Daily News Roundup: Houston Tries to Steer ‘Spare Change’ to Homelessness Charity

Houston Seeks to Direct Giving Away From Panhandlers: A City Hall-led campaign called “Meaningful Change — Not Spare Change” aims, via billboards, radio ads, and social media, to encourage people to support a nonprofit’s fund to help settle homeless people in permanent housing rather than giving in the street, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Michael Bloomberg Heads Town & Country’s Philanthropy All-Stars: The media baron and ex-New York mayor’s work on climate change put him at the head of the lifestyle magazine’s 2017 “T&C 50″ list of billionaires, celebrities, and nonprofit leaders making an impact on key national and global issues. He elaborated on his climate efforts in a Town & Country interview. Singer and criminal-justice activist John Legend and actress Cate Blanchett, who has been outspoken on the refugee crisis, were Nos. 2 and 3.

Nonprofit News Sites Make Fundraising Inroads: Columbia Journalism Review examines the benefits and challenges for news organizations that go nonprofit, particularly local outlets like the Frontier in Tulsa, Okla., and Honolulu Civil Beat. Such groups have seen fundraising bumps since President Trump’s election and attention from big grant makers like the Knight Foundation but still struggle with financial peaks and valleys.

Opinion: FEGS Failure Carries Lessons for Nonprofit Fiscal Oversight: Writing in Accounting Today, a CPA takes a deep dive into the finances of Federation Employment & Guidance Service, the $250 million New York social-service charity that abruptly went under in early 2015, and assesses whether its fiscal collapse could and should have been foreseen by staff and external auditors.

Tech Project Helps African Farmers Build Climate Resilience: The program run by humanitarian charity CARE International under the aegis of aid think tank the Overseas Development Institute outfits farmers and nomadic herders in western Niger with radios and mobile devices to gather and share data on rainfall and droughts and adapt their practices to increasingly erratic climate patterns, writes the Thomson Reuters Foundation.