Philanthropy News Report

The amount of money held by donor-advised funds is growing fast, even amid the challenges caused by the volatile stock market and the large sums donors take out of the accounts to give to nonprofit groups. Over the five-year period ending in 2009, The Chronicle study found that assets held in donor-advised funds at 64 [...]

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee has received a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the Joseph J. and Vera Zilber Family Foundation for youth and wellness programs at the LaVarnway Boys & Girls Club. Most of the grant will fund youth employment, career readiness, and community leadership services at the LaVarnway club — [...]

The United Nations Foundation and the Better World Campaign have announced the launch of a fellowship program for journalists covering the progress of the Millennium Development Goals.With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the program will make it possible for journalists to travel to New York City in September prior to the start [...]

With the housing and financial crises having dealt a blow to the nation’s large, publicly traded home builders, Habitat for Humanity has emerged as one of the top builders in the country. Habitat, which was founded thirty-four years ago in Americus, Georgia, to build, repair, and rehabilitate homes for low-income families, recently was ranked eighth [...]

Peter O’Donnell, Jr., a Dallas investor and philanthropist, has identified himself as the anonymous donor who has given more than $135 million to the University of Texas to help attract promising scientists and engineers early in their careers as well as support graduate and undergraduate researchers. Full text article by Ralph K.M. Haurwitz is available [...]

Fewer low- and moderate-income high school graduates are attending college in America, and fewer are graduating. Rising college costs may be keeping out low- and moderate-income students. Enrollment in four-year colleges was 40% in 2004 for low-income students, down from 54% in 1992, and 53% in 2004 for moderate-income students, down from 59% over the [...]

Greater involvement by nonprofit groups in advocacy and lobbying work will require support from organizations’ boards of directors. Participants in a “roundtable” held by the Johns Hopkins Listening Post Project “broadly agreed that they often saw board reluctance to get involved in advocacy,” the report said. Full text article by Grant Williams is available via [...]

In a second round of awards, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean’s bipartisan coalition of mayors — Cities of Service — will award grants of $200,000 to 10 new cities. The money, paid over two years, will enable the cities to hire chief service officers, whose jobs will be to help increase [...]

The Nature Conservancy has announced a grant of $800,000 from the Toyota USA Foundation to expand its Leaders in Environmental Action for the Future (LEAF) program for teenagers and their educators. Building on its sixteen-year history in New York City, the program aims to double the number of students and environmental high schools it serves [...]

High debt loads, limits on tuition, and a sharp reduction in state support could mean financial problems for New Jersey’s public universities, according to a report released on Monday by Moody’s Investors Service as part of Moody’s Weekly Credit Outlook. The report highlights a number of problems facing New Jersey colleges and warns that any [...]