Harvard receives $20.5m gift for new Asia studies center

An Indonesian conglomerate has pledged $20.5-million to Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government to pay for research and study of the Asian nation. The donation from the Rajawali Foundation, the charitable arm of the PT Rajawali Corporation, will create a new Institute for Asia and an Indonesian program within the Kennedy School’s Ash Center. The world’s fourth-largest country and the biggest Muslim-majority democracy, Indonesia has been the subject of less study and research than other Southeast Asian nations, such as China and Vietnam, said Professor Anthony Saich, who heads the Ash Center. Full text article by James F. Smith is available via The Boston Globe, 1/7/10.

Cracking the fundraising code

Research on fund raising by John List, a University of Chicago economist, is the subject of a report in Crain’s Chicago Business.

Mr. List’s studies on how and in what circumstances people give have been gaining cachet in nonprofit circles as organizations scramble to navigate the recession. Among his findings are that phone solicitations are more effective than direct-mail appeals and that high matching donations do not produce bigger gifts than simple dollar-for-dollar matches.


Full-text article by Christina Le Beau is available via Crain's Chicago Business, 8.24.09.

Bequests, Celebrities, Foundations, and the Economy: a Conference Notebook From National Research Meeting

Researchers offered findings on foundations, corporate giving, and trends in bequests at national meeting for the Association for Research in Nonprofit Organization and Voluntary Action in Philadelphia.

Full-text article by Debra Blum is available via the Chronicle of Philanthropy, 11.23.08. [Subscription required.]

Researchers at Children's Hopsital

Dozens of researchers who will start moving the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh research arm to a new Lawrenceville campus next month, several months before patients and beds are moved.

Full-text article by Kris Mamula is available via the Pittsburgh Business Times, 10.17.08.

Research Tool for Grantseekers

The Foundation Center offers a helpful research tool for grantseekers. With Trend Tracker, a free charting and graphing tool, nonprofits can quickly create summary presentations of fiscal data for a specific funder or compare up to five grantmakers in up to four fiscal categories — assets, giving, expenditures, and gifts received. The data may be generated in either bar chart, line graph, or table format.

Trend Tracker contains data from 2000 to 2005 for the nation's top 20,000 foundations.

Immigrants in the United States, 2007

The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007. Immigrants account for one in eight U.S. residents, the highest level in 80 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13. The largest increases in immigrants were in California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America's Foreign Born Population provides a detailed picture of the number and socio-economic status of the nation’s immigrant or foreign-born population, both legal and illegal. The data was collected by the Census Bureau in March 2007.