At one of the nonprofits I worked at, it was a HUGE struggle to get my colleagues to print on double-sided paper. For regular use within the office, sure, but for board meetings?

Is our failure to act based in a covert belief that White life is more valuable than Black life?

Katherine Commale of Pennsylvania has raised $43,000 to fight malaria.

Living in the modern world can be downright depressing. Wars, crime, poverty, and recession stare out at you from the front page of the newspaper every single day.

I try not to think about how much we're spending on food for my family these days, because my mind just boggles at how much some groceries now cost.

While I visited my bubbe (that's Yiddish for grandmother) at a Catholic hospital where she was recovering from laproscopic surgery, the local news was airing on the TV in her room. It announced that Barack Obama promised to up the ante on George Bush's failed faith-based services initiative if he is elected president, pouring millions more dollars into religious organizations.

Our names, something most of us were given and birth had no control over for the most part, mean a lot. A name can present a person to the outside world through a variety of overt and not-so-subtle ways. As an individual, it represents who you are and what you've achieved. For many people (myself included), a name becomes an inextricable part of his or her identity.

With today's unpredictable climate, producing an ample food supply for the world's population has become increasingly challenging, especially in developing countries. Much of the farmland in these areas have been made available by clearing rainforests, which only compounds the problem of global warming. Even after the land has been cleared, there's no guarantee that the field will produce a bountiful harvest. Often, a flood, drought, or other natural disaster will prevail, leaving farmers with little or no reward for all their hard work. If the crops do come through, they must be shipped hundreds or thousands of miles to the highest bidding consumers all around the world, and all too often, thrown in the trash where they end up in a landfill. We know our population is growing and demand for food is growing. We know weather conditions will only get worse. How will we adapt as a species to the new habitat that we've created for ourselves? What is the solution?

When I was in graduate school, one of my professors asked us which would be better: pulling drowning people out of the river as they float past, or going up the river to stop people from falling in? The United Way of America has recently announced a new 10-year campaign that essentially hopes to move upstream, addressing the root causes of social problems instead of the effects.

This week, after all the questionable nonprofit organizations in the news, I'd like to highlight one of my favorite nonprofit organizations. Red Feather Development Group, started by Robert Young in 1995, builds sustainable housing for homeless native Americans living on reservations in the middle of nowhere.

When I picked up the newspaper on Monday, I was extremely disturbed to read about the decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court that a small day care center (which I will refer to from now on as child care, as the centers provide care for children, not days) is not entitled to property tax exemptions unless it offers a sliding fee scale to parents.

My fellow JUST CAUSE blogger Susan Janvrin emailed me yesterday to tip me off about an article in the New York Times called Exemptions for Charities Face New Challenges.