Nonprofit News Roundup: Internet Archive’s Legal Battle, AmeriCorps Grants, and Addressing Child Malnutrition
Hosted by George Weiner and Nick Azulay of Whole Whale
Key Topics Covered:
- Internet Archive’s Legal Challenges:
- Discussion: The critical role of the Internet Archive in preserving web history and its recent legal challenges concerning copyright infringement.
- Key Insight: The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the Internet Archive in a case involving book digitization, raising concerns about the future of digital preservation.
- AmeriCorps Grant Competition:
- Announcement: AmeriCorps has opened applications for the 2025 State and National Grants Competition.
- Eligibility: Open to nonprofits, colleges, local governments, and other organizations.
- Focus Areas: Civic bridge building, climate resiliency, and youth mental health.
- Deadline: January 23, 2025, at 5 PM
- Child Malnutrition and Mortality:
- Source: Our World in Data.
- Statistic: Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide are linked to malnutrition.
- Progress: Child deaths due to malnutrition have decreased from 6.6 million in the 1990s to 2.4 million today.
- Insight: Malnutrition exacerbates other health vulnerabilities, making it a critical area for intervention.
- Feel-Good Story:
- Nonprofit Highlight: Face the Fight.
- Mission: Provides skincare routines and mental health support for cancer patients.
- Impact: Helps patients feel better about their appearance, potentially improving health outcomes and boosting confidence.
Reflective Thought:
The Internet Archive’s legal struggles highlight the delicate balance between copyright protection and the preservation of digital history. As nonprofits, understanding these dynamics is crucial for safeguarding our collective digital heritage.
Call to Action:
- AmeriCorps Applicants: If your organization aligns with the focus areas, consider applying for the grant competition.
- Support: Visit https://911day.org/ to participate in a day of service and remembrance.
Closing Reflection:
Every nonprofit, regardless of size or scope, contributes to a larger narrative of service and impact. Whether it’s preserving digital history, supporting community service, or addressing global health issues, each effort underscores the power of collective action.
See Transcript:
This week on the podcast, we are talking about a whole bunch of things from the nonprofit news world. But first, my name is George Weiner. I am the chief whaler of whole whale. And we have Nick Azoulay, digital strategist at whole whale. We love talking about nonprofit news and, uh, happy to be always coming back to you.
I feel like the folks that listen to this podcast have got to be like geeks, like us about this topic. And you’re like, yeah, obviously I want to hear about what’s new. And. In the nonprofit news specific world, forget everything else going on in the world, but talk to me about that. But in our own little whole whale world, we have an upcoming webinar.
We do George, and it’s good to be back. As always, I’m very excited to promote our upcoming webinar, which will be tomorrow after our day of recording. So tomorrow, Thursday, September 12th, from three to 4 p. m. Eastern. Eastern whole whales data expert. Emma Joseph is going to be providing a session on understanding how GA four can revolutionize your nonprofits.
Data strategy, particularly folks will learn how to compare key metrics across different years, identify trends in your nonprofits performance, and make informed decisions. Based on historical data. So again, tune in to see our data expert lead this exciting webinar tomorrow at three Eastern. Oh, I think GA4 and getting an understanding of that is the key to understanding your, your website and much of your impact reporting.
So that’s a. That’s a good one. It is. And George, speaking of stories, our first story for this week is actually about a non profit that is kind of really important to the internet, um, but is little known and a vital piece of internet history. Infrastructure. So the first we want to talk about is how much of the archiving of the Internet actually relies on the organization, the Internet Archive, a nonprofit founded in 1996 and is at the forefront of combating digital decay or link rot, which is the disappearance of significant portions of the web due to a variety of factors, um, mostly just Time.
Uh, so as highlighted by recent studies and the closure of numerous news outlets, this issue affects not just older internet, internet content from back in the day. but also more recent material. The archive’s famous Wayback Machine launched in 2001, allows users to access historical snapshots of websites, serving as a crucial defense against the loss of online information and George, I’d argue, culture itself.
So Mark Graham, the director of the Wayback Machine, Sat down with the Verge to discuss the decision involved in this nonprofit and talk about the really complicated and impressive hardware management that goes into this. And I think it’s important for nonprofits to understand that this nonprofit organization serves as a vital stopgap.
For maintaining content that was placed on the internet. And if you’re a nonprofit with a website that’s been up for a while, um, it is likely you don’t have those blog posts from 2005 that got phased out in your most recent site flip, but the Wayback Machine has it. So, uh, plays a role in that as well.
Um, George, we’ve talked about the Wayback Machine before, because there’s been some legal action taken against them with regards to copyright. But. I’d love to hear your thoughts about the importance of this tool and what it means for both nonprofits and the internet as a whole. Well, you know, bringing it up, especially right now is because they had an appeal and the U S court of appeals for the second circuit, and it ruled against, uh, the digital archive upholding an earlier ruling in a hatchet versus internet archive that found that one of the internet archives book digitization projects violated copyright law.
And frankly, it. Uh, the appeal court’s ruling rejects the Internet Archive’s argument that it’s, uh, lending practices were shielded by fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in these cases. I, I think I’m a little nervous, actually, about this type of ruling, because seriously, if you look at a lot of how, uh, things are being saved, uh, it is very ethereal.
It’s like, you know, less than a piece of paper being written on, You know, scary when you’re looking at trying to deduce what was going on, let’s say in 2011 with a certain website or what was top of mind for these different organizations. It is very much dust in the wind, which is very dangerous because you can have, uh, folks, you know, rewriting the past, you know, quite literally last week I was doing research for our Rahim AI story and guess what?
That website’s gone straight up. You, you go there, rahim. ai gone. Okay. So, you know, I wanted to hear and see what was the narrative they were putting out there at the time of say black lives matter. What was the narrative prior to that, how it had changed over time. And I could go to archive. org, get those snapshots and put together a narrative history based on something there, because I think.
When you look at how we will study this period and learn more importantly, learn from this period, it depends scarily on this one tiny resource. And, um, you know, this opened, I’m worried that this opens the door, uh, to, to other organizations, claiming copyright that say like, Oh, they’re using it to profit.
They’re, they’re not using it to profit. They’re storing this information, saving it over time. And, um, you know, I’m nervous about it. Yeah, George. I think that’s important. And I think it brings up some actually kind of interesting and somewhat crazy philosophical questions. But at least as it relates to me, I remember about a month ago, um, a parent company, a Comedy Central, whoever that is, Paramount or whatever, um, deleted like the entire Comedy Central archive Uh, of the two thousands off the Internet, which means that old school Stephen Colbert episodes, Daily Show episodes, all the, all this, uh, all these great TV shows I grew up with as a kid, um, kind of have disappeared into the ether of some corporate server that will probably never see again.
Um, and. That’s kind of disappointing, right? Like that’s part of our culture. Like those shows helped define me, right? And, um, not just that content, but other content, right? News articles, uh, pictures, um, so much of, of what we put into, uh, the internet is part of not only our digital lives, but our real lives.
Um, and. Documenting that is just, I think, so important, uh, especially from a research perspective, but also from a personal perspective. Access to the public though is, is key for archive. org because there’s also an effort by the U. S. Library of Congress to do the same thing, but it has nowhere near the level of permissioning for the public to get access to that.
And, uh, The resources is like, uh, disproportionately used by journalists and, and researchers, lawyers, um, anyone with internet history interest, uh, needs and relies on that tool. Absolutely. Also, Hey, nonprofit. How about that? That’s why we’re talking about this. This is for the public interest. Uh, you know, great example of why you need a, a nonprofit vehicle, right?
Cause I think the narrative would be incredibly different if there was like, Uh, an individual profiting from the traffic coming from copyrighted material. And they were like, Oh, sorry, I’m putting ads against this. You know, your, your recording of this, cause it happened to be on your website at that period of time.
And now I have a right of use to sell ads against it. That is not what they’re doing. Uh, but you need that, uh, for benefit. You need that nonprofit, I will say vehicle, because you cannot have somebody disproportionately profiting, uh, from, from those activities.
Yeah. George couldn’t have said it better. All right, I’ll take us into our next story, and this one comes from The Nonprofit Times, which has written about AmeriCorps announcing a federal grant competition to support thousands of Americans in community service roles. So AmeriCorps has opened this application for the 2025 State and National Grants Competition.
The deadline is January 23rd, 2025 at 5pm. This competition will fund organizations to host AmeriCorps members starting in the summer of next year, 2025 eligible applicants include various organizations such as nonprofit groups, uh, colleges, higher ed educations, and local governments. Um, and this is George.
I think such an important. moment to be thinking about this. You’ve talked a lot on the podcast about the challenge and decline in organization’s ability to recruit and maintain volunteers. Um, AmeriCorps certainly does a great job. Um, and AmeriCorps CEO, Michael D. Smith, emphasized the partnership with state service commissions and the alignment with our partners.
The Biden Harris White House’s goals of alleviating poverty, advancing racial equity, and expanding opportunities in high need communities. What is the opportunity here for nonprofit listening right now that maybe hasn’t interacted with AmeriCorps in the past? You know, is it open to all 501c3s? How might you interact with this particular opportunity?
Yeah, George, so you can read more about it on the AmeriCorps website, um, but the best of my knowledge, it is open, um, to people, folks including, uh, state service commissions, non profit organizations, uh, Native nations, um, so it seems to be pretty wide reaching. But it will prioritize organizations that serve communities through civic built bridge building, strengthening climate resiliency and investing in youth mental health.
So if you’re working for an organization within that area, um, definitely take a look at this competitive programs will share evidence demonstrating that their projects will improve the quality of life for people from underserved communities within these project areas. Um, so keep that in mind as you’re applying.
All right, and I can take us into our next story, and this one comes from our, our world in data, and this is a little bit unique to us, George, um, we don’t often talk about kind of macro level data, humanitarian data, um, um, You know, we’re not keeping track of how many people are on earth, that kind of thing.
That’s not really what we do here, but this article stuck out to us because our world in data has determined that half of all child deaths around the world are linked to malnutrition. And this article highlights that. It’s that critical role of malnutrition in child mortality, revealing that nearly half of all deaths are linked to nutritional deficiencies.
And progress has been made since the 1990s, for sure, uh, malnutrition has decreased from 6. 6 million to 2. 4 million. It remains a significant global, global health issue, particularly in low income countries. But I think what’s important about this, George, is that these kids are not necessarily born Dying from malnutrition itself, right?
Um, actual actual famine is fairly rare, but what’s happening is that malnutrition is intersecting with a whole host of other vulnerabilities, um, that make it incredibly difficult. It’s incredibly dangerous for kids to, you know, get sick with some other illness on top of malnutrition. Um, so, uh, there’s a ton of interventions, there’s a lot to pull out here, but at a top level, what’s your initial reaction to this statistic?
I think when you look at it is beginning to get more nuanced about the second order effects of, of nutrition. It’s no longer just an all catch all famine, you know, give enough people enough wheat and they should be fine. It’s getting more nuanced about the nutritional elements that now need to, to show up.
Uh, and I think in the organization ecosystem, in the cause, uh, dependencies. That your organization works on, I think, looking at this chart and saying, how would we break up maybe something that is more complex? How would we tease out? Here are the seven underlying factors that are, you know, second order effects are impacted by what we’re trying to solve, I think, could open up a lot of opportunities for narratives.
And, and measurement as well for, for your organization, um, obviously you’re trying to tackle a, a large systemic problem, but if, you know, they can do it with global famine and looking at how they’re tracking and looking at this over time and also, you know, Frankly, I love our world in data. org for visual storytelling.
Uh, I think there’s a lot of ideas to pull out here. So that that’s why I wanted to highlight this, just calling out just really well done, uh, data narratives, uh, to, to learn from actually here. Yeah, George. I think that data storytelling piece is so important. Of course, that kind of work is the bread and butter of what we do here at Whole Whale.
On top of that, I really appreciated the article because it really invites this intersectional way of thinking, right? You have this one issue, um, that’s an issue as a standalone, but also maps on to a turn of events. Other issues like maternal health, um, and education and access and poverty, um, and the challenges of particular policy interventions, right?
And I think it’s a mistake to assume that food quality and food access is just a problem dealt with in, you know, Sub Saharan or Western Africa or whatever, right? Like it affects communities. In the United States, it affects urban communities, it affects rural communities, and it displays itself in different ways, and it’s cross sectional in that way.
It intersects with many other aspects of our life, right? Um, and, you know, the amount of kids in America, uh, I don’t have a statistic in front of me, but that receive free lunches. Um, Is staggering. And you know, if you’re hungry all day, you’re not going to perform well in school. Right. And I think while that’s not necessarily malnutrition, um, I think just food access and the quality of, of food, um, is, is really intersectional.
Um, and it’s important for American organizations and local organizations to, to think about it in that way. And I liked how the article really did a good job of kind of pulling that out. Also nice to look at charts that are like, Hey, this is getting better across pretty much every. Uh, metric you can look at, uh, for the most part, which, you know, I, I think I look at enough charts that go the other, other direction.
So every now and then looking at something that is actually, um, improving, um, is nice. Yeah, George, sometimes you need that feel good and this wasn’t even our feel good. So I’ll just double it up and go right into it. And this story I’m excited to say is from.
This story, I’m excited to say, is from KGUN9, and it’s about nonprofit Face the Fight, which started about 11 years ago and offers education for cancer patients on how to implement a skincare routine at home. by providing oncology facials, uh, an optional sound bath and otherwise just general cosmetic advice for helping people who are experiencing cancer treatment, um, the effects of cancer, the effects of radiation, chemotherapy, et cetera, um, feel beautiful both inside and out.
So the organization works with 10 patients a week, helping folks battling cancer, take the taking care of their skin, managing their mental health, um, throughout their entire healthcare plan. And one, uh, individual was interviewed, um, said that it’s a safe place where you can come to relax, be yourself, laugh, cry, educate yourself, and just give you an opportunity to feel.
And I love this story because it’s one of those things that you don’t really think about. You know, like people are going through cancer treatment, you, you think about big picture stuff, you know, health and health plans. Um, but you don’t really think that feeling good about the way you look, um, or helping manage how your skin feels and presents, um, can be a confidence booster that can actually have material impact actually maybe on health outcomes even.
So, just an incredible story. Um, I’m sure cancer has touched, uh, you know, My family, I’m sure it’s touched nearly everyone’s. Um, so it’s amazing to see an organization like that’s doing great work. Thanks. Um, we didn’t include this in the newsletter, but feel appropriate to say, you know, for, uh, nine 11, especially that nine 11 day.
org. a great nonprofit also doing important work out there trying to make it a day of service. So I encourage you to, to check that out. Uh, if you haven’t nine 11 day. org trying to make, uh, this day of remembrance, also a day of, uh, of volunteering. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that George. All right, Nick, final piece.
Cause I always have to do it back to the internet archive. What is the internet archive staff’s favorite movie? Oh God, George. I don’t know. What is it? Raiders of the Lost Archives, oh God. 📍 George. That was, that’s the, that’s the worst one yet, but I ever cheat it. Maybe it might be , it might be that may have been AI created.
May or may not have been. All right. Next May or may not have been. Thank you. Thanks George.
