session features Bold Ventures, which will walk through the two threads of reparative practice, building trust with historically disenfranchised communities and redistributing resources in direct response to their needs, alongside Jonathan Jayes-Green of the Black Migrant Power Fund, who will share how his organization moves money with trust and accountability at the center. This is a working session rather than a lecture, designed for funders rethinking how power and resources flow.

• The Interaction Institute for Social Change is now accepting applications for the Fall 2026 cohort of Gathering to Rise, a leadership program designed for Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive individuals. This program provides an opportunity to reconnect with yourself, align more deeply with your purpose, and develop liberatory leadership skills within a community. It will be held online from September to November. Applications close on Sunday, August 9, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

• Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice is hosting a free online study group series exploring how social movements have fought authoritarianism and won. Organizers can join one or both six-week groups, each anchored by a different book. The first group reads Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom and meets on Fridays from September 11 through October 16. The second group reads Jonny Steinberg’s Winnie and Nelson and meets on Fridays from October 30 through December 11. Applications are due August 10, 2026.

A little Monday motivation: “A winner is just a loser that tried one more time.”

If you come across a tool, story, opportunity, or call to action that should be on my radar (or if you’re working on something you’d like others to see), I’d love to include it in a future round-up! Send me a message on Substack or email me at tirreab@gmail.com.