News

Ruth Mott Foundation extends Flint-based strategy through 2025
Launched in 2016, the strategy addresses the top four priorities of North Flint residents — youth, public safety, economic opportunity, and neighborhoods....

Knight Foundation launches tech-focused artist fellowship program
Through the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship program, unrestricted grants of $50,000 were awarded to five artists employing innovative approaches to technology and new media....

People in the News (02/21/2021): appointments, promotions, obituaries
The latest staff and board announcements from the philanthropic sector....

Novant Health receives $10 million from Michael Jordan for clinics
Slated to open in early 2022 in New Hanover County, the two clinics will provide comprehensive primary care to the uninsured and underinsured....

Report highlights impact of effective principals on student outcomes
An update to a 2004 report, the research review commissioned by the Wallace Foundation draws on more than two hundred studies over twenty years and argues that school leaders are even more important to student success than previously believed and that investments in successful strategies to better prepare and support them often lead to large payoffs....

Community Foundation Update (02/20/2021)
News and staff announcements from community foundations in Arizona, Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C....

Comcast NBCUniversal commits $2.5 million to advance racial equity
The grant to Echoing Green's Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund will provide various kinds of support for leaders working to dismantle structural racism and build inclusive economies....

Wisconsin Historical Society receives $10 million for museum
The gift from philanthropist W. Jerome Frautschi will unlock $70 million in state funding for construction of the $120 million, 100,000-square-foot museum in downtown Madison....

Sloan Foundation announces 2021 Research Fellowships
A hundred and twenty-eight early-career scientists and scholars in eight disciplines — chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, earth systems science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics — will each receive a grant of $75,000 over two years....

Foundations back $300 million venture fund for global health
With investments from the Doris Duke Charitable, Ford, Gates, MacArthur, Children's Investment Fund, and Sorenson Impact foundations, the fund will support promising new technologies aimed at treating or preventing conditions that for the most part have been ignored by venture capital....

Fidelity Charitable donors awarded $9.1 billion in grants in 2020
According to the organization's 2021 Giving Report, more than 250,000 donors recommended two million grants to 170,000 charities in 2020, with grants to human services organizations accounting for nearly a quarter of all grants awarded....

Returns on educational endowments fell sharply in FY20, study finds
According to the 2020 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments, the endowments of more than seven hundred U.S. colleges and universities returned an average of 1.8 percent, net of fees, in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020, down from 5.2 percent in FY19....

Howard Hughes Medical Institute announces 2020 Hanna Gray Fellows
Twenty-one early-career scientists will receive up to $1.4 million over eight years to pursue research into some of the greatest challenges in the life sciences....

UMD receives $9 million from Brin family for performing arts institute
The gift from Google co-founder Sergey Brin's parents and Brin's family foundation will establish the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance, support research initiatives, and fund new teaching positions, undergraduate scholarships, classroom and studio renovations, and instructional technology....

Arthur M. Blank, Bernie Marcus commit $40 million for veterans' health
Commitments of $20 million each from Home Depot co-founders Arthur M. Blank and Bernie Marcus will support the launch of the Gary Sinise Foundation Avalon Network, an integrative treatment and training network focused on providing care for veterans and first-responders impacted by post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injuries, and substance abuse....

Online giving up more than 20 percent in 2020, report finds
According to the latest edition of Blackbaud's Charitable Giving Report, online giving grew 20.7 percent in 2020, with the share of total giving coming via online donations rising to 13 percent, the largest share as a percentage of total giving in the history of the report....

Yeshiva University receives $10 million for career center
The center, to be renamed the Shevet Glaubach Center for Career Strategy and Professional Development, offers programs in career development as well as mentorship, internships, and job search assistance....

UCLA Health receives $29 million in support of genetic research
The Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Precision Genomic Medicine will leverage large data sets and genomic technologies such as CRISPR to better understand genetic factors in disease and improve the diagnosis and treatment of genetic disorders....

Report calls for investment in capacity to respond to virus variants
A report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security discusses variants first identified in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil; the current status of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance, sequencing, and variant characterization; and the need for additional investment to ensure the nation's capacity to detect and respond to new variants of the virus....

Packard Children's Hospital, Stanford Medicine receive $80 million
The gift includes $50 million for construction of a state-of-the-art labor and delivery unit and $30 million to launch a clinical research program focused on advancing the science and practice of maternal-fetal medicine....

Justice, accountability are key to peace in Yemen, report finds
Based on dozens of interviews, the report from the Open Society Foundations found that civil society leaders in Yemen agree that the transitional justice process must be focused on the concerns and needs of victims and include mechanisms for truth telling, redress, and mental health support....

Georgetown Law receives two gifts totaling $34 million
A gift of nearly $24 million from the estate of Agnes N. Williams (L'54) will endow the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professorships of Law, while a gift of $10 million from Timothy (L'77) and Linda O'Neill (N'77) will establish the Center for Transformational Health Law....

RWJF commits $9 million to launch Voices for Health Justice
The Voices for Health Justice project will fund the efforts of twenty-five state- and community-based organizations to improve healthcare access, affordability, and dignity in care....

Nearly one in five donors plan to give more in 2021, survey finds
Based on an online survey of more than a thousand adults in the United States who gave to charity in the past three years, fundraising platform FrontStream’s State of Charitable Giving and Donor Engagement survey found that 87 percent of respondents intend to give to charity in 2021 and 19 percent plan to give more than they did in 2020....

MacArthur Awards $18 million through Safety and Justice Challenge
To drive reform, participating sites incorporate data from, and work with, diverse groups of community members, individuals who work in the justice system, and people with lived experience of the system....

Mellon Foundation awards $9.4 million to reimagine monuments
Part of a five-year, $250 million Monuments Project launched by the foundation in October, the grants will support five projects designed to educate the public about the nation's shared collective past and help inform a more just future....

Digital fundraising, strategic financial planning key to resilience
A survey of global charities by the Charities Aid Foundation of America found that three-quarters (75.6 percent) of respondents believe that finding new ways to fundraise with digital technology is key to building resilience in a post-pandemic recovery....

University of Maryland School of Nursing receives $13.8 million gift
Awarded through Bill and Joanne Conway's Bedford Falls Foundation, the gift will create an additional three hundred and forty-five Conway Scholarships across all degree programs and help fund renovations to the nursing building at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville....