COVID-19 News Digest: September 2020

This month’s selection of thought-provoking readings and resources that we’ve found useful for navigating the philanthropic response to the coronavirus pandemic:

Nonprofit jobs still down by nearly 1 million despite a partial recovery  |There are now an estimated 1 million fewer nonprofit jobs compared to February 2020, before the pandemic. “…the vast majority of jobs lost in community food, housing, and relief services were restored as of the end of August, though it seems unlikely that this was sufficient to meet the enormous expansion in need for these services that the pandemic-induced economic collapse has produced. By contrast, however, less than 6 percent of the nonprofit jobs lost in day care services have been restored, suggesting a serious obstacle limiting parents’ ability to return to work with schools still unable to open safely in numerous locales.”

USDA allows school districts to resume serving free grab-and-go meals through 2020 | Districts are now able to serve meals to any student, with no eligibility requirements, as they did over the summer. “In addition to allowing districts to continue serving grab-and-go meals for free to any student, the waivers also allow districts to serve meals at any time, outside typical settings and to students not enrolled in that district. And it allows parents and guardians to pick up meals for their children — instead of requiring the children to be present to pick up the meals.”

Coronavirus: UCSF launching ‘mass testing’ effort in Oakland’s Fruitvale district |A two-day mass testing campaign is being launched in Oakland’s Fruitvale district to better understand how COVID-19 has spread through one of the hardest hit in the Bay Area. “…the goal is to test about 4,000 people in the census tract just north of the Fruitvale BART Station, bordered by International and Foothill boulevards and between Fruitvale Avenue and High Street, although no one will be turned away. About two-thirds of residents in the census tract are Latinx, and the median household income is less than half what it is in Alameda County as a whole.”