The Conversation - GoFundMe can add to users' distress

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• Jimmy Carter's lasting Cold War legacy: His human rights focus helped dismantle the Soviet Union

Many of the articles about giving and nonprofits that The Conversation U.S. publishes on a regular basis reflect hot-button social issues or sum up intriguing research findings. Here are some of those pieces that we published in 2024 that stood out for our readers and me.

Arizona State English professor Devoney Looser wrote about what she’s discovered while researching the extent to which Jane Austen’s brothers engaged in the movement to end slavery. Abolitionism – an important cause funded by many philanthropists back then – was seen as pretty radical in 1817, when the still-popular novelist died. Figuring out what she believed 200 years later requires much reading between the lines of her books and letters.

Reading between the lines is also required for anyone wanting to suss out whether colleges and universities can actually do what protesters on countless campuses have demanded: divest their endowments of assets tied to Israel. As University of Colorado Denver public administration scholar Todd L. Ely pointed out, it’s rather hard to divest even if a school’s leaders want to go that route.

Some of our best coverage highlighted research that points to solutions for big problems.

For example, a team of researchers at the University of Arizona are finding that military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder have fewer and less severe symptoms when service dogs are by their side.

And a supply chain scholar described how his research team figured out that supermarkets and big-box stores can earn higher profits by giving food away when it’s nearing its expiration date – instead of first trying to sell those items at a discount. That practice, in addition, would send more groceries to food banks.

The Conversation’s readers and I also liked articles published this year about a prevailing but counterproductive system for assessing government contracts with nonprofits, and what GoFundMe could do better if it wants to “fulfill crowdfunding’s democratic promise.”

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