Ideas Sought for Spending $1-Million

While acknowledging that $1-million isn’t what it used to be, a number of writers, professors, and economists have offered the online magazine Slate their ideas about which nonprofit groups most deserve a donation of that size and why.

Most of the respondents picked traditional but overlooked charities, such as Memorial, a Russian human-rights organization, or the Incarnation Center, a New York summer camp that purposely blends children of different economic and racial backgrounds. Others chose public theater or an arts-based high school.

A few, however, speculated about founding charities where they saw an existing need. A professor of economics, for instance, said he would finance merit scholarships for poor, rural Africans to attend college in developed countries. In all, 13 offered their opinions.

The article is part of a larger package on philanthropy by Slate that started last week.