Nonprofit News From Elsewhere
The Nobel Prize Foundation is taking criticism from women’s rights organizations for refusing to implement ethnicity or gender quotas in conferring its annual honors. Only 6.2 percent of Nobel Prize winners have been women since the first awards in 1901. Goran Hansson, the vice chairman of the foundation’s Board of Directors, said, “We want every laureate [to] be accepted ... because they made the most important discovery, and not because of gender or ethnicity.” The UN’s women’s rights agency said the scarcity of women Nobel laureates is an example of the “slow progress on gender equality.” The foundation has changed its nominating process in the past to try to get more women contenders. (ABC News)
Opinion: Foundations and universities sitting on massive endowments often act as left-wing advocacy groups, and the federal tax code should stop treating them like charities, writes author J.D. Vance, who is running for U.S. Senate in Ohio. With many millions, and sometimes billions, to invest, these well-heeled organizations, such as Harvard University and the Ford Foundation, push corporate America to the left on the environment, race, and other issues, Vance argues. Then they pay no tax on the sometimes-huge returns on their investments. No such parallel structure exists on the right, he writes. Vance proposes that institutions with endowments over $100 million be required to spend at least 20 percent of that money annually or lose their tax-exempt status. “This would allow colleges and other secular nonprofits to maintain an endowment without accumulating a war chest of money.” (Newsweek)
More News
- GE to Spend $100 Million to Improve Students’ Engineering Skills (Boston Globe)
- Gymnastics Stars Call for Ouster of U.S. Olympic Directors (Wall Street Journal — subscription)
- The Intercept Wants More Philanthropy in the Post-Trump Era (Axios)
- Jeff Flake Seeds New Voting Nonprofit (Axios)
- Miss. Threatens to Sue Brett Favre Over $828,000 Linked to Nonprofit Welfare Fraud Case (New York Times)
Arts and Culture
- Joan Mitchell Foundation Names Inaugural Winners of $60,000 Fellowships (ARTnews)
- A New Museum in Nashville Centers the Artistry of Black Musicians (NPR)
- Winterthur Museum Names Longtime Employee as Its Director (Delaware News Journal)