ReportWire

Tag: Philanthropy

  • How artist Gordon Parks’ foundation keeps his legacy growing, even as it searches for new funding

    Civil rights photographer and artist Gordon Parks’ legacy continues to expand today, even as the 20th anniversary of his death arrives on March 7. However, the Gordon Parks Foundation, which celebrates the same milestone this year, is finding it harder to fund its work inspired by the director of “The Learning Tree” and “Shaft.”

    Though Gordon Parks Foundation Executive Director Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., told The Associated Press that federal funding cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion programs have only had a limited direct impact on the foundation’s work due to a “strong base of supporters,” it isn’t immune to the changing, more competitive funding landscape that many arts-focused nonprofits now face.

    “We’re definitely sensitive to the fact the world has drastically changed and the arts and DEI and culture have definitely taken a hit,” said Kunhardt.

    That puts extra emphasis on fundraising events like the foundation’s gala — its largest annual fundraising event – especially in a major anniversary year.

    The foundation said Tuesday it will honor EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) winner John Legend, Grammy winner Chance the Rapper, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander, and artist Henry Taylor at its gala on May 19 in Manhattan. Advocate and philanthropist Lonnie Ali will also be honored at the event, accepting the award for her late husband Muhammad Ali, who was a longtime friend of Parks, and their entire family.

    “We need to preserve the past to inspire the future by honoring these individuals,” Kunhardt said. “The particular people on this list for 20 years are very important because they represent many different disciplines that Gordon Parks focused in on and who have championed the arts and social justice.”

    Parks was best known for his work at Life magazine, documenting race relations and American life for decades as the magazine’s first Black staff photographer. He famously bought his first camera at a pawnshop and taught himself to use it at a mix of jobs in Minnesota.

    That work led to him receiving the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942, which provided a one-year apprenticeship under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration, alongside acclaimed photographers including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Parks wanted to provide similar support for young artists and the Gordon Parks Foundation now awards numerous fellowships in art, music and writing. Last year, the foundation launched a Legacy Acquisition Fund, which purchases the work of older artists in order to support them and their connection to Parks.

    Those programs, along with the star-studded 2021 HBO documentary “A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks,” have fueled a resurgence of interest in Parks and his work.

    “People who have had such an extraordinarily long life and so much output of such a high caliber like Parks are bound to become players who become even more important,” said Casey Riley, chair of the Department of Global Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. “If you’re paying attention to what he was doing, it will be relevant to the moment.”

    Riley — who curated the museum’s “American Gothic: Gordon Parks and Ella Watson” exhibit, which focused on the creation of one of the 20th century’s most influential photographs — said that Parks is a “touchstone” for many artists of color, especially Black American artists. However, the Kansas-born Parks has a special bond with artists from Minneapolis and St. Paul, where he spent his formative years as a photographer.

    “He came of age here and really began to realize what his dream for his life would be,” Riley said. “It’s a powerful and resonant story for people here. They take a lot of pride in him, but they also see him as one of their own.”

    Last month, Minnesota state lawmakers announced plans to honor Parks with a statue in downtown St. Paul.

    “He’s a beacon,” Riley said. “He is someone who was thinking about social justice and matters of equity for the entirety of his career and powerfully saw the camera as an essential and critical force in helping us to connect with one another and understand the urgencies of our time.”

    That continues today, as tensions run high in Minneapolis-St. Paul following the deaths of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and Minneapolis mother Renee Good at the hands of federal immigration officers. “It’s not an accident that we have so many talented photojournalists here working in the Twin Cities,” Riley said in an interview before Pretti’s death on Saturday. “They very much understand who he was. And the results of their work resounding around the globe right now as we speak is proof of that.”

    Further proof comes from the wide range of A-list supporters for Parks and his work. The co-chairs of the annual gala range from musicians Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz, whose real name is Kasseem Dean, to CNN journalist Anderson Cooper and Brooklyn Nets co-owner Clara Wu Tsai. Super Bowl quarterback and political activist Colin Kaepernick and former Ford Foundation President Darren Walker are among those who will induct this year’s honorees.

    “What we’re doing has not really changed with the times,” Kunhardt said. “We’ve been one of the constants. We’ve done it when it wasn’t attractive to celebrate Black art and we’re still doing it. Our authenticity has been the same along the way.”

    _____

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • The new ‘Be The People’ campaign wants to unite hundreds of millions of Americans to solve problems

    As the official celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence culminate on July 4, a well-financed, privately funded initiative will kick off to try to connect hundreds of millions of Americans with efforts to solve local problems.

    The “Be The People” campaign aspires to change the perception that the U.S. is hopelessly divided and that individuals have little power to overcome problems like poverty, addiction, violence and stalled economic mobility. It also wants to move people take action to solve those problems.

    Brian Hooks, chairman and CEO of the nonprofit network Stand Together, said the 250th anniversary is a unique moment “to show people that they matter, that they have a part to play, and that the future is unwritten, but it depends on each one of us stepping up to play our part.”

    Funded by a mix of 50 philanthropic foundations and individual donors, Be The People builds on research that indicates many people want to contribute to their communities but don’t know how. The initiative has raised more than $200 million for its first year’s budget.

    Founding members range from nonprofits — including GivingTuesday, Goodwill Industries and Habitat for Humanity, businesses like Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and the National Basketball Association, to funders like the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

    Hooks said this is a 10-year commitment toward trying to achieve what would be a profound shift in behavior and culture. He referenced a 2024 Pew Research Center survey that found most Americans in 2023 and 2024 did not believe that the U.S. could solve its most important problems, saying it was a “red alert” for the country.

    Hooks said the initiative envisions actions far beyond volunteering or service that people could do in their free time. He pointed to a role for businesses and schools and said the initiative would launch a major data collection effort to track whether people are actually more engaged and whether problems are actually getting solved.

    Stand Together, which was founded by the billionaire Charles Koch, works across a broad range of issues and communities in the U.S. and has carved out a role for itself as a convener that can bring coalitions together across ideological lines.

    “Be The People,” will not incorporate as a new nonprofit, but act more like a banner for groups to organize under and use to connect to resources. As an example, at the Atlanta Hawks game on Monday, Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, linked a program they launched last year, Realize the Dream, which aims to increase acts of service, to the new campaign.

    “Our vision is that ‘Be The People’ helps lift up what is already happening in communities across the country and reminds people that service and shared responsibility are defining parts of the American story,” the Kings said in a written statement.

    “Be The People,” will operate similarly to the nonprofit GivingTuesday. While it started as a hashtag to encourage people to donate to nonprofits on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, GivingTuesday has grown into a platform that provides nonprofits with tools, like fundraising kits and advice on how to reach and mobilize their supporters. Nonprofits can participate however they like but gain some momentum by acting alongside many other groups.

    “Our experience with GivingTuesday is that when people volunteer together, when people work together on something to do with positive social impact, they find it harder and harder to demonize each other,” said Asha Curran, its CEO.

    The initiative comes against a backdrop of deep polarization, economic inequality and the degradation of democratic norms and institutions in the U.S.

    A growing number of private foundations have started funding issues related to the health of U.S. democracy, said Kristin Goss, a professor who directs the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism at Duke University. While foundations cannot participate in elections, Goss said they can influence policy or public opinion in other ways.

    “Funders are getting more concerned about of the health of American democracy, the future of the democratic experiment and pluralism and inclusion,” Goss said.

    Another group of funders, including the Freedom Together Foundation, launched a project last year to recognize people and groups who stand up for their communities, which they called a “civic bravery” award. In a November report, they issued a similar call for funders to invest in helping individuals organize together in response to a rise in authoritarianism.

    Hooks and the other leaders of “Be The People” have also convened major communications teams to help tell these stories, which they think are lost in the current information ecosystem.

    “What we’re doing is we’re helping to lift up the story of Americans that is unfolding at the local level, but is not breaking through,” Hooks said. “So we’re holding up a mirror and a microphone to Americans to reveal to each other who we truly are.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • From Farm Boy to Billionaire, Glen Taylor Gives $100M Back to Rural America

    Glen Taylor attends a Minnesota Timberwolves game on March 31, 2024. Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

    Glen Taylor, the founder of printing company Taylor Corp., is the wealthiest person in Minnesota. His roots, however, trace back to humble beginnings on a dairy farm just outside Comfrey, Minn. Now, the 84-year-old billionaire is looking to spread his wealth across his home state—and beyond—through a new $100 million donation aimed at supporting rural communities.

    Taylor is transferring farmland and securities valued at nine figures to the Taylor Family Farms Foundation, a philanthropic initiative supporting rural areas in Minnesota and Iowa. “With this latest gift, I can give back for years to come and make a positive impact on the lives of others in a region that I love so much,” said Taylor in a statement.

    Taylor currently has an estimated net worth of $3.4 billion, according to Forbes. He is also the owner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the former majority owner of both the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx.

    This isn’t the first time Taylor has used his fortune to give back. In 2023, he launched the Taylor Family Farms Foundation with roughly $173 million worth of farmland. The foundation supports three nonprofit partners: the Mankato Area Foundation, Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. It also awards grants in Taylor’s key areas of interest, including child care, food insecurity, emergency medical services and outdoor recreation.

    Those earlier farmland gifts have already generated millions in income, which the foundation has directed toward a range of community needs. Past donations include $100,000 to fund a new ambulance at Buena Vista Regional Medical Center in Storm Lake, Iowa, $15,000 for firefighter radios at the Storm Lake Fire Department, and $25,000 to help the Pipestone Economic Authority create a child care center in Pipestone, Minn.

    Taylor’s latest farmland contributions will not simply be liquidated, but instead used to benefit local residents directly. The farmland will be made available to farmers and rented out, according to the Star Tribune, which noted that Taylor once owned nearly 18,000 acres of farmland across Minnesota and Iowa.

    Taylor is not alone in channeling billionaire wealth toward rural communities. Investment banker Byron Trott, who hails from the small town of Union, Mo., last year committed $150 million to a network of universities aimed at boosting enrollment from rural students. This effort has already increased applications by 20 percent. And last December, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $36 million to rural North Carolina schools like Robeson Community College and Bladen Community College.

    For Taylor, the motivation is deeply personal. He credits much of his success to his upbringing in southern Minnesota, where he worked on farms and raised chickens. “The children and families of rural communities will always hold a special place in my heart because I have shared their experiences,” he said. “I can think of no better way to create opportunities for them than by working in partnership with these amazing nonprofit organizations.”

    From Farm Boy to Billionaire, Glen Taylor Gives $100M Back to Rural America

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

    Source link

  • Mike Stoller Donates $3M to Help Altadena Fire Victims

    The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and his jazz musician wife Corky Hale Stoller have donated $3 million to the Black Freedom Fund

    During his formative teen years living near MacArthur Park, songwriter Mike Stoller hung out at Tommy’s at Rampart and Beverly. He learned his style from the east side pachucos and developed his musical taste in the Black jazz clubs in South L.A. “I heard a lot of good music,” the 92-year-old Grammy winner tells Los Angeles. “We used to hang out at the Club Alabam and Dolphin’s of Hollywood and the 5-4 Ballroom.” Stoller remembers catching gigs by esteemed artists as Count Basie and Chet Baker in the clubs along Central Avenue.

    Stoller and his partner, Jerry Leiber, exploded onto the scene in the early 1950s with compositions like “Hound Dog,” which became a number one hit for Elvis Presley but was originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton. “As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only,” Stoller says in Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography. “We wanted to write songs for black voices.” The duo’s string of hit compositions includes “Stand By Me”, “Yakety Yak”, “Kansas City” and “Poison Ivy.”

    Leiber and Stoller with the Coasters with Ahmet Ertegun at piano
    Credit: Photo courtesy of Leiber & Stoller

    Like many, Stoller was saddened to read about the musicians and artists who were displaced following the Eaton fire in Altadena last year. “Friends lost their homes in that area, and we had friends that lost their homes in the Palisades, but I was very moved by the idea of trying to preserve that community,” Stoller says about the $3 million grant that he and his wife Corky Hale Stoller, the esteemed jazz musician, have made to the Black L.A. Relief & Recovery Fund. “Our purpose was to preserve that community and keep it from being invaded, if you will, by real estate developers so that families and people who have lived there for a long time could return.”

    The fund, led by the California Community Foundation and the Black Freedom Fund, plans to make housing grants to 33 families in Altadena to rebuild in the aftermath of the fires.

    Mike Stoller with wife Corky Hale Stoller
    Credit: Photo courtesy Leiber and Stoler

    The Stollers have been major donors to the arts and to progressive causes over the years, including Homeboy Industries and Planned Parenthood. They helped revive the Pasadena Playhouse when it fell on hard times in 2010, and the Southern Poverty Law Center named its Civil Rights Memorial Theater after the couple. Homeboy’s music studio is also named for the Stollers. “Father (Gregory) Boyle said that there are young people here making music together rather than shooting each other,” Stoller says. “And that’s more important than the kind of music they play or the proficiency they have.”

    Stoller heard stories of displaced Altadena residents, including the son of painter Charles White, who was Stoller’s art instructor in the 1940s. “I’ve never met his son, but the whole thing impacted me, and we decided to do what we could. There were wonderful musicians that lost their homes and famous instruments,” Stoller says. “But most of all I was just taken with the loss of that wonderful African American and interracial community that was built from the time of redlining. That’s when African American people couldn’t buy land in L.A. because there were restrictive covenants where you could not sell to black people. (In Altadena) you had a good warm community with people who had lived there for generations.”

    Scroll to continue reading

    Cutting the ribbon on the Stoller music center at Homeboy Industries
    Credit: Photo courtesy Lieber and Stoller

    “When I was young, I went to a summer camp out of New York City, where I was born, and it was totally interracial,” Stoller says. “It was a very important part of my life and I was really moved to preserve such a community.”

    Chris Nichols

    Source link

  • Rudy Breedy returns to Long Island in nonprofit leadership role | Long Island Business News

    Canine Companions, a nonprofit service dog organization with a location in Medford, has tapped Rudy Breedy, a philanthropy professional, as executive director for its northeast region. The organization serves adults, children and veterans with disabilities, aiming to help them and their dogs live with greater independence. The organization provides dogs and support services, free of charge.

    “I’m truly grateful to have been asked to serve Canine Companions as Northeast Region Executive Director,” Breedy said in a news release about his role at the organization.

    “We all share a common goal here: to place more of our remarkable dogs with those in need –– one act of generosity at a time,” he said.

    “We’re excited to move Canine Companions’ mission forward under Rudy’s leadership,” Northeast Region Advisory Board President Heidi Petschauer said in a news release. “Our board is thrilled to work with him to continue advancing the mission of Canine Companions.”

    Breedy is a familiar face to many in Long Island’s business and nonprofit circles. Prior to a two-plus year position as the executive director of Institutional Advancement at SUNY Ulster Community College Foundation, he spent 12 years at the Nassau Community College Foundation, where he served as executive director and before that, director of development.

    Breedy’s earlier philanthropy positions include roles with the March of Dimes, American Red Cross, and Boys and Girls Club. He brings expertise in board development, volunteer recruitment and management, media relations, marketing, community outreach and staff management.

    Breedy grew up in New York and, according to the news release, now lives on Long Island. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Manhattanville University and his Master of Public Health-Administration from the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy at The New School.

    Founded in 1989, the Northeast Region of Canine Companions serves New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.


    Adina Genn

    Source link

  • The nation’s 250th anniversary arrives with a call for year-round community service

    NEW YORK — The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission wants to turn America’s 250th birthday celebration into the country’s single biggest year for volunteering.

    But America Gives, the program unveiled Wednesday just before the U.S. begins commemorating the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, will have to revitalize a culture of service that has recently waned. Declining volunteering rates still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. Just 28% of Americans said they volunteered time to a religious or secular charitable organization this year, according to a December AP-NORC poll.

    Organizers don’t know how many service hours they need to set the record and aren’t targeting a specific number. The idea is to leverage nationwide reflections on the country’s direction to encourage lasting community involvement that will strengthen nonprofits’ volunteer pipelines beyond 2026. Funding comes from congressional appropriations as well as corporate sponsors including Walmart and Coca-Cola.

    Participants are invited to pledge their time and log volunteering on an online tracker. Nonprofit partners include Girl Scouts of the USA, which will offer a volunteering badge to any of its roughly 1 million youth members who complete a service project, and Keep America Beautiful, which is leading efforts to clean up 250 million pieces of trash by the Fourth of July. JustServe — a service project coordinator sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — is sending 250 semitrucks to deliver food donations to 250 food banks across the 50 states.

    “We strongly believe that this is as much about the future as it is the past,” said America250 Chair Rosie Rios, who oversees the nonpartisan commission created by Congress to organize the anniversary. “Especially this next generation, we want them to give them something to believe in.”

    That forward-focused goal requires courting a demographic that many nonprofits struggle to reach: young volunteers.

    About one-quarter of adults under 30 said they volunteered their time to charity or provided non-financial support to people in their community in the past year, according to a March AP-NORC poll, compared with 36% of those over 60.

    Rios said America Gives is working with high schools, many of which already list community service as a graduation requirement, to ensure those volunteering hours are logged and build giving habits that continue after students’ secondary education.

    “They’re very passionate. They’re very purpose driven. They do want to give back,” Rios said, adding that “inspiring them to not just visualize, but maybe fuel their own future, is a big priority for us.”

    Service could be an opportunity to meet younger generations’ desire for in-person connections. Sofia Alvarez — a cohort lead for the Youth250 Bureau, a separate effort to center Gen Z perspectives throughout next year’s programming — said young people want “third spaces.” That means somewhere outside of home, school or work that feels “safe,” she said, but doesn’t require spending money.

    “I think any sort of craft or activity that really helps people connect, where they can chit chat and bond with each other, really builds that sense of community,” Alvarez said.

    Sarah Keating, vice president of Girl and Volunteer Experience at Girl Scouts of the USA, said they’ve had to make their volunteer opportunities more manageable.

    Young people want to give back, Keating said, but they are busy and don’t know how. She said nonprofits must offer experiences “that match their lives.” Someone might not have time to lead an entire troop, for example, but they can help lead a specific badge program.

    “A campaign like this shines a light on the multitude of ways that you can volunteer — that it doesn’t have to be whatever stereotype you have in your head,” she said of America Gives. “There are small ways to volunteer. There are big ways to volunteer.”

    The patriotic appeal must also overcome extreme polarization and the slow erosion of national pride — trends that America Gives organizers believe they can counter with their call to action.

    Acknowledging political divisions, Rios said the commission’s research shows that most Americans want to bring back a spirit of volunteerism.

    “It is about one country,” she said. “I think there’s gonna be a lot of people who feel like now, more than ever, we all need to stand up.”

    Keep America Beautiful CEO Jennifer Lawson expects her nationwide nonprofit network to unify people around the bridge issue of litter. Her benchmark next year is to reach 4 million volunteers through local chapters devoted to cleaning up their communities, planting trees and making gardens.

    Lawson wants the volunteer opportunities to show people patriotism is an action — not a concept — that involves working with your neighbors.

    “It doesn’t have to be all flags and tricornered hats,” Lawson said. “Patriotism in this country is an act of giving into community.”

    America Gives will engage volunteers beyond July 4th in an attempt to build up the habit of giving back. Volunteers who register their service hours can enter a sweepstakes where 250 randomly selected winners will get to donate $4,000 to an approved nonprofit partner.

    The program also plans to rally people around the national days of service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and 9/11. The year-round goal will be to keep things as local as possible.

    “It should be on people’s minds all the time, not just the day that they’re doing service,” Rios said. “But how do they plan ahead to keep it going?

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • MacKenzie Scott Gave Away $7.2B in 2025—Here’s Who Benefited Most

    MacKenzie Scott’s donations this year centered heavily on education. Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

    MacKenzie Scott keeps her giving largely out of the public eye—allowing recipients to decide whether to disclose funding amounts, awarding mostly unsolicited grants, and acknowledging her philanthropy only through annual or semi-annual online posts. The one thing that isn’t subtle about her donations? Their size.

    Scott gave a staggering $7.2 billion in 2025, the philanthropist revealed in a blog post earlier this month. The annual update brings her total giving over the past six years to more than $26 billion. It also places her just behind fellow billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in lifetime philanthropic giving.

    Scott, whose estimated $30 billion net worth is largely tied to her Amazon stake from her former marriage to Jeff Bezos, pledged in 2019 to donate the bulk of this fortune to charity. If this year’s totals are any indication, she is accelerating toward that goal: her 2025 giving far outpaced the $2.6 billion and $2.1 billion she donated in 2024 and 2023, respectively.

    “This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year,” Scott wrote in her blog post. She pointed to the $471 billion donated to U.S. charities in 2020, nearly a third of which came from gifts under $5,000, as evidence of the power of collective philanthropy.

    Of the nearly 200 organizations supported by Scott in 2025, roughly 120 were repeat grantees. The largest single grant went to Forests, People, Climate (FPC), a collaborative charitable effort focused on reversing tropical deforestation, which received $90 million—boosting its total funding to more than $1 billion. “Now is the time for climate philanthropy to take action with vision and courage: to embrace the potential of forests and back the bold leaders best suited to protect them,” said Lindsey Allen, executive director of FPC, in a statement announcing the gift earlier this month.

    The second-largest donation went to another environmental organization, Ocean Resilience & Climate Alliance, while a slew of other major gifts flowed toward education. She donated $70 million to both UNCF and Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which support historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and also gave $63 million each to Prairie View A&M University, Morgan State University and Howard University. Other notable education-focused recipients included the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and Native Forward Scholars Fund, which received $70 million and $50 million, respectively.

    As a result, education emerged as the largest beneficiary of Scott’s 2025 giving, accounting for 18 percent of the total. Organizations focused on economic security and funding and regranting each received 13 percent, while environmental causes accounted for 12 percent. Additional funding went to groups working in equity and justice, democratic processes, health, and arts and culture.

    Besides the sheer scale of her philanthropy, Scott’s approach stands out for its unrestricted nature, giving grantees full control over how funds are used. That flexibility has been widely welcomed, according to a recent study from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which found that nearly 90 percent of surveyed organizations reported improved long-term financial sustainability as a result of Scott’s donations. The median grant size was $5 million.

    Scott has attributed her generosity to the kindness she has received from others. “Whose generosity did I think of every time I made every one of the thousands of gifts I’ve been able to give?” she wrote. “It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college. It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year.”

    The roommate, Jeannie Tarkenton, later founded Funding U, a lending company offering loans to low-income students without the need for co-signers. Scott has since earmarked funds for the company, she noted in her recent blog post, describing how she “[jumped] at the chance to be one of the people who supported her dreams of supporting students just as she had once supported me.”

    Scott’s financial contributions to Funding U will take the form of an investment rather than a donation. Alongside her philanthropic giving, she announced last year that she plans to pursue for-profit investments in “mission-aligned ventures” aimed at addressing challenges such as affordable housing and access to health care.

    MacKenzie Scott Gave Away $7.2B in 2025—Here’s Who Benefited Most

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

    Source link

  • MacKenzie Scott’s close relationship with Toni Morrison long before Amazon put her on the path give more than $1 billion to HBCUs | Fortune

    Before MacKenzie Scott published her first novel or helped shape Amazon in its early days as an online book seller, she found mentorship and guidance from one of America’s most acclaimed writers.

    Scott credits author and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison not only with shaping her writing, but in helping her find her footing early in her career. Morrison, who was Scott’s creative writing professor at Princeton University, put Scott on a path to publish her first novel and get one of her first jobs out of school, where she met now ex-husband Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.

    “This writer that I admired so much also turned out to be such a gifted and devoted teacher,” Scott said of Morrison in a 2017 Princeton University interview. “She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling.”

    Scott has certainly had multiple callings. In addition to being a novelist and early contributor to Amazon, Scott, worth about $40 billion, is a prominent philanthropist. In 2025 alone, she donated $7.1 billion to nonprofits, and has given away more than $26 billion since 2019. She’s a signatory of the Giving Pledge, devoted to giving away the majority of her wealth during her lifetime.

    More than $700 million of Scott’s donations this year have gone to historically Black colleges and universities, at a time when tech leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have pulled back from funding DEI initiatives. With about $500 million given to HBCUs in 2020, Scott’s contributions to Black higher-ed institutions total more than $1.2 billion. These grants are unrestricted, meaning universities can do with the money as they see fit.

    Some of Scott’s contributions have resulted in homages to her old mentor, who died in 2019: In February 2022, Howard University announced the creation of the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities position using Scott’s $3 million donation to the college.

    Toni Morrison’s influence on MacKenzie Scott

    Scott and Morrison, having met more than 30 years ago at Princeton, worked together closely, with Morrison serving as Scott’s senior thesis advisor. The author called Scott “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes . . . really one of the best.”

    “She was an amazingly supportive teacher, really good at bringing out the best and guiding you through that [writing] process and very supportive after I left school too,” Scott told American talk show host Charlie Rose in a 2013 interview.

    The two kept in touch in the years following Scott’s 1992 graduation. Morrison was instrumental in helping the philanthropist publish her first book, introducing Scott to her agent Amanda Urban. When Scott published her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, in 2005, Morrison wrote a blurb for the cover of the book.

    In letters to Morrison, excerpted by The New York Times, Scott shared her struggles as a recent graduate, waitressing in New York.

    “I guess the only way I will find out what will not work for me in life is by trying it,” she wrote. “I found myself with unpredictable and small chunks of time during which I either collapsed from exhaustion and frustration, or ruminated over the excruciating monotony of making and selling sandwiches, and worried about how I might pay my rent with the nickels they gave me in exchange for my ennui.”

    She soon got an opportunity to work at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and was interviewed for the position she would get by Bezos, who would sit in the office adjacent to her at the firm. The two would leave the firm in 1994 after getting married the year before, with Bezos founding Amazon in the garage of their Bellevue, Wash., home.

    In another letter to Morrison shortly after she took the position at D.E. Shaw, Scott said she got the job “based largely on a transcript of your phone recommendation.”

    Sasha Rogelberg

    Source link

  • How a fast-moving $50 cash relief program buoyed needy families when SNAP payments were paused

    Finances already looked tight for Jade Grant and her three children as she entered the year’s final months.

    “Everyone’s birthday is back-to-back,” the 32-year-old certified nursing assistant said. “You have holidays coming up. You have Thanksgiving. Everything is right there. And then, boom. No (food) stamps.”

    Grant is among the nearly 42 million lower-income Americans who get help buying groceries from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. When the federal shutdown began in October, she wasn’t worried about losing her benefits — she said she is used to government “foolishness.”

    But circumstances got dicey when the budget impasse entered its second month and President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of freezing November SNAP payments. With one child who eats gluten free and another with many allergies, specialty items already drove up her grocery bill. Now Grant wondered how she’d put food on the table — especially with her youngest’s 6th birthday approaching.

    Then Grant logged into Propel, an app used by 5 million people to manage their electronic benefits transfers, where she saw a pop-up banner inviting her to apply for a relief program. Within a minute she’d completed a survey and about two days later she got a virtual $50 gift card.

    The total didn’t come close to her monthly SNAP allotment. But the Palm Bay, Florida, resident said it was enough to buy a customized “ Bluey ” birthday cake for her son.

    Nearly a quarter of a million families got that same cash injection from the nonprofit GiveDirectly as they missed SNAP deposits many need to feed their households. The collaboration with Propel proved to be the largest disaster response in the international cash assistance group’s history outside of COVID-19; non-pandemic records were set with the $12 million raised, more than 246,000 beneficiaries enrolled and 5,000 individual donors reached.

    Recipients are still recovering from the uncertainty of last month’s SNAP delays. Company surveys suggest many are dealing with the long-term consequences of borrowing money in early November when their benefits didn’t arrive on time, according to Propel CEO Jimmy Chen. At a time when users felt the existing safety net had fallen through, they credit the rapid payments for buoying them — both financially and emotionally.

    “It’s not a lot. But at the same time, it is a lot,” Grant said. “Because $50 can do a lot when you don’t have anything.”

    It’s not the first partnership for the antipoverty nonprofit and for-profit software company. They have previously combined GiveDirectly’s fast cash model with Propel’s verified user base to get money out to natural disaster survivors — including $1,000 last year to some households impacted by Hurricanes Milton and Helene.

    “This particular incident with the shutdown we saw as akin to a natural disaster,” Chen said, “in the sense that it created a really sudden and really acute form of hardship for many Americans across the country.”

    The scope differed this time. The “man-made disaster,” as GiveDirectly U.S. Country Director Dustin Palmer put it, was not geographically isolated. The benefits freeze impacted more people than they usually serve. SNAP costs almost $10 billion a month, Palmer said, so they never expected to raise enough money to replace the delayed benefits altogether.

    But 5,000 individual donors — plus $1 million gifts from Propel and New York nonprofit Robin Hood, as well as other major foundations’ support — provided a sizable pot. Palmer found that the issue resonated more than he expected.

    GiveDirectly reports that the median donation was $100. Palmer took that response as a sign the issue hit close for many Americans.

    “You and I know SNAP recipients. Maybe we’ve been SNAP recipients,” Palmer said. “So that was not a disaster in Central Texas where I’ve never been, but something in our communities.”

    The greatest question revolved around the total sum of each cash transfer. Should they reach more people with fewer dollars or vice versa? Los Angeles wildfire survivors, for example, got $3,500 each from a similar GiveDirectly campaign. But that’s because they wanted to provide enough to cover a month’s worth of lodging and transit to those who lost their houses.

    They settled on $50 because Palmer said they wanted a “stopgap” that represented “a meaningful trip to the grocery store.” To equitably focus their limited resources on the that would be missing the most support, Palmer said they targeted families with children that receive the maximum SNAP allotment. Propel’s software allowed them to send money as soon as the app detected that a family’s benefits hadn’t arrived at the usual time of the month.

    Recipients decided whether their prepaid debit cards arrived physically, which might allow them to take cash out of an ATM, or virtually, which could be used almost immediately. The split is usually pretty even, according to Palmer, but this time more than 90% of recipients went with the virtual option.

    “To me, that speaks to the speed and need for people,” Palmer said. “Just saying, ‘Oh yeah, I just need food today. I don’t want to wait to get it mailed.’”

    Dianna Tompkins relies on her SNAP balance to feed her toddler and 8-year-old child.

    “I watch it like a hawk, honestly,” she said.

    But she said she entered “panic mode” when she missed what is usually a $976 deposit last month. She’s a gig worker, completing DoorDash and Uber Eats orders when she finds the time.

    Her pantry is always stocked with non-perishables — canned goods, pastas, sauces — in case her unreliable van stops working and she can’t get to the store. But she couldn’t risk running out as uncertainty continued over the shutdown’s length and future SNAP payments.

    GiveDirectly’s $50 bought her milk and bread — not much but a “big help,” she said. Her local food pantries in Demotte, Indiana, had proven inconsistent. One week they gave far more than expected, she said, but the following week they were “so overwhelmed” that it almost wasn’t worth visiting.

    She said it’s “scary” the government “can just decide to not feed so many people.”

    “At least I have my safety net but not everybody’s lucky,” she said. “I’ve never trusted the government and that’s just a new solid reason why I don’t trust them.”

    Chen, the Propel CEO, said his company’s research suggests that November’s freeze damaged many recipients’ confidence in the government. Even with SNAP funded through the next fiscal year, Chen said, many respondents are concerned about another shutdown.

    “Now it’s introduced this seed of doubt for people that this really fundamental thing that they use to pay for food may not be there when they need it,” Chen said.

    The gap persists for many. Propel estimates that just over half of SNAP recipients got their benefits late last month. GiveDirectly launched an additional “mop-up” campaign to distribute cash retroactively for more than 8,000 people still reeling.

    The delay disrupted the financial balancing act that Grant had going. She put off payments for her electricity bill and car insurance.

    “Government shuts down and that just throws everything completely off,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are awarding $5 million to a leader in neurodiversity education

    NEW YORK — Mega billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, former news anchor Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are awarding $5 million to the founder of a neurodivergent student support network, a recognition that the lesser-known recipient credits to the students powering his fast-growing movement for more inclusive classrooms.

    “I feel like there’s a narrative sometimes that our little actions don’t matter,” Neurodiversity Alliance CEO David Flink said. “That’s just not true. And this proves it. Lots of little actions that happen every day in our work, collectively over time, reached the ears of folks like Lauren and Jeff.”

    Flink is among this year’s five winners of the Bezos Courage & Civility Award. Given most years since 2021, the grant celebrates barrier-breaking individuals who unify people behind bold solutions to often neglected challenges. The no-strings-attached prize money can be used however honorees want to pursue their charitable goals.

    The Neurodiversity Alliance began over 25 years ago as a peer-to-peer mentorship program for students with various learning and developmental differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia. The nonprofit now reaches more than 600 high schools and colleges, encouraging youth to build educational environments that serve classmates whose brains function differently from what is considered typical.

    The Bezoses, who tied the knot this summer in a lavish Venice ceremony that drew protests highlighting wealth inequality, did not release any explanation for their support of the cause. The Amazon founder’s net worth sits around $240 billion, according to Forbes, making him the fourth richest person in the world.

    Bezos has previously shown an interest in early childhood education through his nonprofit network of tuition-free preschools inspired by the Montessori model.

    Sánchez Bezos grew up with undiagnosed dyslexia. She told “Good Morning America” last year that her children’s book, “The Fly Who Flew to Space,” is for “the 8-year-old me who was told I wasn’t smart.” She credited a college professor, who recruited her to the school newspaper despite her insistence that she could not spell, for encouraging her to get tested.

    The selection of Flink marks a departure from the award’s previous higher profile recipients. Past honorees include CNN political commentator Van Jones, World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, actor-director Eva Longoria and country superstar Dolly Parton. The shift reflects a desire to get the money closer to the ground rather than let well-known figures distribute money to the nonprofits of their choice.

    The smaller scale approach differs from many of Bezos’ ultra wealthy peers, according to an Indiana University professor emeritus in public affairs and philanthropic studies. Leslie Lenkowsky said that today’s entrepreneur-philanthropists — Bill Gates, for example — tend to focus on systemic change in the realms of health or education.

    “Rather than trying to change the system, what they’re trying to do is provide funding to individuals or communities to deal with important issues,” Lenkowsky said of the Bezoses. “It really is a much older model of philanthropy.”

    The award’s size is also smaller this year. Five winners are equally splitting a $25 million pot whereas past awards have totaled as much as $100 million.

    Flink said the money will help the alliance meet its goal of reaching more than 2,000 sites by 2028. He promised to invest in growing the mentorship program, telling more stories that challenge negative narratives about neurodiversity and expanding the national network of student leaders who get training to sustain their schools’ clubs.

    He said this support is especially important when “the demand has never been greater” and they’ve witnessed “some oscillation” in the resources that schools receive.

    The Trump administration’s dismantling of the Education Department has included mass layoffs at the agency charged with addressing complaints that students with disabilities are not receiving adequate support from their schools. Earlier this month, the department brought back dozens of Office for Civil Rights staffers, saying their help is needed to tackle a growing backlog of discrimination complaints.

    Kala Shah, an attorney whose 24-year tenure at the Department of Education included enforcing protections for students with disabilities, said that neurodivergent students depend on that oversight.

    “This is an especially critical time for private foundations and philanthropy to help fill the gap in resources that’s been created by the current federal climate,” she said.

    __

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • Long Island firm launches $400K scholarship at SUNY Old Westbury | Long Island Business News

    THE BLUEPRINT:

    • Deer Park Recycling donates $400,000 to create the Jeffrey M. Sissons Memorial Scholarship Fund

    • 10 scholarships of up to $40,000 each support students from Westbury or New Cassel

    • Scholarships target first-year students with economic need and are renewable for up to four years

    • First awardee plans to pursue a career in medicine

    A Westbury-based company is investing $400,000 to fund 10 four-year scholarships, up to $40,000 each, for students from Westbury or New Cassel attending SUNY Old Westbury, the university announced Monday.

    Deer Park Recycling, a provider of scrap metal recycling, is creating the Jeffrey M. Sissons Memorial Scholarship Fund through a donation to the Old Westbury College Foundation, Inc. The donation was given by Anthony Sissons to honor the life, career and philanthropic legacy of his father, the company’s founder who died in 2024.

    “These scholarships were something my father and I discussed often,” Anthony Sissons said about the new scholarship.

    “Along with his work career, my father offered support to the community our company calls home, but he did it quietly and without recognition,” Sissons said. “With these scholarships, we are able to put his name on a program that reflects his values of hard work, generosity and community support.”

    The scholarship is designed to support high-achieving students and provides funding for tuition, fees and other university-related expenses.

    New awards will be given in the fall to one first-year student enrolling full-time who demonstrates economic need but does not otherwise qualify for financial aid. The scholarship may be renewed annually for up to three additional years, provided the student remains enrolled and maintains a GPA of 2.7 or higher.

    “Philanthropic investment where we live and work is key to lifting up our communities and the friends and neighbors who live there,” University President Timothy Sams said in the news release.

    “The Sissons scholarship fund represents well the history of quiet caring that Jeffrey Sissons showed across his life and career,” Sams added. “His legacy now continues on by making higher education available to the best and brightest from Westbury and New Cassel.”

    The college foundation’s Board of Trustees Chair Nora Bassett said in the news release that this “remarkable gift will open doors for deserving young people who dream of going to college but may lack the financial means. We are honored to carry forward the memory of Jeffrey Sissons through the success of these scholars.”

    The university announced on Monday that the first scholarship awardee is Alexa Santiago Munoz, a first-year biochemistry major from New Cassel who hopes to become a physician, but was wary about taking on debt.

    “This scholarship is helping me build a future as a doctor that I hope will improve the lives of those who come from communities like mine,” Santiago Munoz said in the news release.  “I am already thinking about ways to make sure I open doors for others the way this opportunity opened a door for me.”

     


    Adina Genn

    Source link

  • Stop Treating Nonprofits as Charities

    For those of us who invest deeply in our communities—whether as donors, board members, or philanthropic leaders—we are at a pivotal moment. The decisions we make now will shape the strength of our social infrastructure for decades to come. 

    I’ve worked in the social sector for many years, in nonprofits, philanthropy, and as the founder of a social enterprise focused on strategy and data to help nonprofits amplify their mission impact. Over that time, I’ve witnessed many cycles of change, shifts in trust, funding, voice, evidence, and empathy. 

    During the pandemic, we saw the nonprofit sector pushed to its limits as organizations stretched to support more individuals and families than ever before. Federal and philanthropic dollars surged in response, allowing many organizations to meet those unprecedented needs. It was a moment of both strain and collective commitment. 

    Today, however, we’re facing a new transformation, one that is far more consequential but significantly less resourced. Federal funding has dropped sharply. Philanthropic giving has not increased to fill the gap. And while economic instability challenges families with fewer means, demand for nonprofit services continues to rise. 

    These forces are reshaping the sector. About 30 percent of nonprofits have lost direct funding, and a higher percentage are indirectly affected as the competition for limited dollars intensifies. In my 30-plus years working in this space, I have not seen a shift of this magnitude. 

    A sector under pressure 

    Every industry evolves and those that fail to adapt lose ground. Change, contraction, and disruption can spur innovation, but for nonprofits, the stakes are far higher. These organizations provide the essential scaffolding that holds communities together. When they falter, the consequences ripple through families, neighborhoods, and local economies. 

    Two forces, in particular, are accelerating this disruption. 

    1. The dual customer problem 

    Nonprofits, like for-profit companies, create products and services. But unlike businesses, their customers are the people they serve but are not the people who pay them. Instead, nonprofits are funded by philanthropic donors, government grants, and foundations. 

    This creates a “dual customer” dynamic: Nonprofits must serve both their program participants and their funders. These two groups have vastly different needs and expectations. Managing both well requires more resources, not fewer. 

    It’s a nuance many outside the sector overlook. In my own company, when we drift from our ideal client, our focus fragments, quality declines, and efficiency suffers. Nonprofits live this challenge daily, and it is multiplied by the fact that they are accountable to two audiences whose interests are not always aligned. 

    2. The myth of low overhead 

    For decades, donors judged nonprofit worthiness by how “efficiently” they operated—specifically, how little they spent on overhead. The ideal became a 10 percent cap on administrative costs. 

    This cap is unsustainable. No business could deliver quality products, attract strong leadership, and grow customer trust with only 10 percent of its budget covering essential operations. Layer in the dual-customer challenge, and it’s a recipe for burnout and underperformance. 

    Although attention to this issue has increased, the damage lingers. Funding structures, grant requirements, and even leaders’ own mindsets have baked in the assumption that operating costs should be minimal. 

    The result?Systems for tracking data and measuring impact are considered as too much overhead, investments in fundraising capacity are capped, and leadership salaries are scrutinized. With this, organizations are left to do more with less—often at the expense of quality and long-term sustainability. 

    Changing this requires not just new funding. It requires a mindset shift. 

    A call for change 

    These constraints keep many nonprofits small, fragile, and reactive at a time when communities need them to be strong, strategic, and resilient. As public dollars recede, philanthropic leaders—particularly high-capacity individual donors—have a pivotal role to play. We are reaching a critical inflection point. 

    If we want thriving communities and a resilient economy, we must stop treating the nonprofit sector as charity and start recognizing it as infrastructure. 

    Independent Sector reports that nonprofits represent 5 percent of GDP, contribute more than $1.5 trillion to the economy, and employ nine percent of the workforce. This is infrastructure—human, social, economic. And infrastructure must be intentionally built, invested in, and strengthened. 

    As business leaders, we understand that strategy, data, and talent fuel performance. Bringing rigor and an investment mindset to philanthropy strengthens this infrastructure.Let’s fund in a way that truly drives results—not just what feels good in the moment. And when we fund for success, we should expect clear demonstration of results. 

    A vision for what comes next 

    Imagine a sector where nonprofits have the strategic capacity, data systems, leadership pipelines, and financial flexibility that any high-performing business requires. Imagine funders investing in long-term outcomes rather than short-term activity. Imagine communities benefiting from organizations that are not merely surviving but proactively shaping solutions. 

    Funding nonprofits as infrastructure means: 

    • Investing in strong leaders, not scrutinizing their salaries. 
    • Funding data and evaluation, not labeling them unnecessary overhead. 
    • Supporting multi-year, unrestricted capital, not short-term, narrow grants. 
    • Partnering as thought partners, not just check writers. 
    • Expecting results, and resourcing organizations to achieve them. 

    This is the reset the sector needs—and the reset we have the opportunity to create.The health of the nonprofit sector is the health of our communities. And our economy, our cities, and our future depend on both thriving together. 

    Let’s lead the next era of social impact by funding nonprofits like the essential infrastructure they are. Our communities cannot afford anything less. 

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Cindy Eby

    Source link

  • Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $7.1 billion to nonprofits in 2025, a major increase

    NEW YORK (AP) — The author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed $7.1 billion in donations to nonprofits in 2025 Tuesday, marking a significant increase in her annual giving from recent years.

    Writing in an essay on her website, Scott said, “This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year.”

    Scott acknowledged donating $2.6 billion in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023. The gifts this year bring her total giving since 2019 to $26.3 billion.

    Scott’s donations have captured the attention of nonprofits and other charitable funders because they come with no strings attached and are often very large compared to the annual budgets of the recipient organizations. Forbes estimates Scott’s net worth at $33 billion, most of which comes from Amazon shares she received after her 2019 divorce from company founder Jeff Bezos..

    With the exception of an open call for applications in 2023, it is not possible to apply for her funding nor to reach her directly, as Scott maintains no public facing office or foundation. Organizations are usually notified through an intermediary that Scott is awarding them a donation with little prelude or warning.

    In advance of her announcement on her website, Yield Giving, more than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities revealed they had received $783 million in donations from Scott so far this year, according to research from Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Rutgers University and expert on HBCUs.

    “One of the things that I really admire about Mackenzie Scott is that she is like an equity machine,” Gasman said, especially at a time when efforts to promote equity in education have come under attack from the Trump administration. She also said Scott’s gifts to HBCUs this time are bigger than the round of donations she made in 2020.

    Not all of the schools that previously had received funding from Scott received a gift this time and there were some first-time recipients as well. In total, Gasman has tracked $1.35 billion in donations from Scott to HBCUs since 2020.

    In addition, UNCF, which is the largest provider of scholarships to minority students, received $70 million from Scott, and said it will invest the gift in a collective endowment it is building for participating HBCUs. Another $50 million went to Native Forward Scholars Fund, which had also received a previous gift from Scott and provides college and graduate scholarships to Native American students.

    Unlike Scott’s gifts, most foundations or major donors direct grants to specific programs and require an application and updates about the impact of the nonprofit’s work. Scott does not ask grantees to report back about how they used the money.

    Research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy in 2023 looked at the impact of Scott’s giving and found few of the recipients have struggled to manage the funds or have seen other funders pullback.

    Kim Mazzuca, the CEO of the California-based nonprofit, 10,000 Degrees, said her organization was notified of its first gift from Scott of $42 million earlier this year.

    “I was just filled with such joy. I was speechless and I kind of stumbled around with my words,” she said, and asked the person calling from Fidelity Charitable to clarify the donation amount, which is about double their annual budget.

    10,000 Degrees provides scholarships, mentoring and other support to low-income students and aims to help them graduate college without taking on loans. Mazzuca said that usually nonprofits grow only gradually, but that this gift will allow them to reach more students, to test some technology tools and to start an endowment.

    Mazzuca credited Scott for investing in proven solutions that already exist.

    “She comes from a very deep, reflective space, very heartfelt,” Mazzuca said. “And she’s only providing these financial means as a tool for people to recognize they are who they’ve been waiting for.”

    That idea references a prophecy from the Hopi Tribe that ends with the line, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Mazzuca said she’s drawn on the prophecy for years to empower both her organization and the students it supports to recognize their own power to shape our world.

    In October, Scott posted an essay on her website under that title and sharing the prophecy. The essay, which she expanded upon in December to announce her giving, also reflects on how acts of generosity and kindness can ripple far afield and into the future. She cited her own experiences getting help while in college, including a dentist who repaired a tooth for free and her roommate who loaned her $1,000.

    Scott now has invested in that same roommate’s company, which offers loans to students who would otherwise struggle to get financing from banks. The investments seem to be part of an effort Scott announced last year to move more of her money into “mission aligned” investments, rather than into vehicles that seek only the highest monetary returns.

    In her 2025 essay, Scott seemed to urge people toward action, writing, “There are many ways to influence how we move through the world, and where we land.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • MacKenzie Scott’s college roommate once loaned her $1K. Now it’s the billionaire’s turn to invest

    NEW YORK (AP) — MacKenzie Scott, one of the world’s wealthiest women and most influential philanthropists, is now known for her “no strings attached” surprise grantmaking. But, as a Princeton University sophomore, she learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of generosity.

    Facing the prospect of dropping out if she couldn’t come up with $1,000, Scott was crying when her roommate, Jeannie Tarkenton, found her and got her dad to loan Scott the money.

    “I would have given MacKenzie my left kidney,” Tarkenton told the Associated Press recently. “Like, that’s just what you do for friends.”

    Today, Scott’s net worth is around $34 billion, according to Forbes. In October, Scott wrote that Tarkenton’s act is among the many personal kindnesses she has considered as she has donated more than $19 billion of the wealth she amassed mostly through Amazon shares as part of her 2019 divorce from company founder Jeff Bezos. And when Tarkenton started Funding U, a lending company that offers last-gap, merit-based loans to low-income students without co-signers, Scott said she jumped at the chance to help.

    A quarter century passed between the end of their sophomore year and Funding U’s creation, a period when Tarkenton realized just how many more students were being pushed into her former roommate’s position by the rising cost of college. That Scott took an interest in her old friend’s mission to help economically disadvantaged students finance school is unsurprising. Her unusual gifts — which she rarely discusses or discloses outside of essays and a database on her website, Yield Giving — tend to focus on issues of equity, higher education and economic security.

    Jeannie Tarkenton poses for a photo Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

    But the revelation of Scott’s Funding U support offers a new glimpse into her investments. Scott wrote last year that she would invest in “mission-aligned ventures” led by “undercapitalized groups” that focus on “for-profit solutions” to the challenges that her philanthropy seeks to address. However, this is among the few confirmed publicly.

    “She’s looking for innovative ways to create opportunity for those that don’t have it,” said Marybeth Gasman, who runs Rutgers’ Center for Minority Serving Institutions and follows Scott’s donations. “I have to say, as somebody who went to school on a Pell Grant and who came from an extremely low-income family, that’s really meaningful.”

    Amplifying impact

    Scott, in many ways, resembled the exact students that Funding U seeks to serve. Tarkenton recalled the undergraduate Scott as a “hardworking student with very good grades” who was “highly focused” and had already been accepted into a competitive program.

    Her lending company plugs those sorts of details — student transcripts and internship experiences, for example— into an algorithm that determines the likelihood applicants will complete college, get a job and make enough money to pay back the loan.

    Tarkenton suggested that this formula is fairer — and more predictive — than existing criteria that determine loan eligibility based on the credit histories of students or their co-signers.

    Scott provides most of the “junior debt” they use to reduce the risk for larger investments from banks such as Goldman Sachs, according to Tarkenton. She is among a handful of philanthropists who provide 30 cents for every dollar that Funding U loans. These funders lend at concessionary rates, meaning they make less money back than the market suggests they should and wait a longer period of time to recoup the money.

    Funding U gets the other 70% from banks, who support them to comply with federal laws aimed at preventing anti-poor discrimination by requiring banks to make loans that benefit their communities.

    “I wanted to combine capital from people who were participating in this because they cared about the underlying person,” Tarkenton said, “and also, knowing that scale of philanthropy wasn’t quite big enough, bring to the table some sort of market solution alongside that capital.”

    Jeannie Tarkenton poses for a photo Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

    Jeannie Tarkenton poses for a photo Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Megan Varner)

    A philanthropic endeavor?

    Tarkenton is clear: the endeavor isn’t philanthropic. Funding U is a company, after all, and Scott will eventually get her money back — just as she repaid Tarkenton’s informal loan all those years ago at Princeton.

    But the approach represents a model that Scott’s former roommate thinks more philanthropists should embrace. Tarkenton said there’s more space for the likes of Scott to “bring a spirit of investment” that serves a “greater good” but isn’t purely charitable.

    “I think philanthropists can get a little messier and do more with their money,” Tarkenton said. “I’m all about pushing philanthropists in a very aligned way.”

    It’s why she started Funding U. Working at an Atlanta-based adult literacy nonprofit, Tarkenton said she noticed persistent disparities in degree completion rates based on socioeconomic status. She found the problem too big for philanthropy to solve. But the need was too small for most market players to care about addressing, she said.

    Scott described the Funding U loans as “generosity- and gratitude-powered” in an Oct. 15 essay about the ripple effects of kindness.

    Panorama founder Gabrielle Fitzgerald, whose social impact nonprofit tracks Scott’s giving, said the investment is “very consistent with her approach to ensuring students have access to higher education.” She said many funders see impact investing as a critical part of their giving portfolios.

    “It shows that she’s using all the tools at her disposal to pursue her goals,” Fitzgerald said.

    And the full circle impact of Tarkenton’s college-era loan?

    “It’s a really lovely story in a time when we’re not seeing a lot of kindness and generosity,” Fitzgerald added. “And just a reminder that helping your fellow humans is both a good thing to do at the time and something that could have a massive impact down the road.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis follows science and steady funding to a broader mission

    Marc Buoniconti said his father, the late NFL Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti, explained the secret to the success of their nonprofit and its fundraising efforts simply: “We’re just not good listeners.”

    In the 40 years since Marc Buoniconti, then a college football linebacker at the Citadel, was paralyzed during a routine tackle, they have been told countless times that it was a problem that couldn’t be fixed. The Buonicontis didn’t listen.

    Instead, through the fund that bears their name, they have helped raise more than $550 million for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and improved the lives of millions with spinal cord and brain injuries.

    “The Buoniconti Fund has lasted because we’re relentless,” Marc Buoniconti recently told The Associated Press. “We never give up. When we see a challenge, we face it head-on and don’t stop until we find a solution. It’s that determination, that refusal to quit that’s kept us going all these years.”

    That drive has also led The Miami Project to expand its work beyond curing paralysis. Its research center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine now also studies neurological diseases and disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and it is testing the brain-computer interface implant from Elon Musk’s technology company Neuralink.

    Dr. Barth A. Green, chairman of The Miami Project, who co-founded the organization in 1985 with Nick Buoniconti, says the most surprising developments from the center have been the broadest ones.

    “Every operating room in the world that puts people to sleep monitors their nervous system for safety,” Dr. Green said. “That was all developed at The Miami Project.”

    Therapeutic hypothermia, where the body is cooled after an injury to protect the brain and spinal cord, is another widely used treatment developed at the center.

    Dr. Green said that before Buoniconti’s accident he had been working on helping those who had been paralyzed for 20 years. Yet there wasn’t a hub for that work until The Miami Project was established.

    It provided a home for him and “thousands of scientists and researchers in Miami and around the world, who were equally engaged by the opportunity to change people’s everyday quality of life and their opportunities to have more function and a better opportunity to be mobile and do things they never dreamt they could before.”

    Miami Project Scientific Director W. Dalton Dietrich III said gathering those people from a variety of disciplines – neuroscientists, researchers, clinicians, biomedical engineers – into one building has led to unexpected advances.

    “Not one particular treatment is going to cure paralysis,” Dietrich said. “So I’ve tried to look at other disciplines to bring into the project to help us achieve that goal.”

    One new, multidisciplinary area, neuromodulation, is “something we never thought about five years ago,” Dietrich said. “It’s just an exciting area where you can stimulate these residual circuits after brain injury or spinal cord injury in patients and they start moving their limbs.”

    The Buoniconti Fund’s support for the center helps accelerate research in these areas by funding early trials. That, in turn, makes it easier to eventually receive grants from government agencies like the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Defense, Dietrich said.

    Marc Buoniconti says “it’s hard to put into words” seeing so many people rally behind him and the millions of others who have been paralyzed.

    “What started as a promise to help me walk again became a mission to help millions,” he said. “Every resource, every dollar, every hour given is a testament to the belief that we can change lives.”

    Mark Dalton, chairman and CEO of Tudor Investment Corp., said that belief resonated with him and made him want to get involved with The Buonicontis even before he met them.

    “I had tremendous admiration for him as a father who was never going to give up on finding a cure for what ailed his son,” Dalton said. “And his son was a representation of millions of other people.”

    Once he learned more about The Miami Project, Dalton said he was impressed by its science-driven approach. Its setting on a university campus was also important to the former chairman of the board of trustees at Denison and Vanderbilt universities.

    “They put the line in the water,” said Dalton, who now chairs the Buoniconti Fund’s biggest annual fundraiser, The Great Sports Legends Dinner. “They hooked me. I’m all in.”

    That’s a common feeling around The Miami Project, which counts legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus and Grammy winner Gloria Estefan among its supporters. And it’s something Marc Buoniconti says he does not take for granted.

    He hopes The Miami Project’s work will continue to expand.

    “My biggest dream is for our researchers to find a way to fully repair the nervous system,” Buoniconti said. “When we do that, we’ll change the entire landscape for paralysis and so many other neuro conditions. We’ll give so many people their lives back. That’s what keeps me going, and that’s what makes every struggle to this point worth it.”

    _____

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • Melinda French Gates Just Donated $250 Million to Support Women’s Health

    Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates is making good on her $1 billion commitment toward women’s health and empowerment causes. 

    The Action for Women’s Health challenge she announced last year drew to a close on Wednesday—and more than 80 nonprofits walked away with funding totaling some $250 million.

    “I want to see women everywhere making decisions, controlling resources, and shaping policies and perspectives—but women can’t do well unless they can be well,” French Gates said in a statement. 

    The awardees each received grant funding in sums ranging from $1 million to $5 million. They are nonprofits and non-governmental organizations headquartered everywhere from Australia and the U.S. to Uganda and South Africa. They address a range of issues, including offering free mental health services for survivors of domestic violence in Washington, D.C.; training indigenous birthworkers to provide culturally appropriate care in Alaska; and combatting teen pregnancy, HIV, and sexual violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 65 percent of winners are community-run organizations working within their home countries.

    “We believe the best agents for change are those closest to the challenges,” Lever for Change CEO Cecilia Conrad said in a statement. Pivotal, the group of impact organizations French Gates founded in 2015, funded the initiative and Chicago-based nonprofit Lever for Change managed it. They issued an open call last year to nonprofits working to advance women’s physical and mental health globally. More than 4,000 organizations from 119 countries applied. 

    “These 80+ organizations have proven that when it comes to improving women’s health, progress is possible and solutions exist,” French Gates said. “We hope this funding will help them expand their lifesaving, life-changing work, scale their impact, and reach millions more women around the world.”

    French Gates stepped away from her role at the Gates Foundation in June 2024 following her 2021 divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Still, she pledged to continue her work to empower women and improve global health outcomes with the some $12.5 billion she received when leaving the foundation. Shortly before her departure, French Gates announced she would donate $1 billion over the course of two years specifically to systemic issues facing women and families. The Action for Women’s Health challenge was just one part of that pledge.

    Chloe Aiello

    Source link

  • How Gary Sinise is helping the nonprofit CreatiVets build ‘a place to go when the PTSD hits’

    NASHVILLE (AP) — Richard Casper shakes his head as he touches one of the boarded-up windows in the once-abandoned church he plans to transform into a new 24-hour arts center for veterans.

    The U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Purple Heart recipient said he was an arm’s length away from military officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at Marine Barracks Washington when he learned the former church his nonprofit CreatiVets just purchased had been vandalized.

    The physical damage to the building and its stained glass windows saddened Casper. But what worried him more was that the church had remained empty since 2017 without damage. That vandalism came just weeks after CreatiVets bought it, suggesting that maybe he and the veterans in his program were not welcome.

    “I almost just left,” Casper said. “It put me in a weird headspace.”

    However, Casper, 40, a CNN Heroes winner and Elevate Prize winner, needed more support for the center — “a place to go when the PTSD hits.” Like so many veterans, he said his PTSD, caused by seeing a close friend die on patrol in Iraq, would generally come in the middle of the night, when the only places open are bars and other spaces that can be ”destructive.”

    He figured a 24-hour center where veterans could engage in music, painting, sculpture, theater and other arts could help. It could “turn all that pain into something beautiful.” The artistic element factored in when Casper, who suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving in Iraq, returned home and found it hard to be in public — unless he was listening to live music.

    So he completed his mission that night in Washington, introducing new people to CreatiVets’ work. Then, Casper returned to Nashville to practice what he has preached to hundreds of veterans since his nonprofit opened in 2013. He asked for help.

    And help came.

    Within weeks, CreatiVets’ Art Director Tim Brown was teaching a roomful of volunteers how to create stained glass pieces to replace those that were vandalized. Brown said the volunteers wanted to give back to the organization, “but also because of the impact that these activities have had on them.”

    Gary Sinise believes in art’s impact

    Gary Sinise values that impact. The actor, musician and philanthropist had already signed on to donate $1 million through his foundation to help CreatiVets purchase the building. Sinise’s involvement encouraged two other donors to help finalize the purchase.

    The “CSI: NY” star said he believed in CreatiVets’ work and had already seen a similar program in his hometown of Chicago help veterans process their wartime experiences.

    “In the military, you’re trained to do serious work to protect our country, right?” Sinise said. “If you’re in the infantry, you’re being trained to kill. You’re being trained to contain any emotion and be strong.”

    Those skills are important when fighting the enemy, but they also take a toll, especially when veterans aren’t taught how to discuss their feelings once the war is over.

    “Quite often, our veterans don’t want any help,” Sinise said. “But through art – and with theater as well – acting out what they are going through can be very, very beneficial.”

    David Booth says he is living proof of how CreatiVets can help. And the retired master sergeant, who served 20 years in the U.S. Army as a medic and a counterintelligence agent, wishes he participated in the program sooner.

    “For me, this was more important than the last year and a half of counseling that I’ve gone through,” said Booth. “It has been so therapeutic.”

    After years of being asked, Booth, 53, finally joined CreatiVets’ songwriting program in September. He traveled from his home in The Villages, Florida, to the historic Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, to meet with two successful songwriters – Brian White, who co-wrote Jason Aldean’s “Blame It on You,” and Craig Campbell, of “Outskirts of Heaven” fame – to help him write a song about his life.

    Booth told them about his service, including his injury in Iraq in 2006 when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device and detonated it.

    He suffered a traumatic brain injury in the explosion, and it took months of rehab before he could walk again. His entire cervical spine is fused. He still gets epidurals to relieve the nerve pain. And he still suffers from nightmares and PTSD.

    In Iraq, Booth’s unit was once surrounded by kids because American soldiers used to give them Jolly Rancher candies. Snipers shot the children in hopes the soldiers would become easier targets when they tried to help.

    “Things like that stick in my head,” Booth said. “How do you get them out?”

    He also told them about his desire for a positive message and Combat Veterans to Careers, the veteran support nonprofit he founded. Those experiences became the song “What’s Next.”

    Booth hopes “What’s Next” becomes available on music streaming services so others can hear his story. CreatiVets has released compilations of its veterans’ songs since 2020 in cooperation with Big Machine Label Group, Taylor Swift’s first record label. This year’s collection was released Friday.

    “It’s almost like they could feel what I was feeling and put it into the lyrics,” said Booth, after hearing the finished version. “It was pretty surreal and pretty awesome.”

    Why Lt. Dan from ‘Forrest Gump’ launched a nonprofit

    Sinise has seen the unexpected impact of art throughout his career. His Oscar-nominated role as wounded Vietnam veteran Lt. Dan Taylor in “Forrest Gump” in 1994 deepened his connection to veterans. His music with the Lt. Dan Band expanded it. In 2011, he launched the Gary Sinise Foundation to broadly serve veterans, first responders and their families.

    “I think citizens have a responsibility to take care of their defenders,” he said. “There are opportunities out there for all of us to do that and one of the ways to do it is through multiple nonprofits that are out there.”

    Sinise immediately connected with CreatiVets’ mission. When the idea came to dedicate the performance space at the new center to his late son Mac, who died last year after a long battle with cancer, Sinise saw it as “a perfect synergy.”

    “Mac was a great artist,” he said. “And he was a humble, kind of quiet, creative force… If Mac would have survived and not gone through what he went through, he’d be one of our young leaders here at the foundation. He would be composing music and he’d be helping veterans.”

    Mac Sinise is still helping veterans, as proceeds of his album “Resurrection & Revival” and its sequel completed after his death, are going to the Gary Sinise Foundation. And Gary Sinise said he discovered more compositions from his son that he plans to record later this year for a third album.

    After the new center was vandalized, Casper said he was heartbroken, but also inspired knowing part of the center was destined to become the Mac Sinise Auditorium. He decided to take pieces of the broken stained glass windows and transform them into new artwork inspired by Mac Sinise’s music.

    “I told you we’re going to go above and beyond to make sure everyone knows Mac lived,” Casper told Sinise as he handed him stained glass panes inspired by Mac Sinise’s songs “Arctic Circles” and “Penguin Dance,” “not that he died, but that he lived.”

    Sinise fought back tears as he said, “My gosh, that’s beautiful.”

    As he examined the pieces more closely, Sinise added, “I’m honored that we’re going to have this place over there and that Mac is going to be supporting Richard and helping veterans.”

    _____

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Source link

  • More Than 80 Nonprofits Receive $250M for Global Women’s Health From Melinda French Gates

    More than 80 organizations that provide health care for women all over the world received grants Wednesday totaling $250 million from Melinda French Gates after a year-long application process.

    “It will be instructive for the world to see what it looks like when organizations like this aren’t so chronically underfunded,” French Gates said in written responses to The Associated Press, which receives funding from Pivotal for news coverage.

    The grants, which range between $1 million and $5 million, were awarded through a competition that was open to nonprofit organizations from most countries. French Gates said the point of holding such an open call is to learn about organizations that aren’t already known to major funders. The Chicago-based nonprofit Lever for Change ran the application process and said more than 4,000 organizations from 119 countries applied.

    “This seems to be a topic that resonates,” said Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, of global women’s health. “So I’m excited about helping to uplift and elevate the profile of these organizations with other funders.” Her organization often provides donors, both large and small, with advice about what organizations to support, drawing from the list of finalists who have applied to the grant competitions they run.

    This is the second largest funding competition that Lever for Change has hosted, after MacKenzie Scott gave $640 million to community-based nonprofits in the U.S. in March 2024.

    For the Likhaan Center for Women’s Health based in the Philippines, the $5 million grant represents 10 years of funding at their current annual budget.

    “I could not contain the joy of people in the room,” said executive director Junice Melgar when she and her staff learned they had been selected.

    For 30 years, Likhaan has provided primary care to very poor communities and advocated for policy changes to reflect community needs. Beyond the money, Melgar said the recognition affirms the effectiveness and sustainability of their community-based model.

    The investment in global women’s health organizations is part of a $1 billion commitment that French Gates made to support women’s rights over two years. She also gave $20 million each to 12 individuals to distribute to nonprofits of their choice and has pledged $150 million to boost gender equity in workplaces.

    Lisel Lifshitz, the executive director of the small nonprofit Mujeres Aliadas, which also received a grant, said her organization makes “magic” with every dollar they receive. Located in Michoacán, Mexico, Mujeres Aliadas trains midwives and provides education to women and teens about sexual and reproductive health.

    “You don’t know what it takes to be very creative in more rural and complicated contexts, talking about security, about poverty, about the many, many things that are missing here,” she said.

    For 16 years, her organization has advocated for greater recognition and acceptance of midwives, who blend traditional knowledge and local beliefs with professional training. The funding comes at a critical moment. In 2025, she said two grants they were expecting did not come through because of foreign aid cuts and other policy changes.

    “Having this kind of trust-based and unrestricted funding means the world to us,” Lifshitz said.

    Since 2000, many gains have been made globally in reducing the number of women who die in child birth, increasing access to contraception and decreasing cases of HIV among women, according to a 2024 report about sexual and reproductive health from the United Nations Population Fund. But the report also found that profound inequalities in health outcomes for women remain within countries and between countries.

    Rahel Nardos, director of Global Women’s Health at the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility, University of Minnesota, said the historic exclusion of women from medical research and a lack of research into issues that impact women specifically, like menopause, contribute to women’s poor health.

    From her own practice as a specialist in treating pelvic floor conditions, Nardos said she also sees women prioritizing family members and delaying care for themselves, despite living with extreme health problems. Additionally, violence and instability have contributed to stalling progress on maternal mortality, she said, even as it is well-known what combination of treatments and approaches work to prevent these deaths.

    Some recipients of Pivotal’s funding are developing new tools to reach women who have been left behind. Sabine Bolonhini and Adriana Mallet, cofounders of SAS Brasil, use telemedicine and mobile clinics to provide specialized care to patients in Brazil, who otherwise would have to travel long distances.

    For example, in partnership with a university, they have been training an artificial intelligence model to identify likely cases of cervical cancer from images. Bolonhini said that she hopes French Gates’ giving will inspire wealthy families in Brazil to also give more to organizations like hers.

    “For us, it’s also using (the funding) responsibly and being a good role model for how this money can find solutions that no one else has found yet,” Bolonhini said.

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

    Associated Press

    Source link

  • Zuckerberg, Chan shift bulk of philanthropy to science, focusing on AI and biology to curb disease

    REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal — “to cure, prevent or manage all disease” — if not in their lifetime, then in their children’s. But during that time, they also funded underprivileged schools, immigration reform and efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Now, the billionaire couple is shifting the bulk of their philanthropic resources to Biohub, the pair’s science organization, and focusing on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The idea is to develop virtual, AI-based cell models to understand how they work in the human body, study inflammation and use AI to “harness the immune system” for disease detection, prevention and treatment.

    “I feel like the science work that we’ve done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done. So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday evening at an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City, California. Three other Biohub institutes — in New York, San Francisco and Chicago, focus on addressing different scientific challenges.

    Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged 99% of their lifetime wealth — from shares of Meta Platforms, where Zuckerberg is CEO — toward these efforts. Since 2016, when Biohub launched, they have donated $4 billion to basic science research, a figure that does not include operating expenses for running a large-scale computer cluster for life science research. The organization says it is now on track to double that amount over the next decade, with an operating budget of about $1 billion a year.

    Last week, singer Billie Eilish told an audience that included Chan and Zuckerberg that rich people should do more to address the world’s problems.

    “Love you all, but there’s a few people in here who have a lot more money than me,” she said, to a smattering of applause. “And if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties.”

    The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s charitable organization, has been faced with criticism recently for curtailing its other philanthropic work. Earlier this year, it stopped funding grants related to diversity, equity and inclusion, immigration advocacy and other issues currently in the crosshairs of the Trump administration — though the focus has been shifting to science and away from social issues for years, the couple says, long before the 2024 election.

    “So we basically looked at the ecosystem of science funding and decided that the place that we can make the biggest impact was on tool development,” Zuckerberg said. “And specifically working on long-term projects, 10 to 15 years, where the output of them was taking on a biological challenge that would produce a tool that scientists everywhere could use to accelerate the pace of science.”

    The organization earlier this year scrubbed its website’s mentions of DEI, including a statement saying “People of color and marginalized communities have experienced a long history of exploitation in the name of scientific research, and indeed science has itself been deployed as a tool of oppression.”

    “Going forward, Biohub will be our primary philanthropic effort and where we’ll dedicate the vast majority of our resources,” Zuckerberg and Chan said in a blog post Thursday. “We will continue our other philanthropic efforts as well, but the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will serve as infrastructure and support for our initiatives.”

    Zuckerberg and Chan’s increased commitment to science research comes as the Trump administration has cut billions in scientific research and public health funding.

    Chan, who had worked as a pediatrician and treated children with rare diseases, says what she wanted “more than anything was a way to see what was happening inside their cells — how genetic mutations were expressed in different cell types and what, exactly, was breaking down.”

    “Until now, that kind of understanding has been out of reach. AI is changing that. For the first time, we have the potential to model and predict the biology of disease in ways that can reveal what’s gone wrong and how we can develop new treatments to address it,” she said.

    On Thursday, Chan and Zuckerberg also announced that Biohub has hired the team at EvolutionaryScale, an AI research lab that has created large-scale AI systems for the life sciences. Alex Rives, EvolutionaryScale’s co-founder, will serve as Biohub’s head of science, leading research efforts on experimental biology, data and artificial intelligence. The financial terms were not disclosed.

    Biohub’s ambition for the next years and decades is to create virtual cell systems that would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. Similar to how large language models learn from vast databases of digital books, online writings and other media, its researchers and scientists are working toward building virtual systems that serve as digital representations of human physiology on all levels, such as molecular, cellular or genome. As it is open source — free and publicly available — scientists can then conduct virtual experiments on a scale not possible in physical laboratories.

    Noting that Biohub launched when the couple had their first child, Chan listed off some of the organization’s accomplishments, ranging from building the largest single-cell data set, contributing to one of the largest human cell maps, building sensors to measure inflammation in real-time in living cells and researching rare diseases.

    That work continues, with a focus on using AI to advance biomedical research.

    “And to anchor it back onto the impact on patients, you know, why do this?” Chan said. “It’s like, why is a virtual cell important? We have cured diseases for mice and for flies and for zebrafish, many, many times. And that’s great. But we want to make sure that we are actually using biology to push the forefront of medicine for people — and that is so promising.”

    Source link

  • Zuckerberg, Chan shift bulk of philanthropy to science, focusing on AI and biology

    REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal — “to cure, prevent or manage all disease” — if not in their lifetime, then in their children’s. But during that time, they also funded underprivileged schools, immigration reform and efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Now, the billionaire couple is shifting the bulk of their philanthropic resources to Biohub, the pair’s science organization, and focusing on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The idea is to develop virtual, AI-based cell models to understand how they work in the human body, study inflammation and use AI to “harness the immune system” for disease detection, prevention and treatment.

    “I feel like the science work that we’ve done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done. So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday evening at an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City, California. Three other Biohub institutes — in New York, San Francisco and Chicago, focus on addressing different scientific challenges.

    Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged 99% of their lifetime wealth — from shares of Meta Platforms, where Zuckerberg is CEO — toward these efforts. Since 2016, when Biohub launched, they have donated $4 billion to basic science research, a figure that does not include operating expenses for running a large-scale computer cluster for life science research. The organization says it is now on track to double that amount over the next decade, with an operating budget of about $1 billion a year.

    Last week, singer Billie Eilish told an audience that included Chan and Zuckerberg that rich people should do more to address the world’s problems.

    “Love you all, but there’s a few people in here who have a lot more money than me,” she said, to a smattering of applause. “And if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? And no hate, but give your money away, shorties.”

    The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s charitable organization, has been faced with criticism recently for curtailing its other philanthropic work. Earlier this year, it stopped funding grants related to diversity, equity and inclusion, immigration advocacy and other issues currently in the crosshairs of the Trump administration — though the focus has been shifting to science and away from social issues for years, the couple says, long before the 2024 election.

    “So we basically looked at the ecosystem of science funding and decided that the place that we can make the biggest impact was on tool development,” Zuckerberg said. “And specifically working on long-term projects, 10 to 15 years, where the output of them was taking on a biological challenge that would produce a tool that scientists everywhere could use to accelerate the pace of science.”

    The organization earlier this year scrubbed its website’s mentions of DEI, including a statement saying “People of color and marginalized communities have experienced a long history of exploitation in the name of scientific research, and indeed science has itself been deployed as a tool of oppression.”

    “Going forward, Biohub will be our primary philanthropic effort and where we’ll dedicate the vast majority of our resources,” Zuckerberg and Chan said in a blog post Thursday. “We will continue our other philanthropic efforts as well, but the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will serve as infrastructure and support for our initiatives.”

    Zuckerberg and Chan’s increased commitment to science research comes as the Trump administration has cut billions in scientific research and public health funding.

    Chan, who had worked as a pediatrician and treated children with rare diseases, says what she wanted “more than anything was a way to see what was happening inside their cells — how genetic mutations were expressed in different cell types and what, exactly, was breaking down.”

    “Until now, that kind of understanding has been out of reach. AI is changing that. For the first time, we have the potential to model and predict the biology of disease in ways that can reveal what’s gone wrong and how we can develop new treatments to address it,” she said.

    On Thursday, Chan and Zuckerberg also announced that Biohub has hired the team at EvolutionaryScale, an AI research lab that has created large-scale AI systems for the life sciences. Alex Rives, EvolutionaryScale’s co-founder, will serve as Biohub’s head of science, leading research efforts on experimental biology, data and artificial intelligence. The financial terms were not disclosed.

    Biohub’s ambition for the next years and decades is to create virtual cell systems that would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. Similar to how large language models learn from vast databases of digital books, online writings and other media, its researchers and scientists are working toward building virtual systems that serve as digital representations of human physiology on all levels, such as molecular, cellular or genome. As it is open source — free and publicly available — scientists can then conduct virtual experiments on a scale not possible in physical laboratories.

    Noting that Biohub launched when the couple had their first child, Chan listed off some of the organization’s accomplishments, ranging from building the largest single-cell data set, contributing to one of the largest human cell maps, building sensors to measure inflammation in real-time in living cells and researching rare diseases.

    That work continues, with a focus on using AI to advance biomedical research.

    “And to anchor it back onto the impact on patients, you know, why do this?” Chan said. “It’s like, why is a virtual cell important? We have cured diseases for mice and for flies and for zebrafish, many, many times. And that’s great. But we want to make sure that we are actually using biology to push the forefront of medicine for people — and that is so promising.”

    Source link