Nonprofit News From Elsewhere Online
MacKenzie Scott’s unrestricted gifts to school districts across the country are a departure from most contemporary education philanthropy. After getting millions of dollars out of the blue to use as they see fit, school officials have opted to spiff up playgrounds and other spaces in high-poverty areas, use augmented reality devices in some lessons, train teachers in “social-emotional” learning, and pursue other projects that would not have fit into district budgets. Other big gifts, from the likes of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have zeroed in on particular areas, such as math and technology, and required extensive measuring and analysis. Scott’s “approach is very different: She thinks she will have more impact by letting people have the money and do what they think is best,” one philanthropy scholar said. (Education Week)
Plus: ‘On Cloud Nine': 2 Milwaukee Schools Get Surprise Million-Dollar Gifts From Billionaire Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
The catastrophe of climate change has focused minds at the Rockefeller Foundation, where officials have put it at the center of everything they do. The $5 billion philanthropy, founded on a 20th century fortune made from fossil fuels, has dumped its fossil-fuel investments, borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars, and created spin-offs to pour money into climate mitigation and innovation and to urge governments, corporations, and investors to do the same. Among its projects is a $500 million investment, matched each by the IKEA Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund, to bring renewable energy to 1 billion people around the world. “When we look across everything, the thing that threatens all of humanity in a highly complex but incredibly urgent manner is the climate threat,” said Rajiv Shah, the Rockefeller Foundation’s president. (Barron’s)
Melinda French Gates’s newest crusade is to get donors to team up in collaboratives, alongside nonprofit leaders and expert advisers, as a better way to achieve systemic change. Collaboratives allow philanthropists to enter new areas, to easily tap into expertise outside of their own organizations, and to pool risk, among other advantages. For nonprofits, they can offer greater funding and staffs better equipped to work hand in hand with them. The Gender Fund, for example, which launched last year with help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is likely to hit $1 billion in donations to use on health care and education projects. “My dollar is being stretched or my advantage is being stretched by joining forces with other funders,” said Tsitsi Masiyiwa, an African philanthropist who joined the Gender Fund this year. (Financial Times — subscription)
More News
- Key Partner in Covax Will End Support for Middle-Income Nations (New York Times)
- Memphis Nonprofit Puts Money Behind Drive to Curb Gun Deaths (Associated Press)
- Foundations Join Biden Administration’s Global Workers’ Rights Effort (Devex)
What’s Happening in the States
- U. of Maryland, Baltimore, T. Rowe Price Foundation to Create Nonprofit Incubator (Baltimore Business Journal)
- The Beige Book: Faced With Economic Uncertainty, More Texans Turn to Nonprofits (Texas Standard)
- Vt. Nonprofits Struggle to Keep Up With Salaries and Benefits to Attract the Workers They Need (VT Digger)
Sam Bankman-Fried and Philanthropy
- Sam Bankman-Fried Gave $2.5 Million to a Leading Political Ethics Watchdog. The Group Says It Can’t Give the Money Back Because Officials Already Spent It. (Insider)
- Effective Altruism Warned of Risks. Did It Also Incentivize Them? (New York Times)
- Charity-Linked Money Launched Sam Bankman-Fried’s Empire (Semafor)
Arts and Culture
- Cincinnati’s Holocaust Museum Offering Free Admission Amid ‘Surge in Antisemitism’ (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- A Night (Or Day) at the Museum: Getting Better for Workers? (Christian Science Monitor)
- L.A.’s Natural History Museum’s Major $75 Million Transformation Set to Open in 2024 (Los Angeles Times)
- Museum Works to Repatriate Artifacts Looted From West Africa (PBS News Hour)
