A billionaire businessman is helping charities that protect voter rights raise money just ahead of  their busy Election Day efforts.

William Louis-Dreyfus said in an advertisement in the online and print editions of Tuesday’s New York Times that he would provide $1-million to help charities that are trying to challenge new state laws that limit access to the polls for those who lack identification.

Mr. Louis-Dreyfus, who amassed a fortune estimated at more than $3-billion in the global commodities business, called on other wealthy people to join him in the effort and directed donors to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Mr. Louis-Dreyfus, a supporter of President Obama and other Democratic candidates, says he became concerned after hearing news reports that the laws might restrict voting among students, minorities, and people with disabilities—groups that …

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Former President Bill Clinton’s seventh annual philanthropy conclave opened in New York Sunday with its hallmark blend of high-powered talk about the world’s biggest problems and announcements of new financial commitments designed to alleviate them.

In one session, World Bank leader Jim Yong Kim, Queen Rania of Jordan, Wal-Mart chief executive Michael Duke, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon discussed how to reduce youth unemployment in the Arab world, maintain peace in countries like the Ivory Coast, and ensure that students are taught skills that businesses need.

They were preceded on stage by Tom Golisano, founder of Paychex, who announced a $12-million gift to help the charity Special Olympics expand its work to improve the health of people with mental disabilities.

The theme of this year’s Clinton Global Initiative is “Designing for Impact,” a nod to the…

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The IKEA Foundation, in the Netherlands*, is expanding its giving to American nonprofits that fight poverty in the developing world, the organization said today.

The foundation says it will provide seven grants this year totaling more than $40-million to nonprofits in Britain and the United States.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative was awarded two grants, totaling about $26-million, to combat children’s diarrhea in India and Kenya. The Earth Institute won about  $2.5-million to improve primary education in India. A new $9-million gift to another U.S. charity will be announced at next week’s Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation said.

“Our ambition at the IKEA Foundation is to help improve the lives of children and youth in the developing world.  Our commitments so far will impact more than 100 million children,” Per Heggenes, chief executive, said in a statement. �…

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Eleven more families have signed the “Giving Pledge,” a public commitment to donate at least half their wealth to charity, the pledge’s organizers said today. That brings to 92 the number of families who’ve joined the campaign to increase philanthropy among the super rich, started by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

While the list announced today includes well-known philanthropists such as Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies, it also counts people who haven’t yet made a name for themselves in major-league giving, such as Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, and Jonathan M. Nelson, founder of Providence Equity Partners.

At least three people on the list are immigrants. Manoj Bhargava, founder of the 5-Hour Energy drink, and Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group, were born in India. Jorge M. Perez,…

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Editor’s note: On Thursday afternoon, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy withdrew the study that was the basis for the following item. It said data from the Foundation Center was flawed.

Many nonprofits pinned their hopes on foundations to help them get through the worst of the downturn with multiyear grants, but now a new study finds that such contributions fell sharply from 2008 to 2010.

The study, by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, examined 900 foundations from 2008 to 2010 and compared their grants to those offered by a similar group of foundations in 2004 to 2006.

The share of grants that were for multiple years dropped by 55 percent in the downturn when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is excluded from the sample. That foundation gives more multiyear grants than any other philanthropy, awarding $2.6-billion in multiyear grants, or 96…

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Philanthropy studies at the university level just got a very prominent booster as one of the nation’s most prominent foundation leaders moves to academe.

Paul Brest, the former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who stepped down from that post last week, has been named faculty co-director of Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, the university announced today.

Mr. Brest, who started out as an expert on constitutional law, and in later years has focused on decision-making and philanthropy, is no stranger to Stanford. He joined Stanford Law School in 1969 and served as dean of the school from 1987 to 1999. He left to lead the Hewlett Foundation in 2000.

He said in an interview with The Chronicle that he is joining the center so he can continue to be actively involved in writing about philanthropy and teaching the practice of it.

Mr….

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Warren Buffett said today he would give each of his three children $1-billion to donate, in addition to the $1-billion gifts he made to each of their philanthropies in 2006.

To celebrate his 82nd birthday, he said in a letter to his children that he is awarding  12,220,852 Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to each of their foundations.

Mr. Buffett made history in 2006 when he pledged stock, then worth more than $30-billion, to the Gates Foundation and about $3-billion to a foundation established by his late first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett.

He also pledged stock valued at roughly $1.2-billion apiece to each one of the three foundations created by his children, Susan, Howard, and Peter.

While the value of the stock has fluctuated over the years, Mr. Buffett has been steadily  paying off all of his 2006 pledges every year since.

Mr. Buffett’s daughter, Susan Buffett,…

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Bill Gates, America’s most prominent evangelist for philanthropy, told The Chronicle of Higher Education that his foundation probably won’t change its grant-making priorities for at least a decade.

“We want to learn, make mistakes, try new things out, find new partners,” says Mr. Gates, whose foundation works to improve health and reduce poverty in the neediest countries, and to improve education in the United States. “And so until we’ve done something quite dramatic, which in the best case would be in 10 to 20 years, we’re not going to move on and do something else.”

In an interview, Mr. Gates stressed his foundation’s emphasis on measuring results. That focus has been criticized by some nonprofit leaders, who say universities, international aid groups, and other charities shouldn’t be run like businesses. But Mr. Gates says it’s important to get a clearer picture of, for example,…

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Even in tough economic times, wealthy Americans still believe strongly that they have a duty to give, a new survey says.

About 69 percent of rich people said they have a responsibility to pass on to their children a tradition of philanthropic giving, according to the study by U.S. Trust of 642 people with investable assets of at least $3-million.

Two-thirds of those who are 67 and older and 73 percent of baby boomers said philanthropy is an important social responsibility for all generations. About 53 percent of those age 18 to 46 said charitable giving is a responsibility.

Attitudes by the wealthy on how to create positive social change differed by generation and gender.

Of those 18 to 46, 44 percent said they were more likely to see an opportunity to effect positive change through their work, compared to 18 percent of baby boomers.

Nearly one-third of the younger…

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