NewsTrust - Philanthropy - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

I.R.S. Attacks Abuse by Charity Support Groups

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Stephanie Strom - Feb. 14 (News Report) - In the last five years, the Internal Revenue Service has revoked the tax exemption of 72 groups, known as supporting organizations, that obscure philanthropies created to support specific charities.

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Google Finds It Hard to Reinvent Philanthropy

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Stephanie Strom, Miguel Helft - Feb. 01 (Special Report) - JUST before Google first sold its shares to the public in 2004, Larry Page, one of its founders, excited the nonprofit world with a bold commitment to philanthropy. He vowed to dedicate about 1 percent of Google’s profits, 1 percent of its equity and a significant amount of its employees’ time to the effort, which became known as Google.org, or simply DotOrg. “We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems,” Mr. Page wrote in a letter to potential investors. Although Google intended to tackle major problems like climate change, global poverty and the spread of pandemic diseases, it declared that DotOrg would not be “conventional” — a four-letter word in Google-speak. For starters, the organization would operate in part as a business, thus freeing itself from various constraints placed on nonprofit groups.

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Why We've Given Less To Pakistan's Flood Victims

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - By Brett Neely - Sep. 03 (News Analysis) - By and large, Americans haven't opened up their wallets to help victims of the flood disaster in Pakistan. According to Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy, charitable donations by individuals, foundations and companies totaled just $25 million as of Aug. 30. By comparison, the center's data show that Americans donated $900 million to relief efforts in Haiti within five weeks of the earthquake there. Disaster relief experts were nearly universal in agreeing that there are at least three reasons why fundraising for this disaster has been challenging. The first has to do with the nature of the disaster, says Randy Strash, the strategy director for emergency response at World Vision, a Christian relief agency with worldwide operations, including programs in Pakistan.

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Bill Clinton gets tough as donors fail to honour $5bn Haiti pledge

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Richard Luscombe - Jul. 16 (News Report) - Six months after the disaster that killed 220,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless, only $506m of $5.3bn raised at an international donors' conference in March has been handed over, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

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The $600 billion challenge

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Fortune - By Carol J. Loomis - Jun. 17 (News Report) - Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett are asking the nation's billionaires to pledge to give at least half their net worth to charity, in their lifetimes or at death. If their campaign succeeds, it could change the face of philanthropy.

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Gates seeks more spending on clean energy research

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Frederic J. Frommer - Jun. 10 (News Report) - Gates and other business leaders were meeting with President Barack Obama and lawmakers Thursday to pitch their plan to increase the annual federal spending on clean energy innovation to $16 billion, from $5 billion now. But tight budgets make it a tough sell. A report released Thursday by the American Energy Innovation Council called for an increase in spending and the creation of an independent National Energy Strategy Board to coordinate federal energy research.

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eBay Founder's Next Bid: Online News Service

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - By Ben Markus - Apr. 26 (News Report) - The newspaper industry is not doing very well in general, and it appears Honolulu is about to become a one-newspaper town. The Star-Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser will likely merge in the coming months. But residents now have another option for local news: the online news website Civil Beat. Half a dozen reporters -- some clutching their morning coffee -- gather around Editor John Temple for their daily news meeting: "This week, just to be clear, I mean, articles and beat updates and then Twitter are our focus, not topic pages, and we'll work on that. So I think we should jump into beat updates." Topic pages. Twitter. This isn't classic newspaper lingo. Then again, this is a newsroom starting in 2010. Civil Beat went live Wednesday and will officially launch May 4. Temple has a long track record in print journalism, most recently at the Rocky Mountain News. But he also has extensive online experience.

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Seeking to Help Budding Researchers With a Click of the Mouse

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Victoria Schlesinger - Apr. 02 (Special Report) - The Eureka Fund hopes to finance small-scale, independent scientific research through online contributions.

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WellPoint's giving for uninsured falls short, records show

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Noam Levey - Mar. 18 (Investigative Report) - The firm had pledged in 2007 to spend $30 million over three years to help those who lack health coverage, but its tax records and website show it gave only $6.2 million. The company disputes that.

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Salvation Army is a residential real estate powerhouse

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Stuart Pfeifer - Mar. 14 (Special Report) - Salvation Army is a residential real estate powerhouse

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The Tragedy of Haiti

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

60 Minutes - By Byron Pitts - Jan. 17 (Special Report) - Five days after the earthquake in Haiti, the enormity of the bare numbers seems too much to comprehend. Some 140,000 lie dead -- tens of thousands of bodies are still entombed beneath the rubble. And an ever-dwindling handful of survivors lie with them, trapped alive, awaiting either rescue or death. In Port-Au-Prince, 300,000 citizens have no home but the streets. More than three-and-a-half million Haitians, according to the Red Cross, find their lives turned inside out by the quake and its aftermath.

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Breaking the Supply Logjam

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Time - By Tim Padgett - Jan. 17 (News Report) - When I arrived at Port-au-Prince's Toussaint L'Overture International Airport on a  U.S. Navy relief helicopter Saturday morning, the first glimpse of Haiti I  caught below was what greets every flight into the western hemisphere's  poorest country:

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Bush, Clinton: Haiti response not about politics

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - Jan. 17 (News Report) - Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton say the earthquake in Haiti offers a chance to put aside politics and help people in despair. Bush and Clinton appeared on five Sunday talk shows as part of their effort to lead private fundraising efforts for Haitian relief, including immediate needs and the long-term rebuilding effort. President Barack Obama asked them to lead the bipartisan effort. "I'd say now is not the time to focus on politics," Bush said in an interview taped Saturday for CBS' "Face the Nation" when the ex-presidents' visited the White House. "You've got people who are ... children who've lost parents. People wondering where they're going to be able to drink water," Bush said. "There's a great sense of desperation. And so my attention is on trying to help people deal with the desperation.

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Elderly and abandoned, 80 Haitians await death

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Alfred De Montesquiou - Jan. 17 (News Report) - There is no food or water for the 80 elderly people at the quake-damaged Port-au-Prince Municipal Hospice, just a mile from the airport where a massive international aid effort is taking shape.

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Looters roam Port-au-Prince as earthquake death toll estimate climbs

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Rory Carroll - Jan. 16 (News Report) - The death toll from Haiti's earthquake climbed to as high as an estimated 140,000, as logistical bottlenecks delayed aid and stoked looting by survivors desperate for food and water. A flotilla of ships anchored offshore while aircraft circled overhead, but only a trickle of supplies and emergency teams made it onto the shattered streets of Port-au-Prince, where the desperation was turning into violence. Groups of men with machetes roved the ruins seeking supplies of food or water; others used corpses as roadblocks, a macabre sign that the capital had reached breaking point after four days of apocalyptic scenes. "They are scavenging everything. What can you do?" Michel Legros, 53, told AP as he waited for help to search for seven of relatives buried in his collapsed house. Aramick Louis, secretary of state for public safety, told Reuters the death toll had exceeded 140,000. "We have buried 40,000 people. We think there are 100,000 more on top of that."

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Mobile giving to help Haiti exceeds $1 million

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:46:40 -0800

MSNBC - By Suzanne Choney - Jan. 14 (News Report) - The cell phone may be one of the big heroes in a campaign to donate money for relief efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. In the United States, more than $1 million was raised Wednesday via text-messages sent to organizations like the American Red

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Pakistan Philanthropist Cares For Karachi's Forgotten

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Morning Edition - By Julie McCarthy - Jul. 28 (Special Report) - Abdul Sattar Edhi has personally washed tens of thousands of corpses that he has rescued from gutters, beneath bridges and from the sea. The 82-year-old Pakistani has devoted his life to the destitute of Karachi, burying the city's forgotten and giving fresh life to its abandoned newborns. His pioneering social work has drawn comparisons to Mother Teresa's.

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Anne Frank guardian reaches 100

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Feb. 15 (News Report) - The last surviving member of the group who helped hide the Jewish girl Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam has turned 100 years old. Miep Gies will celebrate her birthday on Sunday quietly with relatives and friends, she said this week. She said she was not deserving of the attention, and others had done far more to protect Jews in the Netherlands.

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New African-American history course stretches student minds

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - By Joe Smydo - Feb. 06 (News Report) - Pittsburgh Oliver High School teacher Ken Smith doesn't want students to take history; he wants them "doing history." And so the Pittsburgh Public Schools' new African-American history course is designed to stretch students' research, writing and thinking skills while taking them far behind the scenes of a people's struggle for freedom. The district yesterday kicked off Black History Month by gathering civic leaders and school supporters at the Senator John Heinz History Center to introduce the course and a program bringing black artists into three schools. The initiatives are intended to promote achievement among black students who, as a group, trail white students academically. "We have to connect with the kids. We have to be relevant to them," history center President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Masich said.

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The credit crunch according to Soros

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By Chrystia Freeland - Jan. 30 (Special Report) - On Friday, August 17 2007, 21 of Wall Street’s most influential investors met for lunch at George Soros’s Southampton estate on the eastern end of Long Island. The first tremors of what would become the global credit crunch had rippled out a week or so earlier, when the French bank BNP Paribas froze withdrawals from three of its funds, and in response, central bankers made a huge injection of liquidity into the money markets in an effort to keep the world’s banks lending to one another.

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Despite 20% drop in assets, Gates Foundation to spend more this year

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Kristi Helm - Jan. 27 (News Report) - In a call with reporters Monday, Gates conceded that major progress on many fronts is closely linked to the overall economy... ..."Raising economies up is the primary way we get literacy, good governance, lower population growth, better health outcomes," he said.Addressing education, Gates said it was surprising the U.S. economy has been so strong considering the education system has so poorly prepared the bottom half of students, and has been focused on helping the top 20 percent succeed. The crisis highlights "the importance of investing in a broader set of kids so they're not dropouts and have a chance to go to college," he said.

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Bear Market for Charities

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Mike Spector - Jan. 24 (Special Report) - Today, the U.S. boasts more than one million nonprofits, up from about 774,000 ten years ago. Their biggest donations come from corporations, foundations and the ultra-wealthy. Many have been hit hard by the deepening recession.

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Obama Brushes Up on His Painting Technique

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Jonathan Weisman - Jan. 19 (News Report) - At 10:20 this morning, it was clear Barack Obama was ready for a day of service work. That’s when Reggie Love, a former Duke University varsity basketball and football player and now the president-elect’s personal assistant, emerged from Walter Reed Army Medical Center carrying Obama’s suit. Obama had been at Walter Reed visiting patients who had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Minutes later, the motorcade pulled onto 16th Street, slinking its way through some of the rougher parts of Washington, to the fringes of Capitol Hill. And at 10:50 a.m., the motorcade pulled up to the Sasha Bruce House, a homeless shelter for teens founded in 1974. The stately house on a hill was filled with volunteers, painting and preparing dormitories for girls and boys. Obama slipped through the back door and was greeted by the house’s director and founder, Deborah Shore and with shouts of “Mr. Obama” from the group. “Give me a second,” said the president-elect, now wearing a casual Navy jacket and dark gray jeans. He made his way through one room where volunteers were painting lockers for the kids, then made his way up to the boys’ dormitory. He looked at a mural. “I like that,” he commented, asking the names of volunteers and shaking hands.

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Obama observes Martin Luther King Day with call to service

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Frank James - Jan. 19 (News Report) - On the eve of his inauguration as the nation's first African American commander in chief, President-elect Barack Obama observed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by participating in a day of service. Obama painted a wall at an emergency shelter for homeless and runaway teens in Washington, D.C., one of the several public events on the day before his swearing-in.

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Heroin Program's Deadly Toll

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Justin Scheck - Jan. 10 (Special Report) - harm-reduction leaders have struggled to address a sometimes-lethal issue: dangerous drug use by the very workers who are supposed to help users. In the circles of New York and San Francisco where Mr. Morse worked, at least five harm-reduction staffers have died of overdoses. These included needle-exchange founders in both cities, as well as psychologist John Watters, a needle-exchange advocate who started a study to track how outreach programs benefited drug users. Mr. Watters died from an opiate overdose in 1995.

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