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Research and data compiled in one portal with the goal of making progress against the world's largest problems

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Research and data to make progress against the world's largest problems

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Statistics, graphs, and articles covering many different topics. Many free articles available but some are fire-walled.

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Apr 15, 2024 | Mobile Devices

Quarterly smartphone market share worldwide by vendor 2009-2024

Samsung held the largest slice of the global smartphone market by shipments during the first quarter of 2024, followed by Apple. Xiaomi has taken a tight grip on the third position, accounting for a market share of 14 in the first quarter of 2024.

Samsung and Apple smartphone sales Smartphone vendors have been suffering from the events of the past couple of years, including the pandemic and the economic downturn. However, they all appear to be recovering, as shown by the recent increase in shipments. For instance, mostly based on the main line of Galaxy Series, Samsung's smartphone shipments totaled nearly 226.5 million units globally in 2023.

Next to Samsung, Apple is a major manufacturer of smartphones worldwide, with the company shipping more than 232 million iPhones worldwide in 2023 - a number that made Apple leading smartphone vendor for the first time ever. Apple's sales tend to be very cyclical, peaking in the fourth quarter each year, much like in the fourth quarter of 2023, when they took the first spot in terms of units shipped globally with around 80.5 units.

Huawei falls outside the leading five vendors While Apple and Samsung are typically the two major companies challenging for the top spot, Huawei had provided a strong challenge in recent years. Particularly, the Chinese company managed to climb the smartphone market ladder between 2011 and 2020, recording shipments of over 32 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2020. However, strong performances from rivals like Xiaomi and the effects of the U.S. trade ban have since seen Huawei fall outside the list of top five vendors by smartphone shipments.

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Apr 16, 2024 | Business Enterprise

Most affluent women worldwide 2023, by net worth

The granddaughter of the L'Oréal founder, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers was the wealthiest woman in the world as of April 2024. She and her family's net worth was estimated at 99.5 billion U.S. dollars. Alice Walton was ranked second with over 70 billion U.S. dollars in net worth. By comparison, the richest man in the world had a fortune of over 258 billion dollars as of December 2023.

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Apr 16, 2024 | Population

Total population of China 1980-2029

According to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in January 2024, the Chinese population decreased by 2.08 million people to around 1,41 billion in 2023. This was a stronger decrease than expected by the IMF, which underestimated China's population decrease already in 2022. China arrived at the turning point of its population growth earlier than expected by many observers, and current IMF estimates for the total population until 2029 very likely need to be adjusted downwards.

Population development in China China had for a long time been the country with the largest population worldwide, but according to UN estimates, it has been overtaken by India in 2023. As the population in India is still growing, the country is very likely to remain being home of the largest population on earth in the near future. Due to several mechanisms put into place by the Chinese government as well as changing circumstances in the working and social environment of the Chinese people, population growth has subsided over the past decades, displaying an annual population growth rate of -0.15 percent in 2023. Nevertheless, compared to the world population in total, China held a share of about 18 percent of the overall global population in 2022.

China's aging population In terms of demographic developments, the birth control efforts of the Chinese government had considerable effects on the demographic pyramid in China. Upon closer examination of the age distribution, a clear trend of an aging population becomes visible. In order to curb the negative effects of an aging population, the Chinese government abolished the one-child policy in 2015, which had been in effect since 1979, and introduced a three-child policy in May 2021. However, many Chinese parents nowadays are reluctant to have a second or third child, as is the case in most of the developed countries in the world. The number of births in China varied in the years following the abolishment of the one-child policy, but did not increase considerably. Among the reasons most prominent for parents not having more children are the rising living costs and costs for child care, growing work pressure, a growing trend towards self-realization and individualism, and changing social behaviors.

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Apr 17, 2024 | Online Retail

Visitors to most popular online retailers in Japan 2024

As of March 2024, Amazon Japan's e-commerce website was the leading e-commerce site accessed in Japan, with almost 587 million visits. The subsidiary of the American technology company competes in the Japanese e-commerce market against the major business-to-consumer (B2C) retailers Rakuten and Yahoo Japan.

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Apr 15, 2024 | Soccer

Most German soccer titles 1903-2024, by club

In 2024 Bayer Leverkusen won the Bundesliga for the first time, with the team going unbeaten in all competitions for over 40 matches. Previously, Bayern Munich had won the league every year since 2013.

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Apr 16, 2024 | Vehicle Manufacturing

Latin America: number of motor vehicles produced 2013-2023, by country

In the last years, Mexico has positioned itself as the largest producer of vehicles in Latin America. In 2023, the North American country produced just over four million motor vehicles, followed by Brazil, where around 2.3 million units were produced. In addition, most of the motor vehicles produced in Mexico were light commercial vehicles.

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Find statistics, consumer survey results and industry studies from over 22,500 sources on over 60,000 topics on the internet's leading statistics database

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Statistics and graphs covering many different topics. Some are fire-walled but many are free.

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Provides a comprehensive non-partisan view of social issues using government-sourced data. Search or browse for your topic.

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Our nation, in numbers. USAFacts provides a comprehensive, nonpartisan view of the state of our union.

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Search for government data by topic or agency. This is a huge website filled with statistics and reports.

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Making government services easier to find | USAGov

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Find government benefits, services, agencies, and information at USA.gov. Contact elected officials. Learn about passports, Social Security, taxes, and more.

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Fixing the flooding problem could be as simple as adding pipes, but small, rural places like Johnsonville cannot afford it. Read more

Our public service and investigative reporting is among the most important work we do. It's also the most expensive reporting we do. We can't do it without your support.

Charlestonians have lived alongside water for centuries. Yet, 2021 is likely to be the first time in Charleston's history that water plays a dominant role in the city's future growth strategies.

Can anything be done to speed our city toward a better place? Scientists, planners and other experts say yes, but it will take creativity, leadership and a new sense of urgency. Here are some of their ideas.

Prospective homebuyers in Charleston want to know one thing first: "Did the house flood?" That will play into further interest in the property and the price, as homes on the peninsula aren't appreciating as much as others in the region.

The cost of fixing flooding in Charleston has bloomed to some $3 billion in total, city officials say - a price tag for solutions from cleaning out plugged drainage systems to new, deep tunnels and a wall that could deflect hurricane waves from the downtown peninsula.

A new analysis for The Post and Courier's Rising Waters project shows how the Charleston area's unprecedented building boom has made us more vulnerable amid the accelerating forces of climate change. The study shows that a fast-growing Charleston has lost 5 percent of its tree canopy, and that faster-growing Mount Pleasant lost 22 percent of its tree cover. Read more

Reporter Chloe Johnson joined us for this week's podcast to discuss what's known and what's still unclear about the proposal to build an eight-mile sea wall around the Charleston peninsula.

The city has a front row view to the real-time impacts of climate change, and those impacts are just coming faster.

Flooding and sea level rise are perhaps the biggest threats to Charleston's viability since the Civil War, according to reporter Tony Bartelme. We discuss in the latest Understand S.C. episode.

Flooding and sea-level rise pose a critical threat to Charleston's business community, the workforce it supports and the viability of low-lying areas as sites for future investment. Read more

Thousands of buildings in Charleston County are lower than the federal government says they should be to avoid flooding, giving the area one of the highest inventories of vulnerable homes in the country.

In the Charleston region, one of the most flood-prone areas on the East Coast, Black people face great risks from climate change due to racial discrimination that limited generational wealth and displacement caused by gentrification.

Humans have pumped huge volumes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases into the atmosphere, and now there is more carbon dioxide trapping heat than in the past 800,000 years... So what does that mean for South Carolina?

The Rising Waters project presents "Flood Woman and Climate Doom," a four-page comic book set in Charleston.

Set aside the notion of climate change. The climate has always changed. The real story is about speed. The pace of change. From rain bombs to higher sea levels, the impacts are coming faster. Wednesday's deluge in Charleston was yet another reminder how this affects our community in many ways. Read more

Data obtained by The Post and Courier allowed reporters for the first time to pinpoint about one-third of South Carolina's most vulnerable and water-damaged properties, a revealing disclosure for a state that is near the top in flood insurance payouts from the federal government. Read more

The proposal, laid out at the end of last month in a lengthy report by the Army Corps of Engineers, would create an 8-mile perimeter around the city's core peninsula, slicing through the marshlands that blossom out from the water's edge or following the paths of streets on higher ground. Read more

Not so far into the future, the vibrant South Carolina coast today could largely feature skeletal patches of drowning seascape and dying wetlands. Read more

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Rising Waters | Our Climate Emergency in Real Time

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Fixing the flooding problem could be as simple as adding pipes, but small, rural places like Johnsonville cannot afford it. Read more Our public service and investigative reporting is among the most important work we do. It's also the most expensive reporting we do. We can't do it without your support.

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NORTH CHARLESTON - When Ida Taylor was 8 years old, she collected green chinaberries in her neighborhood to make beaded bracelets. Then she dashed off to Bible study at Noah's Ark Baptist Church.

Union Heights was a safe place back then, full of thoughtful neighbors who looked after the children, rich in history and pride.

A half-century later, Taylor is worried that children in the neighborhood today might never have the experience of making bracelets with berries. Everything is changing before her eyes.

Taylor, 64, likes that Union Heights is becoming racially diverse as White homeowners move in to the still somewhat affordable community.

But she hopes progress doesn't cause displacement of the neighborhood's seniors as the city's southern end becomes increasingly expensive.

"I don't want to see them go anyplace else," Taylor said.

North Charleston is changing again. And Taylor isn't the only one worried that low-income residents living within the Interstate 526 loop - especially those in the African American community - will be most harmed if no deliberate effort is made to protect them from increasingly rapid growth.

Pressure is being applied from below as the city of Charleston redevelops the last of its territory in the Neck Area. Pressure is increasing from above as the Park Circle area, now a haven for the professional class, stretches westward and southward.

The tri-county region is seeing an influx of new residents looking for a place to live not too far from the downtown area. Many newcomers end up buying property on the fringes - in Ladson, Summerville, Moncks Corner, Goose Creek and Cainhoy.

Urban planners generally promote the notion of density and infill as a preferred strategy to avoid suburban sprawl and all its associated problems, like more traffic and environmental degradation.

Many, though, say North Charleston still has a chance to create smart solutions that benefit newcomers while protecting those already living here.

"The train has left the station and it's moving with speed," said Rep. JA Moore, D-Hanahan. "But it's not too late."

'The clock is ticking'

Residential movement in the tri-county region is a little like a long game of musical chairs. The cost of housing downtown (or near downtown) has become too high for most middle- and working-class families - even if their jobs often are located there. And housing stocks are limited in the dense center of town.

So developers are hard at work building neighborhoods along the outer rim of the metropolitan area. Some local residents are feeling the squeeze and seeking more affordable options farther out. Newcomers who can't afford million-dollar homes downtown often end up in new neighborhoods some distance away.

Lots of buyers are competing for homes their budgets can manage. Some of those homes can be found in the southern part of North Charleston, now undergoing change. The old Charleston Naval Base is the site of a major redevelopment effort; the former Charleston Naval Hospital soon will be converted into hundreds of apartments; real estate investors are buying properties along Reynolds Avenue; Spruill Avenue is becoming an important strip of commercial activity, especially along the stretch closest to Park Circle; and the Neck Area of Charleston is the stage for a dramatic project on what's known as the Magnolia tract.

No wonder neighborhood advocates are concerned.

North Charleston Councilman Mike Brown said the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood by the Navy base suffered its first economic hit when, in the 1970s, racial integration policies took hold, driving out some White residents. The area was dealt its second blow when the base closed two decades later. During this period, Chicora transformed from a neighborhood that consisted of single-family homeowners into one that housed mostly renters.

Renters, he said, are far more vulnerable to displacement and the economic pressures that cause it than homeowners. Landlords, some of them absentee, rent dilapidated properties at low rates with little incentive to upgrade them, Brown said. When the property values rise, suddenly the landlord has a reason to sell.

And many do, leaving their tenants with few good options, he said.

Among the most noted changes include the increase in the number of young adults moving into the city's newer multifamily units, Mayor Keith Summey said.

"What we have seen is younger folks aren't looking for a large yard," he said, adding that White people now are buying properties in historically Black areas.

The key to ensuring that local residents aren't hurt by the changes is to control housing prices, Summey said. But that can be difficult when construction costs go up and market forces affect land values.

Bill Stanfield, co-founder and CEO of Metanoia Community Development Corp. and a Chicora resident, said homeownership is essential for strengthening the fabric of a community and ensuring that local residents can help determine the fate of their neighborhood.

So Metanoia works to acquire land and construct housing that it makes available to local residents, and to provide alternative rental properties in order to keep people where they are.

When Stanfield first got started here, a typical lot cost around $2,500. Today it costs $20,000.

"The clock is ticking," he said. "There is a limited time to do this work."

The work includes infill, property rehabilitation, pushing for zoning changes, socioeconomic integration and instituting incentives for more affordable housing. To accomplish all this, Metanoia relies on public and private partnerships, philanthropy, community engagement and grant writing. And it manages a land bank that subsidizes property costs and enables low-income people to have a stake in their neighborhoods.

The goal is to create "a mixed-income community that becomes a model," he said. It can enable property improvements and stimulate economic activity while providing a buffer against the kind of gentrification that ends up displacing people.

Opportunities exist, he said. The planned Lowcountry Rapid Transit bus line could help create urban density, increase the supply of homes and encourage the establishment of needed grocery stores and small businesses.

Some combination of incentives and penalties could get developers to produce more affordable housing.

And the city of North Charleston, a vital partner already, could modify its spending to encourage the kind of urban development that benefits all.

"Budgets are moral documents that speak to our priorities," Stanfield said.

Constantly changing

In 1920, the area around what is now Park Circle consisted of tracts of woodland and decaying plantations along the Cooper River and tidal creeks.

Some industry had cropped up - a construction company, General Asbestos and Rubber Co., the Navy shipyard, E.P. Burton Lumber Co., railroad lines and shipping operations that transported cotton and other commodities upcountry, downriver and around the world - but houses were scarce.

Park Circle was little more than an idea, its concentric street design laid out in the 1910s by a group of Charleston developers who had its streets named for them. The area beckoned investors and adventurers willing to become the first generation of a new English garden-style model community, a place where people lived and worked and cultivated a sense of belonging.

The population of the North Charleston area was a little under 1,000 in the 1920s. By the time the city was incorporated in 1972, the number of residents had reached 20,000, and it grew rapidly, partly because of annexation, in the decades that followed. Today, 120,000 call North Charleston home, making it the third-largest city in South Carolina. About 46 percent of them are White and 45 percent are Black.

Neighborhood demographics have changed over the decades, especially after the Navy base shut down in 1996 and 15,000 jobs vanished. The neighborhoods around the base had been mostly White and solidly middle- and working-class, and they included the shops and lunch counters and churches these communities depended on.

In the years since the base closed, retail chains came to dominate the city's economic activity, along with the remnants of industry. The 800,000-square-foot Northwoods Mall, which opened in 1972 near Rivers Avenue and Ashley Phosphate Road, had created a new commercial center far to the north of "downtown" North Charleston.

As the White middle class abandoned the area near the Navy base, the shops on Reynolds and Cosgrove avenues closed, accelerating economic decay.

Two nearby neighborhoods, though, always were predominantly Black. Liberty Hill was founded on May 10, 1871, by four freed slaves from Georgetown. During the Reconstruction period, land there was for sale and made available to Black people at reasonable prices. Mostly it was settled by the poor.

By the 1950s, the Liberty Hill neighborhood near Park Circle was an African American enclave, self-sufficient, thriving. Retail stores and small groceries lined Montague Avenue, church pews filled up, students walked to Liberty Hill Elementary School and to Bonds-Wilson High School.

The streets were safe, everybody knew everybody.

More coverage

To read more stories in the series about growth and development, go to postandcourier.com/boomandbalance.

Desegregation in this North Charleston neighborhood during the 1960s and 1970s frayed Liberty Hill's well-established edges and weakened its once-concentrated economy. And as Park Circle has gained in popularity, attracting mostly White professional and middle-class residents, the Black neighborhood to the west has felt the pressures of gentrification.

To the south, another "settlement community" - Union Heights, founded shortly after the Civil War by freed slaves who settled on an abandoned plantation - once was a thriving working-class neighborhood featuring movie theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, a pharmacy and other small retail.

Government-sponsored "urban renewal" projects of the 1960s inflicted physical and economic damage. Interstate 26 slashed through the area, and Exit 218 bifurcated the neighborhood. Nearby industry further degraded this low-lying land, resulting in brownfields and a superfund site.

When the Navy base closed, many working people sought opportunities elsewhere, leaving behind an aging population and little economic activity.

The Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities has sought to reverse the downward spiral, investing in small businesses, affordable housing and other community-based projects. Now, as developers begin the process of transforming the nearby brownfields along the Ashley River in the Magnolia mixed-use project, the area could see a revitalization.

This renewed effort might help Union Heights, or it might cause harm if measures are not adopted to ensure that current low-income residents are not displaced as a result of economic improvements.

A chance to get it right

Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities is a nonprofit that, like Metanoia, seeks to foster economic development while protecting local residents.

LAMC negotiated an arrangement with the State Ports Authority that resulted in $4.3 million in cultural and environmental mitigation money, and another agreement with Palmetto Railways worth $4 million. Most of that money is packed away in endowments managed by the Coastal Community Foundation and will be spent on initiatives that bolster the overall economic well-being of Union Heights and other nearby neighborhoods.

Executive Director Omar Muhammad noted that in recent years the city of North Charleston has shown an interest in quality-of-life issues and in trying to preserve the cultural heritage of old neighborhoods such as Union Heights.

But to do so successfully, housing must remain affordable. And to ensure that housing remains affordable, you need to control the rising costs of the land, Muhammad said. That's where the land trust comes in.

LAMC operates the Community First Land Trust which, as it adds property to its holdings, helps to stabilize its value, as well as the value of neighboring properties. The lease agreement spells out details about how the subsidies work, how equity accrues and how it's divided between the trust and the homeowner. And it generally comes with a 99-year term that gives a family ample time to improve its economic status.

Essentially, the trust provides the pathway to regular homeownership, Muhammad said. It's one of several good solutions that should be implemented to help low-income people get a leg up, he said. Others include:

Rent control and other renter protections, such as (at a minimum) first right of refusal when the landlord wants to sell.

Eliminating sunset clauses in developer contracts so subsidized housing cannot suddenly be sold at market rates after a defined term.

Limits to speculative real estate investment, perhaps by reducing allowable vacancies through the strategic use of incentives and penalties.

When homeowners and landlords, including housing authorities, can find easy ways to impose big rent increases, it accelerates the displacement of the most vulnerable, Muhammad said.

"Once you move a family out (even temporarily), there's not a big likelihood that they will return," he said.

Everyone wants to see neighborhoods improve, Muhammad said. Change is generally welcomed - unless it's achieved through the sort of gentrification that enables some to profit from the removal of people of a certain race or class from areas municipal governments have largely abandoned.

In the urban part of the tri-county area, opportunities to advance equitable growth solutions are dwindling, but there's still a chance in this zone between the border with the city of Charleston and I-526, he said.

"North Charleston is the last place to get it right."

Keeping the culture

Muhammad, Stanfield and others said the neighborhoods at risk in the part of North Charleston inside I-526 all have strong advocates now. LAMC advances the interests of residents of Union Heights, Accabee, Windsor Place, Five Mile and Chicora-Cherokee. Metanoia focuses on the Chicora neighborhood. The Liberty Hill Improvement Council and The Charity Foundation are defenders of Liberty Hill.

Others, including state lawmakers and church pastors, also are keeping a sharp eye on what transpires in these places.

State Reps. Marvin Pendarvis and Moore think displacement in North Charleston is inevitable as property values continue to rise. All the more reason to protect the culture and history of traditionally African American neighborhoods.

"You can argue that maintaining the culture is good business," Moore said, referencing New York's Spanish Harlem, with its Latin American restaurants and street murals, or various "Chinatowns." North Charleston has a chance to create similar communities populated with Black businesses and decorated with artistic manifestations of Black culture.

He doesn't want North Charleston to follow in the footsteps of downtown Charleston, which has become "Disneyland for White people," Moore said.

"We need Black investors," he said.

Pendarvis said the city is in the best position to manage this kind of economic development through zoning rules and planned development districts, and by appealing to developers amenable to reinforcing the cultural fabric of the communities in which they work.

"The only way to stop the train is to create a new station," Moore said, extending his metaphor.

Some feel the responsibility also falls on concerned residents to keep alive the memory of their ancestors.

In Liberty Hill, efforts have long been underway to share the neighborhood's history of liberation and empowerment. Those community-based initiatives include an annual homecoming celebration, cemetery preservation project, community garden installation, Black History Month programs, and a children's reading group.

"We want to make sure that Liberty Hill is not ignored, not forgotten," said Carolyn Lecque, a native of the neighborhood and member of the improvement council. "Our kids need to know where they come from."

Part of Liberty Hill's decline can be attributed to grown children who move away. The hope is that new development will entice them to return to the community, Lecque said.

But those who grew up here can offer support in other ways - by helping to fund community programs, local businesses and other initiatives.

"You can invest without moving back," Moore said.

Legislators say limiting population displacement depends on making sound economic arguments.

Citing moral issues to convince profit-driven businesses to implement safeguards against displacement won't work, he said. A better approach is to discuss the good financial sense it makes for developers to engaged with communities, where they can recruit employees and solicit support.

"It's good economics," he said.

Moore, Muhammad, Stanfield, Brown and others think it's possible to foster growth and protect longtime residents. Productive collaborations and creative policy solutions could bring about the kind of positive transformation Ida Taylor envisions: safe, diverse communities where natives and newcomers work together and share a vision for the future.

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North Charleston, once a retreat for those affected by gentrification, now under pressure

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NORTH CHARLESTON - When Ida Taylor was 8 years old, she collected green chinaberries in her neighborhood to make beaded bracelets. Then she dashed off to Bible study at Noah's Ark Baptist Church. Union Heights was a safe place back then, full of thoughtful neighbors who looked after the children, rich in history and pride.

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How to tell if a charity is worthwhile. Includes links to several directories (several are included below too) you can use to get information about charities.

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Charity solicitations are as much a part of the holiday season as decorations. If you give, it's a good idea to know what the nonprofit organization does with your money. Here's one way: use ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, a tool for researching the financial details of nonprofits.

Nonprofit Explorer

Use our database to search over 1.8 million tax returns from tax-exempt organizations and see financial details such as their executive compensation and revenue and expenses. Explore the app.

Organizations that receive a tax exemption from the Internal Revenue Service and take in at least $50,000 a year have to file an annual report, called a Form 990, which can serve as a guide to how they operate and what their programs are. Nonprofit Explorer summarizes the financial data in 990 forms and also provides links to the documents. While not a complete picture of an organization's activities, the form does provide insight on how a nonprofit operates. Here are a few things to look for when deciding whether to make that contribution:

Program Spending

Charities often tell donors that a certain amount of every dollar goes directly to "programs," which usually mean direct services provided to the recipients of their assistance (the homeless, for example, or children). But read the fine print, says CharityWatch: sometimes these statements say "of every dollar spent" and sometimes they say "of every dollar donated." Those are two different numbers, as ProPublica's reporting on the Red Cross demonstrates. The Form 990 not only lists the totals for money coming in and going out, but in Part III (often the second page of the completed form, as with the 2013 form for the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless), the group also describes the program services that it performed, how much they cost and indicates whether there were any significant changes to existing programs. If you're unsure about exactly what a charity does, Part III can help clear up that uncertainty, but it is also the place where charities promote their accomplishments.

Amount Spent on Professional Fundraisers

Charities rely on volunteers to ask for donations, but many also pay for-profit companies to help them raise money via telephone and mail solicitations. In its investigation of " America's Worst Charities," the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting identified nonprofits that raise millions via professional fundraisers and "regularly give their solicitors at least two-thirds of the take." One organization, the Committee for Missing Children in Lawrenceville, Ga., paid its fundraisers nearly 90 percent of the $27 million it raised during the decade the report examined. The more that charities spend on fundraisers, the less money they have for direct program spending - the reason the organizations exist. On a 990 form, look for this amount on line 16a of the first page, labeled "Professional fundraising fees."

Executive Compensation

Charity organizations are also required to list officers, directors, trustees, key employees and the five highest-paid employees of the organization - and the amount each person was paid - in Part VII of the 990 form. Because of this public disclosure, executive salaries are sometimes contentious, as recently highlighted during a congressional hearing on Planned Parenthood. ( In 2013 the organization's president, Cecile Richards, was paid $590,928 in salary, retirement contributions, bonuses and other pay.) But a high salary alone isn't a red flag. The IRS requires only that compensation is " reasonable," or what a similar position would be paid by a similar organization. A Charity Navigator study of charity CEO compensation noted that unsurprisingly, "as the size and to some degree the complexities of running a nonprofit increases, so does the salary of the institution's top executive," recommending that donors compare an organization's executive salaries to other charities for a better assessment.

The study also points out that organizations that show $0 paid to executives may also warrant a closer look. "There are very few individuals that can afford to work full-time managing complex, multi-million dollar organizations without receiving any compensation." There may be legitimate reasons for this, or the compensation figure may have been misreported to the IRS.

According to Ray Madoff, director of the Boston College Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, this could also be caused by a nonprofit outsourcing staff and management duties, essentially hiding the individual salaries of an organization by reporting it within an aggregate contractor payment. She points to Fidelity Charitable, the second-largest nonprofit in terms of donations: Although officers are listed in Part VII of the form 990, all salaries are listed as "$0*", with the asterisk noting that "all services are provided to Fidelity Charitable" by FMR LLC, the parent company of the for-profit Fidelity Investments. A Fidelity spokesperson confirmed simply that "Fidelity Charitable does not report individual salaries because it does not itself pay any salaries" and that "it hires FMR LLC [...] to provide a wide range of services." They also point out that the charity "does, of course, report the fees paid to service providers, including FMR LLC." According to Schedule O of the 990, FMR received over $32 million in "contractor compensation" from Fidelity Charitable.

Beyond the 990

While the 990 can help you root out scammers and gross underperformers, it does not tell you how effectively money spent on programs translates into results on the ground. In the words of the Foundation Center's Luz Rodriguez, "some not-so-great charities are just really good at finances." To examine a charity's reputation in its target community, Rodriguez suggests looking through its social media for positive testimony or service complaints. Greatnonprofits.org aggregates crowd-sourced reviews of nonprofits. GuideStar has experts in the field weigh in on their favorite nonprofits on Philanthropedia.

In the absence of robust data on results, GuideStar CEO Jacob Harold said donors should look for groups that set out their work and measures of success with clarity and specificity. "Clarity is all too rare in the nonprofit sector," he said. "Look for groups that clearly articulate the solution rather than just talking about the problem." He recommends GiveWell, one of the more quantitatively rigorous nonprofit watchdogs, which weighs charities by lives improved per dollar spent. Its list is far from exhaustive, but incorporates the concept of scalability - it selects groups that have "room for more funding," and can do the most with your money

Giving Overseas - One Thing To Remember

Sometimes your charity of choice's mission could cause more harm than good by having unintended consequences for the recipients of its donations.

This is particularly relevant to "gift-in-kind" donations - those old clothes, shoes, toys and food that well-intentioned Americans send in bulk to the developing world. These influxes of free, second-hand goods can undercut and destroy local industry. Indigenous manufacturers are priced out of the market, and the community is denied the growth benefits of textile and food processing industries that placed countries like Mexico and South Korea on the development ladder. Countries like Kenya and Haiti are having this first rung broken right under their feet by good intentions.

Charity evaluators like GiveWell prioritize health and infrastructure sectors instead, in which nonprofit interventions have an exponential impact on the local economy by attacking the problems of poverty at their core. They also recommend GiveDirectly, a direct cash transfer charity with a 90 percent program-to-overhead cost ratio that consistently ranks among GiveWell's top performing nonprofits. GiveDirectly sends donor money straight to the poorest families in Uganda and Kenya through mobile banking. The mobile route ensures that the entire sum reaches the target family, and is even safer than in-kind donations, which can be siphoned off to the black market.

As a nonprofit, ProPublica also files Form 990; you can see the most recent one here.

Derek Willis
Derek Willis was a news applications developer at ProPublica, focusing on politics and elections.

Mike Tigas
Mike Tigas is a news applications developer at ProPublica. He is also the developer of Tabula, a data extraction tool for PDF files, and Onion Browser, an open source web browser for iOS which uses the Tor anonymity network.

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Charity solicitations are as much a part of the holiday season as decorations. If you give, it's a good idea to know what the nonprofit organization does with your money. Here's one way: use ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, a tool for researching the financial details of nonprofits.

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Here are a few large not-for-profit organizations you probably know about:

ASPCA
Doctors Without Borders
Goodwill Organizations
Habitat for Humanity
Meals on Wheels
Ronald McDonald House
World Resources Institute
World Wildlife Fund

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Here are some local and lesser known not-for-profit organizations:

A'ja Wilson Foundation (dyslexia)
Green Heart Project (urban gardening)
Coastal Conservation League
Community Works (housing, communities)
Lowcountry Food Bank
News Literacy Project (media literacy)
One America Movement (polarization)
One80 Place (homelessness)
Project Drawdown (carbon emissions)
Water Missions International

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You'll find about 40 or so charities covered by books in the BEHS Library. If you pick one of these charities, you might be a step up in your research.

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Affordable housing

Homelessness

Misinformation/Media literacy

Organic farming
Sustainable living
Carbon reduction/climate change
Corporate responsibility

Impact of polarization on government

Extremism in the U.S.

Disappearing local news sources
Censorship

Drought/Clean drinking water

Flooding

Renewable energy sources

Gentrification impact on cities
Foster care system

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Includes different social issues and problems to think about.

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In a world torn apart by headline-popping politics, it's easy to turn your head away from the real stories-to ignore what is actually happening to people.

That is what made me want to spend a year writing about the economy through the lens of Catholic social teaching, combining my experience as a business reporter with the mission of America, as described in the essay "Pursuing the Truth in Love."

In a remarkable book scheduled to appear in January, Cathonomics (Georgetown University Press), Tony Annett, a former speechwriter for the International Monetary Fund and an Irish Catholic, traces the roots of Catholic social teaching from ancient Greek philosophy through Thomas Aquinas to Pope Leo XIII's "Rerum Novarum" (1891). The encyclical declared the church's support of trade unions and collective bargaining, and established concepts like a living wage, worker safety and regular time off from work.

It is clear that humans need to do the hard work of figuring out how to build an economy that allows us to better love our neighbors.

"Rerum Novarum" also loosened the church's 19th-century power alliance with the interests of states and big business. The Industrial Revolution had upended life, creating miserable conditions in factories as well as offering miraculous technology for people who could afford it, and Leo XIII's text acknowledged the church's duty to stand up for working people as the world changed.

Mr. Annett was compelled to write his book because in his view, Catholic social teaching offers "a middle road people can agree on between the twin rocks of shipwreck, communism and libertarianism." In other words, it actually has the potential to bring people together. And, he told me, "you don't need to be a Catholic or you don't need to really be religious at all to [appreciate] principles like the universal destination of goods or the preferential option for the poor or the common good or integral human development."

As we reckon with advances in automation, artificial intelligence and technology just as wild and disruptive as the Industrial Revolution, it is clear that humans need to again do the hard work of figuring out how to build an economy that allows us to better love our neighbors.

Here are 10 things I learned in my year of writing about the economy through the prism of Catholic social teaching.

1. Wages need to go up.In almost every column I reported, whether it was about reparations for slavery or the gender pay gap, unions or global trade, the biggest issue that bedeviled people in our economy was insufficient pay. As Ray Miles, an activist and former prisoner in Pittsburgh, told me, the reason that so many people go back to selling drugs after getting out of incarceration is that the jobs available to lower- and middle-class America-whether at Walmart, Taco Bell or Amazon-simply do not pay enough.

In the first column of the year, I chronicled a high-profile effort by some chief executive officers and companies to team up with the Vatican to promote changes to their business practices. Thus far, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism says it has "487 commitments from 200 organizations." But only two private employers, Bank of America and the energy company BP, have promised the concrete thing that will really make a difference, wage increases.

"However, others have committed to more inclusive practices in other ways," Amanda Byrd, a spokeswoman for the Council, wrote in an emailed statement. For example, she wrote, members have "made over 150 commitments to dignity and equality through pledges to pay equity and investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion" and "have also committed to investing in their employees and communities through increased education and training programs and access to health care."

In almost every column I reported, the biggest issue that bedeviled people in our economy was insufficient pay.

In writing his book, Mr. Annett said, he came to believe that "higher wages are essential, although the minimum wage is not the only way to do that." He said he is a bit skeptical about a universal basic income but favors "worker councils like they have in Germany, where workers help manage the company." Whatever the solution, everything should be on the table. "The gig economy is a disaster," he said.

2. Unions are back. Although the effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama has so far failed, the decline in wages has stoked support for labor unions in the United States. Some two-thirds of Americans "approve" of labor unions, including President Joe Biden, who draws some philosophical inspiration from Leo XIII's writings. "Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union, and especially Black and brown workers," said President Biden, who is the most pro-union president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to every historian I interviewed.

Leo XIII "correctly saw unions as necessary for protecting the dignity and rights of workers and their families, given that capitalists, who hold an imbalance of power over workers, often do not give workers their just due," Gerald Beyer, a professor of Christian ethics at Villanova University, told me.

3. Forgiveness creates prosperity. What really changed the life of Ray Miles, an ex-prisoner and activist in Pittsburgh, was getting a full-time job that guaranteed income for the next 12 months. "To know I'd have a paycheck meant I knew I wouldn't have to go back to selling drugs," he said. "That's what really makes a difference for people: when they know they're going to have that stability for a while."

What really changed the life of Ray Miles, an ex-prisoner, was getting a full-time job that guaranteed income.

The gnawing uncertainty of the U.S. service economy and its minimum-wage gigs contributes to people going back to crime, he said. In addition, many companies and governments refuse to hire ex-prisoners, keeping them stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime. Coming out of jail is "like being in critical condition," said Mr. Miles. "You need life support."

4. We need to save local news. In a chaotic world, communities need local journalism. As Pope Francis said in a 2019 speech, local news helps citizens address "the same reality" and it spotlights "poverty, challenges [and] sometimes urgent issues" in families, neighborhoods and workplaces.

I was heartened in reporting on journalism to learn about people like Steve Novotney, whose digital startup in Wheeling, W. Va., called Lede News, keeps on building community with a mix of reporting, opinion, sports and consumer tips. That is because people will trust national media only if they see people in their own community practicing journalism up close. "Saying 'national media sucks' is a lot easier than looking a local journalist you know in the eye to say that," John Isner, co-host of the popular West Virginia-based podcast, Appodlachia, told me.

Americans will have to recognize that "a news organization is like the local health care clinic or the local library," said Ken Ward Jr., a co-founder of Mountain State Spotlight, a digital nonprofit founded in 2020 that covers West Virginia.

5. Learning history can lead to justice. Telling the story of our past can lead to justice. A moving example of this is the private reparations movement, which has led institutions and people to offer reparations to the descendants of victims of slavery, even as the national reparations movement has stalled. This is the result of decades of work by activists, scholars and writers to highlight the wealth gap created by slavery. "I never thought that in my lifetime, we would be having a broad conversation about reparations," the Rev. Dr. Joe Thompson, a pastor and professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, told me.

The seminary is sending cash payments to descendants of people whom it exploited for forced labor.

Dr. Thompson, who is African American, is in charge of a $1.7 million fund the seminary has created to atone for its past involvement in enslaving people and for the segregation and discrimination that followed. The seminary is sending cash payments- around $2,100 per person this year -to descendants of people whom it exploited for forced labor, as well as to people who worked at the institution during segregation.

6. Urban planning is loving. In reporting about gentrification in U.S. cities, I was surprised to learn of the easy convergence of urban planning and Catholic social teaching's emphasis on building tighter communities.

Robert Beauregard, for example, in his influential 2006 book When America Became Suburban, takes the moral point of view that modern suburban life lacks "a moral center that would enable people to reach outside their communities and embrace diverse peoples" and also lacks "a widely shared sense of purpose."

At Georgetown University, Jamie Kralovec, an instructor in the urban and regional planning department, explicitly draws upon his Catholic faith and Ignatian training in developing his current work.

"If we talk about the original sin of slavery and the way that history endures, that's manifested in a profound way in how Americans live," he told me. "I grew up in Chicago, and there were two cities in one city." When he looks at urban planning, Mr. Kralovec said, he sees "this potential to build just and equitable use of the neighborhood, and bring about all these things Pope Francis talks about, like social friendship and solidarity."

7. Animals are important, too. Pope Francis, along with many theologians, seems to be calling for an increased appreciation for animal rights. "Clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures," he wrote in " Laudato Si'," also writing, "This responsibility for God's earth means that human beings, endowed with intelligence, must respect the laws of nature and the delicate equilibria existing between the creatures of this world."

Our craving for meat has created lopsided animal populations.

Our craving for meat has created lopsided animal populations. There are, for example, over 25 billion chickens in the world. Yet there was no killing of animals for food in the Garden of Eden, theologians point out. One solution, advocates for animals say, is to make meat a delicacy that comes from small farms, instead of a factory-farmed staple of every meal.

8. What and where we buy changes the world. It is easy to forget that we did not always live in a world with one-click shopping. What changed things was the explosion of free trade deals after World War II and the invention of the shipping container in the 1960s. Americans and Europeans went for the cheap stuff, and gobbled up television sets, shoes, washing machines and a million other products from companies like Walmart, Target and the French retailer Carrefour.

These companies helped create hyperglobalization, which is why American highways and neighborhoods have almost all the same big-box chain stores and fulfillment centers for shipping out online orders; why middle-class wages are depressed in the United States while Asia is no longer poor; why China is powerful; why populists like Donald J. Trump and Boris Johnson win elections; and why the United States and Europe face a dramatic crisis of inequality between the people trade has helped and the people it has hurt.

But trade is complicated. As Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, the Vatican's envoy to the World Trade Organization, put it in a 2017 speech, global trade "has helped to lift a billion people out of poverty in developing countries and has improved the livelihood in many developed countries." And as I reported, the fair trade movement has created alternative supply chains that help small businesses around the world.

9. Women still aren't paid enough. Paying women less than men for the equivalent work has been illegal for over a half-century, ever since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963. And yet in 2020, the median pay for women in full-time jobs was 82.3 percent of that for men. Put another way: In the United States, women, who make up about half of the population, earn only 40 percent of the gross domestic product. And in the last 25 years, the gender pay gap in the United States has shrunk by only eight percentage points.

For modern interpreters of Catholic social teaching, there is little question that women deserve equal pay.

For modern interpreters of Catholic social teaching, there is little question that women deserve equal pay and a chance to build successful careers that align with their desires for family and home life. The Catholic solution to the gender pay gap requires affirming women's right to equal pay while pushing back against a purely capitalist impulse. "We're affirming women should be treated equally in work," said Kate Ward, a professor of theology at Marquette University. "We're not just saying that women should become better capitalists and have fewer families" and children.

10. There are no utopias. In Cathonomics, Mr. Annett emphasizes that Catholic social teaching resists utopian thinking, which is why the church rejects both communism and libertarian capitalism. "It's the 'already but not yet' dimension of the kingdom of God," he told me. "We are called to build the kingdom on earth, but it will never be perfected in this life."

But we can be clear-eyed about what is happening. In his book, Mr. Annett explains that Aristotle divided wealth into two categories. First, there is oikonomia (the root of our word for economics), which is essentially household management. The second, chrematistike, is the pursuit of wealth for its own sake, divorced from care or concern for your neighbor or community.

The first is healthy, in part because it is inherently limited. The second impedes human flourishing because it is unlimited. However rich you are, you can always want more. If anything is clear to me after a year of writing about business and Catholic social teaching, it is that we live in a world ruled by chrematistike, and that is something we should be deeply concerned about as Catholics.

In Cathonomics, Mr. Annett reports that people underestimate or forget how much Jesus talks about money. The only time he gets really angry is at the merchants in the temple. Nineteen of his 31 parables, Mr. Annett writes, "refer to indebtedness, social class, misuse of wealth, the distribution of wealth, and worker pay."

You don't have to believe in Jesus to agree with the Gospel's focus. "Even if you're just a scientist who doesn't have any faith beliefs, you will come to the view that we're a cooperative species," said Mr. Annett. "And that naturally leans towards the principles of Catholic social teaching. We're not individualistic agents out to maximize our utility in isolation from everybody else. Trying to just get more stuff is not who we are as human beings."
This article has been updated. More reporting from John W. Miller:

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Ten things Pope Francis and Catholic social teaching taught me about the economy

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In a world torn apart by headline-popping politics, it's easy to turn your head away from the real stories-to ignore what is actually happening to people. That is what made me want to spend a year writing about the economy through the lens of Catholic social teaching, combining my experience as a business reporter with the mission of America , as described in the essay "Pursuing the Truth in Love."

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Like a natural system, democracy faces collapse as polarization leads to loss of diversity

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Much like an overexploited ecosystem, the increasingly polarized political landscape in the United States—and much of the world—is experiencing a catastrophic loss of diversity that threatens the resilience not only of democracy, but also of society, according to a series of new studies that examine…

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Corruption is flourishing in the rural corners of South Carolina as newspapers fold or shrink coverage amid a financially crippling pandemic.

Seven of our state's newspapers closed their doors in the past year, joining more than 60 that shuttered across the nation as the coronavirus strangled an industry already battered by shrinking revenue and draining job cuts. This only exacerbated a trend that has created so-called "news deserts" in hundreds of U.S. communities, depriving them of vital watchdogs of government and democracy.

The losses hit hardest in the vast rural stretches of the Palmetto State, in places such as Allendale County, which has struggled for years with soaring poverty, failing schools and government mismanagement.

In the past five years, the state took over the county's problem-plagued school district for the second time while three of Allendale's public officials went to jail on embezzlement charges. All this occurred after the county lost its lone newspaper, the weekly Allendale Sun, in 2015.

"When you lose a local newspaper, what you are losing is that person who shows up to cover the town council, the person who covers the school board and the local police beat," said Penny Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Illinois. "At a minimum, it provides transparency about what's going on in local government."

Abernathy has spent years charting the growth of news deserts while a professor at the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Her findings have caused great alarm among advocates of open government.

It's not just that some of these papers have been around for more than 100 years. Studies have shown that citizen engagement and voter participation drop off when newspapers vanish. A financial toll is exacted, as well, with public salaries, spending and debt rising in the absence of journalistic scrutiny, another study found.

Without that scrutiny, corruption can blossom, often in financially strapped places that are least able to afford it.

The Post and Courier examined 100 South Carolina misconduct cases in which criminal charges were filed since 2015. Roughly 75 percent involved public officials and employees accused of betraying the rural community in which they worked.

Take the Union County court clerk who pocketed more than $10,000 in child support money meant for families. Or the Kiawah Island town administrator who cut herself extra paychecks and used town credit cards to cover $7,500 in personal expenses for airline tickets, car repairs and medical appointments. Or the town clerk in the tiny Upstate town of Lyman who siphoned off $20,000 in addition to the $8,000 she racked up on town credit cards to pay for her son's wedding and other expenses. All three were convicted of their crimes.

State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel said the public would likely be stunned by the amount of misconduct that goes on in the state. His agency has conducted some 1,400 misconduct investigations in the past decade alone.

"We have seen a lot of that sort of thing," he said. "It may not be the highest-paid person or an employee with a whole lot of authority, but someone who sees an opportunity, whether it's embezzlement or stealing property from a city or county."

Often, the corruption comes to light when local suspicions or complaints end up in the community newspaper, prompting someone in power to reach out to SLED for help, Keel said.

Kristine Artello, a corruption expert and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, interviewed former federal prosecutors and investigators for a study into what triggers corruption cases and the tools investigators need for these cases to succeed.

One surprising finding: Newspapers and law enforcement often had a synergistic effect. Old-school investigators told her "they would come into the office in the morning and the first thing they did was read the newspaper and make circles in the articles, saying, 'This smells funny. I want to investigate that.' And that's what they started with." But as communities lose newspapers, they lose the kinds of clues law enforcement needs to make cases, Artello said.

"I know there was a belief that as newspapers decline we're going to have citizen reporters taking their place," she said. "But most individuals are just trying to live their lives - they don't have time to live and breathe this stuff."

A crisis in local journalism

The internet greatly expanded the reach of local journalism, but it also left the industry vulnerable to monolithic companies such as Facebook and Google, which vacuumed up news content and the overwhelming share of digital revenue that went with it.

As advertising revenue plummeted and circulation withered, a quarter of the nation's newspapers vanished in the 15 years leading up to 2020, Abernathy's research showed. That left more than two-thirds of U.S. counties without a daily paper and more than 200 with no newspaper at all. At the same time, the number of working journalists plunged by half - a loss of 36,000 jobs. That's left some publications as "ghost papers," or mere shells of their former selves, with decimated newsrooms and few resources left to properly cover a community, Abernathy found.

This all translates to less coverage and fewer stories, with government transparency and accountability suffering in the process, Abernathy said. And the coronavirus has only made things worse, "turbocharging" the rate of decline and closures, she said.

Last year, at least 1,800 communities around the country had no local news outlet, with most of the losses among weekly newspapers in economically struggling communities. The South, which has some of the poorest states in the country, also has the most counties without newspapers, Abernathy's research found.

"We're in a crisis in local journalism in this country, and it was a crisis before the pandemic came along," said Al Cross, a former journalist who directs the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.

South Carolina, which saw its pool of newspapers decline by 14 percent between 2004 and 2019, has only one news desert: Allendale County. But seven more papers shut down last year, diminishing coverage in the rural communities of Union, Ware Shoals, Bamberg, Santee, Holly Hill, Fort Mill and Walterboro. Two more, in Gaffney and Travelers Rest, shuttered their print operations and shifted to online-only coverage, according to the South Carolina Press Association.

"It's a problem," SCPA Executive Director Bill Rogers said. "Having the press monitoring government is vital in a democracy, and, unfortunately, that's been reduced by staff cuts and closures."

Watchdogs of society

The Union Times survived the Civil War and much more in its 170 years of publication, but it couldn't outlast the financial pressures of the pandemic, Editor Charles Warner wrote in a farewell column in September. That left this former textile community in South Carolina's Upstate region with one newspaper, the weekly Union County News, to cover a county of 27,300 people where nearly a quarter of the population lives in poverty.

Editor Graham Williams is one of just two staff members at the News, and he handles everything from covering meetings and editing copy to delivering the paper when it comes out each Monday. It can be a grind, but Williams knows that important issues would go unreported if he and his colleague, Anna Brown, the publisher, didn't work so hard to cover all the bases.

Brown was among the first to push for documents that later exposed complaints about then-Union County Sheriff David Taylor, who was accused of sending lewd messages to deputies and asking subordinates to buy him booze on duty. The governor suspended him last year after Taylor was indicted for allegedly sending an obscene photo to a citizen.

"Our job is to be the old watchdog for society," Williams said. "Anything can happen, and if we're not there to watch and report on it, how are people going to know?"

About 28 miles away, Travis Jenkins carries on a similar mission in another two-person shop, The Chester News & Reporter. When he's not covering council meetings, basketball games or the latest monster catfish to be hauled out of Caney Fork Falls, he is often busy filing open records requests and sifting through documents to track down stories.

Over the past couple of years, Jenkins has covered the indictment of the county's administrator for allegedly selling meth out of his government vehicle, and he's reported on the arrests of the county sheriff and two top deputies on misconduct charges. He also exposed issues with the qualifications of local judges and revealed hostilities among school officials - a scoop he nabbed after sorting through more than 5,000 of the education superintendent's emails.

Jenkins said it can be a challenge to find the time to do these deeper digs. But he's not sure anyone else would do it if he didn't take that time. And then?

"The public would probably get an incomplete or distorted picture of it all from gossip and social media," he said.

In Greenwood, another former mill city in the western portion of the state, the Index-Journal newspaper has long been known as a champion of the Freedom of Information Act and government accountability. So when Julie Wilkie was named city manager in 2018, she quickly reached out to Editor Richard Whiting to discuss open government issues and ways to ensure proper transparency.

"I believe that having a local paper is important to ensuring that local residents are informed about the matters being acted upon by their local governments," Wilkie said.

Costs to taxpayers

Local watchdog journalism has been a hallmark of our democracy for more than two centuries, but it is slipping away as small newspapers struggle just to keep the lights on, said Cross, of the rural journalism institute. Fewer rural communities can afford to support a newspaper these days, and the publications that remain often lack the resources to do the time-intensive deeper investigations needed to expose wrongdoing. But covering meetings just isn't enough, he said.

"Covering a meeting is like sitting in a train station and watching trains pick up and let off passengers," Cross said. "You might have some idea what is going on, but you don't really know unless you get on that train, ride it and ask questions."

Some 26 weekly newspapers around South Carolina have shut down operations since 2007. Seventeen new weeklies started up during that same period, for a net loss of nine news outlets. But numbers only tell part of the story.

A number of the new arrivals have set up shop in places that already have news outlets, providing a second or third choice for readers. But in other areas - rural communities such as Whitmire, Powdersville, Walhalla, Lake Wylie and Inman - the presses have stayed silent.

There hasn't been a lot of academic research done on whether the lack of local news coverage fuels corruption. But researchers from Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago found that governments cost taxpayers more after newspapers closed down and reporters were no longer watching. Government salaries increased, as did the number of employees. Deficits also jumped, along with borrowing costs. The cost of an average bond issue shot up by $650,000, the researchers found.

"It was an eye-opener to me that the effects were so pronounced," said Dermot Murphy, an assistant finance professor at the University of Illinois and co-author of the study.

The results probably wouldn't surprise Walt Inabinet, a retired cartoonist who has worked tirelessly to attract media attention to Bamberg County, where he lives. Bamberg, the hometown of former Gov. Nikki Haley, has soaring unemployment and poverty, and the county has lost about 20 percent of its population since 1980. At the same time, it has taken on $14 million in debt to fix up the county courthouse and meet other needs - moves elected officials applaud as needed but Inabinet decries as a "slow-rolling financial disaster."

The Bamberg Advertizer-Herald, founded in 1967, used to ride herd over the county's leaders, but it lost much of its step after the longtime owners retired and sold the weekly to a chain in 1996, Inabinet said. The Advertizer folded last year amid the pandemic, along with its sister papers in Holly Hill and Santee.

So Inabinet regularly sends out email blasts to news outlets throughout the state, pleading with them to come investigate the concerns he and other residents have raised about the actions of their county leaders.

"Loudmouths like me accept the hell they catch and take to Facebook and other social media outlets," he said. "We beg the outside media to the point of being annoyances to please come help us expose what we've already documented for them."

Sometimes they take heed, such as with the flurry of recent coverage surrounding the County Council chairman's arrest on child molestation charges. But his request for more complicated investigations into the intricate financial dealings that have fueled the Bamberg renovations have attracted few takers.

Inabinet compares himself to a lonely vineyard worker, toiling alone to collect a bounty of sour grapes from the desert growing around the place he calls home.

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Accountability suffers as newspaper closures grow in SC, nation

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Corruption is flourishing in the rural corners of South Carolina as newspapers fold or shrink coverage amid a financially crippling pandemic. Seven of our state's newspapers closed their doors in the past year, joining more than 60 that shuttered across the nation as the coronavirus strangled an industry already battered by shrinking revenue and draining job cuts.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Housing is one of, if not the, most expensive monthly bills the average South Carolinian has to contend with.

Conventional wisdom suggests no more than 30 percent of your income should be dedicated to your rent or mortgage payment. The latest report on homelessness in South Carolina shows that goal is unattainable for many in the state.

Data published in the 2020 South Carolina State of Homelessness Report shows the average wage needed to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment is $17.30 per hour, working full-time. However, the report concludes the average renter makes $13.52 per hour, leaving a $3.78 wage gap.

In the tri-county that gap grows wider.

In Charleston County, the wage gap is $7.01, and in Dorchester County the gap stretches to $10.42, the largest in the state. Berkeley County does slightly better than the state average with a wage gap of $3.68 but still below the average wage needed to live comfortably.

Lowcountry Counties wage gaps:

These numbers are indicative of the plight many low-income workers face in finding a place to live. In 2020, the number of people experiencing homelessness reached its highest number since 2016 at 4,268, according to the report.

Uplift Charleston is an organization working with and advocating for the homeless. Founder Aaron Comstock says the price of housing is out of control.

"We are contacted daily by people who are looking for help. . . unfortunately, because of COVID it has just gotten worse," Comstock said, suggesting city councils need to look outside the box to address the housing problem. "Zoning and ordinances can be done to build things like tiny homes. Folks don't really care about the size of the house. They want something affordable. A $1,300 a month, even $1,000 a month is not affordable for most folks who are working two or three jobs even. We are talking about rent that can be $500-$800 dollars a month."

According to the report, a minimum wage employee would have to work 96 hours a week in Charleston County to bridge the wage gap.

The housing wage gap is not just a homelessness problem. It's a problem for everyone. Donna Gill works in downtown Charleston, but she says she makes much less than $17 an hour. Without her roommates she says she would never be able to afford her rent.

"I think most people can afford something in the $600 or $700 range, but those places are unheard of you. You can't find that unless you're living with five college students and who wants to do that," Gill asked. "In Charleston it's more like what can you find that doesn't require your first born."

Kim Harmon works with homeless veterans by helping them find places they can afford to live. She says $17 an hour for anyone trying to get off the streets is a pipe dream.

"I can't think of anywhere off the top of my head where you could get paid $17 an hour walking into a job," Harmon said. "My husband has a bachelor's degree and has worked full time at some of these jobs that are hourly wages. No one has offered him $17 an hour."

She and her group of volunteers put together a list of available apartments under $1,000 a month. It was a short list.

"It's hard. We maybe had five apartments listed and those were right at the $950 mark," Harmon said. "I mean when I say under $1,000, I mean just barely under that thousand mark."

While Comstock is hoping governments can encourage affordable housing developments, Gill has a message for landlords.

"Really consider renting at a reasonable rate that people don't have to open a vein for," Gill said. "I know a couple who are both on disability and they cannot afford anywhere based on the federal guideline of 30 percent of your income. It's just impossible. It's crazy."
Copyright 2021 WCSC. All rights reserved.

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Housing wage gap exacerbates homeless problems

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Housing is one of, if not the, most expensive monthly bills the average South Carolinian has to contend with. Conventional wisdom suggests no more than 30 percent of your income should be dedicated to your rent or mortgage payment.

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A 500-year-old Sitka spruce in Alaska's Tongass National Forest, which was slated to be sold by the U.S. Forest Service under the Trump administration, on Prince of Wales Island. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Chloe Breyer and her husband, Greg Scholl, honeymooned in Alaska. The couple also sold her engagement ring years later and donated the money to conservation causes. So when they read about a soaring Sitka spruce in Alaska's Tongass National Forest that The Washington Post featured recently, they were moved to act.

After centuries of growing, the prominent tree now stands more than 180 feet tall and 15.7 feet around. It is worth about $17,500 as raw timber - but chopping the 500-year-old tree down would also release many tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide that it has stored throughout its lifetime.

"It was really an appreciation that it's a living thing on this planet," said Breyer, 52, who lives in New York City. The couple wrote to The Post wanting to buy the ancient spruce. "It just seemed like it would be worth trying to protect in any way possible."

Breyer and Scholl were not alone in their desire to purchase the tree. So we turned to the experts, who say that when it comes protecting old-growth forests, there are ways for individuals to get involved.

This tree has stood here for 500 years. Will it be sold for $17,500?

Even if people came up with the money, the short answer is that it is probably not possible to buy the specific tree from the article.

"The Forest Service isn't going to sell one tree. They'll have a timber sale where they lay out a large area, and then they designate trees in that larger area and put it up for bid," said Jim Furnish, a retired deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service. "The idea of buying that one tree is charming but probably not practical."

Joan Maloof, founder of the nonprofit Old-Growth Forest Network, also noted that because this tree is in a national forest, the public technically already owns it. "It already belongs to you," she said. "But the people you hired to manage those forests are the ones who decided to cut it down."

Engaging with on-the-ground organizations as well as the policy process are a couple of ways that experts suggest individuals can encourage protection of the nation's old-growth forests.

"You can donate to an organization that's buying up land and protecting it," Maloof said. Those with more money could purchase and preserve land themselves. "You can also go the route of donating to organizations that are speaking out for the forests."

In January, the regional tribal corporation Sealaska decided to stop its logging operations and instead sell credits for the carbon that its trees store to oil and gas company BP. Some of those funds - as much as $10 million, along with $7 million from the Nature Conservancy - are slated to go toward the Seacoast Trust, which has the ultimate goal of raising $100 million. The money will help support the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, a network of individuals and organizations that work to strengthen cultural, economic and ecological resilience in Southeast Alaska.

Which organizations support old growth forests?

There a number of places that aim to help protect forests and old-growth trees. Maloof said land trusts often buy and conserve land, and that the Land Trust Alliance runs findalandtrust.com to help connect people to organizations close to them.

"There are a lot of local organizations that speak out for their old-growth forest, too," Maloof said. Nationally, she said there is a gap in organizations that are advocating specifically for forest protection, which is why she started the Old-Growth Forest Network. But there are groups that have broader forest interests, such as promoting tree-planting and other restoration initiatives, including the Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests.

"There are a lot of good people around the country that are trying to save forests," she said.

Biden officials to propose road ban on much of Alaska's Tongass National Forest

Ultimately, "it's not just about saving one tree, it's about saving old-growth trees as a whole," said Bruce Stein, chief scientist at the National Wildlife Federation. He and other experts point to political change as the best route for increasing protections for forests.

Kate Glover, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said: "The major areas that people can get involved in are really policy areas. We can encourage the Biden administration to protect old-growth forests."

In 2001, the outgoing Clinton administration issued a landmark rule established prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting on 58.5 million acres of national forests - including on more than 9 million acres in the Tongass National Forest. Forest Service data shows that the Trump administration auctioned off less timber on an annual basis in the Tongass than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush.

In 2020, however, former president Donald Trump's administration exempted the Tongass National Forest from the rule. Last year, President Biden's administration froze large-scale old-growth timber sales in the Tongass and proposed restoring roadless protections in the national forest.

The public comment period on the change runs through Jan. 24 and concerned individuals can make a submission - which is what Breyer and her husband say they plan to do. "Absolutely," she said. "If there's a way to weigh in, of course."

But some argue that focusing on the Tongass misses the mark.

"The Tongass is not representative of the problems facing the majority of the national forests," said Bill Imbergamo, executive director of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a trade organization. "There is nothing like it."

Imbergamo noted that most of the areas available for harvest in national forests are not made up of old-growth trees and that, while important to nearby mills, the overall harvest from public lands only makes up a small portion of the U.S. timber supply. The vast majority comes from private land.

Steve Pedery, conservation director of the nonprofit Oregon Wild, disagreed regarding old-growth trees. "It's a little like saying commercial whaling is no big deal because there's not that many whales left," he said. "We're still here in Oregon fighting timber sales where they are cutting 160-year-old trees down."

Furnish would like to see the Forest Service develop more explicit policies for protecting old-growth forests, which he called "an issue of great unfinished business." He would also like to see the agency factor carbon storage into its harvesting plans - a point Pedery echoed.

"The U.S. Forest Service still doesn't consider the carbon impact of its timber sales," he said. "What we really need out of this administration is to show some leadership on public forests."

MORE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

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Interested in protecting old-growth forests? Here are some steps you can take.

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Chloe Breyer and her husband, Greg Scholl, honeymooned in Alaska. The couple also sold her engagement ring years later and donated the money to conservation causes. So when they read about a soaring Sitka spruce in Alaska's Tongass National Forest that The Washington Post featured recently, they were moved to act.

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Urban farm in Charleston's upper peninsula announces plans to expand [urban gardening]

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An urban farm nestled inside Charleston's upper peninsula has secured the funding necessary to continue its mission in food education and providing fresh produce to the community.

The Green Heart Project, a nonprofit founded in 2009, said in late November it completed a fundraising goal of $2.4 million to build and support the Urban Farm at Enston Home, the organization's largest site.

The farm, at 900 King St., occupies half an acre at the William Enston Home, which consists of apartments managed by the city of Charleston's public housing authority.

Directors at the farm-to-school nonprofit have big plans for the land, which unofficially opened to the public in September 2020 following its first planting.

The farm features over 60 raised garden beds and a stand which houses cooking demonstrations and a weekly pay-what-you-can market.

But the money raised will go toward building two additional structures, furthering the organization's goal in providing downtown Charleston residents with access to fresh, healthy foods, Green Heart Executive Director Jesse Blom said.

A farm-to-school nonprofit

Green Heart began with a garden project at Mitchell Elementary School on Rutledge Avenue. Students continue using the space as part of their science curriculum, but also for fun.

There is a disconnect between young people and the source of their food, said Amanda Howell, Green Heart's development director, who previously taught middle school and preschool.

A lack of access to healthy food is part of the reason, but education around food - what you can achieve when you are taking care of yourself, your community and the environment - is equally important, Howell said.

The Mitchell garden served as the nonprofit's model as it expanded to other schools around Charleston. The organization now works with 15 school and community partners, Blom said.

The urban farm is its most recent, and largest, initiative. Though it doesn't sit directly on school property, students were still at the heart of the project.

As the elementary students at Mitchell and other schools grew up, Green Heart wanted them to continue having opportunities to learn in the garden, Blom said.

Green Heart directors began working with the city of Charleston about five years ago, and William Enston Home was identified as a possible location for the farm, Blom said.

The space has three schools on the same block - not only could students have easy access, but nearby residents would be able to take advantage of the fresh produce.

Once a design was drawn up, Green Heart leaders began raising money to see the project through to its full vision: the farm as it currently stands, plus an orchard, community pavilion and greenhouse.

An official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the farm is scheduled for spring 2022, after the final touches are in place, Blom said.

A piece of the puzzle

On a Thursday evening in early December, Will Brown, 18, pushed a wheelbarrow full of soil as he led a group of ninth-grade volunteers through the farm.

The senior at Academic Magnet High School in North Charleston is one of the nonprofit's paid youth interns, a program enabled by the urban farm's size and scope.

"It's just awesome to be able to provide the opportunity to people to have a more healthy lifestyle, when that's not really supported by the infrastructure of this area," Brown said.

Green Heart leaders felt one of the best ways to engage older youths, in particular, was through employment opportunities, Howell said.

"We're really building out this pipeline where the kids that started with us in elementary school have this farm now to continue growing with us, and one day will be on staff with us," she said.

Brown found out about Green Heart through his school and became an intern in the summer of 2020, when the farm was "literally just a dirt pit." He's been working with the nonprofit ever since.

The high schooler fell in love with learning about sustainable agriculture and watching both the garden and community grow.

That first summer, Brown never met anyone who lived in Enston, he said. Now, he sees the residents every week. There's one man who cooks soup for the workers. Another, Virginia, ran up to Brown as he patrolled the farm, inviting him to watch her play basketball.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Access Research Atlas identifies much of Charleston's upper peninsula as being a low-income area with limited access to healthy food.

A swath of residences on Charleston's East Side, below the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, is more than a half-mile from any grocery store. Above the bridge, as the peninsula's neck stretches into North Charleston, the distance grows to a mile, according to the map.

While the farm is just one piece of solving the food justice puzzle, it's an important one. Sean Murray, Green Heart's full-time farmer, has seen firsthand the ways in which their efforts are helping the community.

A lot of local residents depend on the farm stand, he said, describing one group of 90-year-old women who regularly walk to the market to purchase their produce.

"It helps out a lot of people," he said. "I'm pretty proud of what we do."

Murray hopes more people will come to the farm to buy their produce - he wants to see the market sell out every week, he said.

Anyone in the Charleston community can volunteer at the urban farm, or shop its market every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. Visitors can pay however much they're able for the farm's fresh fruits and vegetables.

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Urban farm in Charleston's upper peninsula announces plans to expand

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An urban farm nestled inside Charleston's upper peninsula has secured the funding necessary to continue its mission in food education and providing fresh produce to the community. The Green Heart Project, a nonprofit founded in 2009, said in late November it completed a fundraising goal of $2.4 million to build and support the Urban Farm at Enston Home, the organization's largest site.

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The Next Disaster Coming to the Great Plains [drought]

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The Next Disaster Coming to the Great Plains

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Acute scarcity drives the search for water underground. But the West’s major aquifers are in trouble, too.

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Browse or search Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints (DISCUS) for topics and articles. TIPS: Look for your topic in the list. Start broad (for example: poverty) then drill down to more focused topics. Use the TOPIC WHEEL for ideas.

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About Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints

Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues.

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About Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues. Don't know how to login? Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password.

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Use this easy general interest database to research both topics and organizations

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Use this easy general interest database to research both topics and organizations

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Explora for High School is an easy-to-use general interest database. You'll find magazine, journal articles, and research topics.

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List of Charleston area not-for-profit organizations by topic

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South Carolina SC Organizations SC Charities Charleston Charities

FEATURED Charleston Nonprofit Organizations

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charleston county south carolina sc help support for helping child children youth youths teenager teenagers adolescent adolescents need needs needy non profit non-profit non-profit nonprofit nonprofit not for profit charity charities public service social service human services volunteer opportunities volunteers volunteering volunteer work donate donation donations association associations organization club clubs group groups mentoring program programs resource resources philanthropy

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Charleston Charities - Nonprofit Organizations in Charleston County

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South Carolina SC Organizations SC Charities Charleston Charities Feature Your Charleston Organization Here Please choose from one of the following types of nonprofits and community organizations: These Charleston groups provide support for families and children in need.

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Charity Ratings and Donor Resources | Charity Navigator

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Use Charity Navigator’s ratings and resources to find and support highly rated charities that align with your passions and values. Whether you’re looking to give toward international relief, the environment, animal welfare, or something else, we empower you to donate and volunteer with confidence.

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Use this general interest database to research topics and organizations

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Use this general interest database to research topics and organizations

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Mas Ultra
Includes full-text popular magazines, reference books, and primary sources covering many subjects, including history, science and health. TIPS: Use AND to link concepts (animals AND captivity AND ethic*); use OR to add similar terms (plastics OR pollution OR trash); use a lot of synonyms.

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How to PITCH. by Stephanie Schomer, Entrepreneur, May 2017

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What investors look for in a pitch. The PDF version has a nice graphic with presentation tips.

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The resources in Discus South Carolina's Virtual Library are made available to state residents. Please enter the current Discus username and password. If you need assistance, contact your local library or media center. You may also contact the Discus Office: (803) 545-0201 or DiscusOffice@statelibrary.sc.gov

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The resources in Discus South Carolina's Virtual Library are made available to state residents. Please enter the current Discus username and password. If you need assistance, contact your local library or media center. You may also contact the Discus Office: (803) 545-0201 or DiscusOffice@statelibrary.sc.gov

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How to Get on Shark Tank—and Win! by Dorie Clark, Newsweek Global, 1/15/21

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A shark tank contestant talks about his experience and his recommendations on how to present.

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The resources in Discus South Carolina's Virtual Library are made available to state residents. Please enter the current Discus username and password. If you need assistance, contact your local library or media center. You may also contact the Discus Office: (803) 545-0201 or DiscusOffice@statelibrary.sc.gov

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The resources in Discus South Carolina's Virtual Library are made available to state residents. Please enter the current Discus username and password. If you need assistance, contact your local library or media center. You may also contact the Discus Office: (803) 545-0201 or DiscusOffice@statelibrary.sc.gov

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Scan the QR code to find this book in the BEHS Library 

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The young adult's guide to public speaking : tips, tricks & expert advice for delivering a great speech without being nervous. 

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The young adult's guide to public speaking : tips, tricks & expert advice for delivering a great speech without being nervous. 