Awards, Mar 09, 2006

The following awards have been presented for work in advocacy, fund raising, nonprofit leadership, philanthropy, and other areas.

Corporate philanthropy. The Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy (New York) has presented its Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Awards, which honor companies for their executives’ commitment to philanthropy, innovation in corporate giving, and dedication to evaluating the effectiveness of their philanthropy. The award for companies with annual revenue in excess of $3-billion was given to Cisco Systems (San Jose, Calif.). Cisco was recognized for its innovative charitable-giving efforts, which focus on basic human needs, access to education, and responsible citizenship, and for its programs through which employees volunteered more than 200,000 hours in seven months.

The award for companies with annual revenue of less than $3-billion went to the Grand Circle Corporation (Boston), a travel company that supports the Grand Circle Foundation, which has donated or pledged $30-million to charitable projects around the world since 1992. The company has also initiated such programs as the World Classroom Initiative, a five-year, $10-million effort to invest in foreign communities to which the company operates tours.

In addition, Kaboom! (Washington) received the Directors Award, which is accompanied by a $25,000 prize, for its nine-year partnership with Home Depot (Atlanta) to build community playgrounds, skateparks, and sports fields across North America. In 2005 alone the two groups worked to create and refurbish 1,000 playgrounds in 1,000 days.

Philanthropy. The Association of Fundraising Professionals (Alexandria, Va.) has presented its 2006 William R. Simms Award for Outstanding Youth in Philanthropy, Ages 18-23, to the Midland College Students in Philanthropy Club. The club was established in 1997 by the Abell-Hanger Foundation (Midland, Tex.) and Midland College. Since the program’s inception, more than 236 students have participated in the program, and 132 grants totaling more than $147,000 have been awarded to various charities.

Research. The Dan David Foundation (Tel Aviv) has announced the recipients of its 2006 Dan David Prizes, which recognize individuals for innovative and interdisciplinary research on the past, present, and future of the arts, humanities, science, and technology. Each year the foundation chooses a field within each of the three time periods; this year’s selections are preserving cultural heritage (past), print-media journalists (present), and cancer therapy (future). Each prize carries a $1-million cash award, of which $100,000 goes to support scholarships for young researchers in the winner’s field. The recipients:

— Past. Yo-Yo Ma, the world-renowned cellist, for his work as founder and artistic director of the Silk Road Project, which has brought back to life the music, ideas, arts, and culture found in the nations along the Silk Road, the historic trade route that connected the peoples and traditions of Asia with those of Europe.

— Present. Magdi Allam of Italy, deputy editor of Corriere della Sera and a commentator on Arab and Islamic affairs; Mónica González of Chile, a longtime investigative reporter who writes about democracy and human-rights issues in Chile and elsewhere in South America; Adam Michnik of Poland, a journalist and activist who has written extensively about the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and current issues in Eastern Europe; and Goenawan Mohamad of Indonesia, a journalist, poet, and writer who advocates increased freedom of the press and independent journalism.

— Future. John Mendelsohn, president of the U. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (Houston), and Joseph Schlessinger, a professor and chair of pharmacology at the Yale School of Medicine (New Haven, Conn.), for their groundbreaking research on innovative strategies for treating cancer.