Amy Costello
Nonprofit Quarterly
Austin, TX, United States
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Past articles by Amy:
“Dirty Work”: Uncovering the Mechanisms of Concealment in the World of Work
Increasingly, as author Eyal Press explains in this podcast interview, the US economy has been structured to keep jobs that are unpleasant far out of public view. → Read More
Imagery and Authenticity
NPQ’s creatives assess the use of design in perpetuating harmful narratives—and in creating new ones. → Read More
The Black Women Making Birth Better
Maternal mortality for US black women is four times that of white women. This podcast speaks to a midwife and nonprofit CEO working to fix it. → Read More
Rebuilding at Thunder Valley: A Story of the Lakota Nation Rising
Not far from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in southwestern South Dakota, a powerful Lakota economic and cultural movement is taking hold. → Read More
The Guilty Project: “How Do You Defend Those People?”
Criminal defense lawyer Abbe Smith is often asked how she defends people accused of committing terrible crimes. Hear her moving reply, and learn why she believes the guilty deserve a spirited defense. → Read More
How One Nonprofit Helped Change a Nation’s Thinking about Criminal Justice
Working case by case, Innocence Project attorneys and law students played a critical role in shifting an entire nation’s discourse about prisons and justice. → Read More
In the Climate Crisis, We Need Love And Science
Pastor and activist Rev. Mariama White-Hammond describes how her experience of racial and economic injustice led her to fight for the planet as a whole and explains why it’s time to “live differently.” → Read More
The You-Sized Hole in the Environmental Movement
Two advocates talk about the need to understand the destruction of the environment through a racial equity lens and the promising and powerful future of inclusive climate action. → Read More
A Multimillionaire’s Critique of Nonprofits and a Plea for Higher Taxes on the Rich
Tiny Spark’s new season launches with multimillionaire Nick Hanauer, who calls on the nation’s wealthiest to pay more tax and for all of us to pay more attention to righting the economy’s systemic wrongs. → Read More
For Volunteer Humanitarians, “Solidarity Is Not a Crime”
When 10,000 refugees set up camp in Calais, France, in 2015, outraged citizens were so appalled by conditions that they went in to volunteer and later became activists. → Read More
Baby Bonds: A “Birthright to Capital”
Tiny Spark explores one way to decrease wealth inequality with economist Darrick Hamilton, who proposes giving newborns thousands of dollars in “baby bond” accounts that mature when they turn 18. → Read More
A Plan to Reverse “Economic Apartheid” in the US
NPQ’s latest Tiny Spark podcast looks at ideas for narrowing the racial wealth gap, from reparations to raising the minimum wage. → Read More
On A Mission To Make White People Uncomfortable
Whether calling out celebrities or highlighting controversial issues about race, a relatively new, but hugely popular campaign is using Instagram to hold altruistic white people accountable. → Read More
On A Mission To Make White People Uncomfortable
Using fiery Instagram posts, and uncomfortable tweets, the duo behind the social media campaign No White Saviors challenge white people to examine race, power, and how they perceive their roles when attempting to “help” in communities and countries not their own. They explain why their motto is, “If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not listening.” → Read More
Orphanage Voluntourism: Trafficking on Good Intentions
Is it possible for charity to worsen the lives of those they purport to help? In the latest Tiny Spark podcast, we investigate how a global surge in one form of “voluntourism” exploits vulnerable children and contributes to child trafficking. → Read More
The Ethics of Nonprofit Storytelling: Survivor Porn and Parading Trauma
Over the last few years, nonprofits have been urged to tell stories to ensure their work is both memorable and fundable. This propensity for storytelling in the sector has created concerns about what many call “poverty porn”—the portrayal of people as helpless victims, such as the classic shot of a small child whose eyes are → Read More
The Ethics of Nonprofit Storytelling: Survivor Porn and Parading Trauma
In our latest Tiny Spark podcast, host Amy Costello explores nonprofits’ propensity to create “survivor porn” and the ways in which the sector trades in “parading trauma.” → Read More
How Philanthropy “Captures” Social Movements: An Interview with Megan Ming Francis
In our latest podcast, we examine how philanthropists—even well-intentioned ones—can sometimes “capture” the social movements they fund and, in doing so, steer grassroots organizations and activists away from their original missions. → Read More
Could ‘Radical Tough Love’ Improve The Internet? These Women Think So.
In honor of International Women’s Day, we speak to a pair of women who are on a quest to transform Wikipedia, one of the Internet’s most popular websites. “It also has the biases of the real world internalized in its working and in its content,” says Anasuya Sengupta, a feminist activist from India and Nonprofit Quarterly board member. Sengupta was previously Chief Grantmaking Officer at The… → Read More
“Radical Tough Love” On the Internet
This International Women’s Day, Tiny Spark host Amy Costello interviews feminist activists Anasuya Sengupta and Adele Vrana about their work to make women, particularly women of color, more visible on the internet. Their new campaign #VisibleWikiWomen is an act of “radical tough love” aimed at Wikipedia and the internet in general, where most of the content is created and edited by white men in… → Read More