NONPROFIT NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE
The Australian couple behind the ubiquitous Canva design platform have launched an antipoverty foundation into which they are pouring billions of dollars’ worth of company stock. About 10 years ago, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht started working on software to allow anyone to create their own graphic designs. Now Canva has 75 million active monthly users, and the company is valued at $40 billion. Last year, Perkins and Obrecht launched the Canva Foundation and donated almost all of their 30 percent, or $12 billion, stake in the company. They had already vowed to give 1 percent of Canva’s profits to charity, and they had signed the Giving Pledge. Although the money is not out the door yet, they have foundation staff putting together long-term projects. In the meantime, they are donating $10 million to a project with Give Directly, to which they plan to give another $100 million next year and after that, $1 billion. (Fast Company)
The recent blowback against some institutions that have received money from Russian oligarchs is once again forcing a conversation about tainted money. Anticorruption groups that champion transnational financial transparency, as well as activists who want tainted money out of U.S. educational and cultural institutions, protest donations by Russian tycoons. Those gifts share the stigma of money from donors such as the Sackler family, who made a fortune from the opioid drugs that have fueled an addiction crisis, and they function as a kind of soft power for a brutal and corrupt regime. But the debate also has shown that the line between acceptable and unacceptable donors is indistinct — “there are really no bright lines demarcating problematic oligarchs bearing gifts from politically savvy, celebrated extractive capitalists offering eight- and nine-figure donations.” These gifts “have exposed how rickety the ethical foundations of much high-stakes philanthropy are and have reminded us of the murkiness of the principles informing philanthropic receivership.” (Town & Country)
Plus, Yale University Defends Donations From Russia-Linked Billionaire (Daily Beast)
News About Giving
- Virginia Museum Receives Gift Worth Nearly $60 Million (Associated Press)
- Nashville’s Meharry Medical College Gets $20 Million From Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott (Main Street Nashville)
- Gates Foundation, Partners Launch $90 Million Program to Develop Drugs for Future Pandemics (Geek Wire)
More News
- Founder of Violence in Boston and Husband Charged With Fraud in Federal Indictment (Boston Globe)
- How to Help Refugees When You’ve Become One Yourself (NPR)
- U.S. Museum Donors Among Biden Appointees to Arts Committee (ARTnews)