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Monthly Archives: September 2012
September 25, 2012, 6:03 pm
At Clinton Philanthropy Summit, Obama Spotlights Human Trafficking
President Obama today called human trafficking a “debasement of our common humanity” and said the United States must do more to protect the estimated 20 million people worldwide who participate in forced labor, the sex trade, domestic servitude, or other conditions against their will.
Speaking at former President Clinton’s annual philanthropy event, in New York, Mr. Obama said that human trafficking must be called by its “true name”: “modern slavery.”
“I don’t use that word lightly, ” he said. “It evokes one of the most painful chapters in our nation’s history.”
“But there’s no denying the awful reality that when a man desperate for work finds himself in a factory or fishing on a boat or in a field, working, toiling for no pay, and beaten when he tries to escape, that is slavery,” Mr. Obama continued. “It’s barbaric and evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.”…
September 24, 2012, 10:52 am
Bill Clinton Urges Donors to Think About Results From the Start
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…
September 19, 2012, 8:52 am
IKEA Foundation Expands Its Giving to American Groups
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. …
September 18, 2012, 10:46 am
With 11 New Members, ‘Giving Pledge’ Signers Now Numbers 92
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,…
September 13, 2012, 9:15 am
Nonprofits Are Dissatisfied With Foundations’ Evaluation Efforts
Nonprofits say they want more help from donors in measuring their performance, according to a new survey from the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
More than 70 percent of the 177 nonprofit officials surveyed said they don’t receive assistance with evaluation from foundations. About 62 percent said they would like help with that work.
And despite many foundations’ public insistence that they want charities to measure performance, how to do so isn’t a big topic of conversation between donors and nonprofits, according to the study.
Foundations “could help provide expertise and help organizations measure, instead of relying on organizations to bear the sole responsibility for these skills,” said one nonprofit official quoted anonymously in the study. “It is rare that a foundation offers this kind of help.”
More than half of those polled said that when foundations do seek…
September 5, 2012, 12:35 pm
Correction: Downturn Causes Drop in Multiyear Foundation Grants
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…
September 5, 2012, 9:00 am
Former Hewlett Foundation Head to Join Stanford Center
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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