Now here’s something that breaks the Nonprofiteer’s heart: the MacArthur Foundation is making grants to a dozen libraries and museums nationwide to establish youth computer learning centers modeled on YOUMedia, the Chicago Public Library’s innovative youth learning project.
Why does such good news evoke such profound sorrow? Because the Nonprofiteer can remember when the notion was that the philanthropic sector would serve as a laboratory, trying out new approaches to solving social problems and then passing along the ones that worked to be funded by the government. What we have here, however, is a model already vetted in the public sector whose future sustenance apparently will have to come from private charity.
This role-reversal is particularly galling here in Chicago, where the reward for the library’s pioneering work has been a substantial chop in the city’s library budget.
It’s hard to read a computer screen, or learn anything, when the world is upside-down.
