Fund-Raising Fatigue Drove Environmentalist Into Business
Michael Martin cares deeply about the environment, but he never cared much for the fund raising required to keep a conservation group afloat. For eight years, Mr. Martin ran Concerts for the Environment, a Minneapolis non-profit group that organized free concerts nationwide. The concerts featured…
By Susan Gray
Contributor
Entrepreneur Brews Plan for Do-Good Businesses
Jeff Reifman has set out to be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed: He intends to start a crop of socially conscious coffeehouses, record stores, and other enterprises which will in turn create yet more businesses that do good works. Mr. Reifman has started his quest by creating Habitat Espresso, a…
By Susan Gray
Contributor
Business Makes Sure Coffee Growers Get an ‘Equal Exchange’
In the 1980s, three managers of a Cambridge, Mass., food cooperative were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the policies of the organization. The co-op had good intentions. It bought food directly from producers around the world in order to cut out distributors, whom the co-op felt jacked up…
By Susan Gray
Contributor
Company Taps Inner-City Web Talent
Ever since Nick Gleason spent a year in the early 1990s doing social work in Oakland, Cal., he has been determined to find a way to help poor people in the inner cities earn more money. Mr. Gleason, 30, considered starting a charity. He had worked for Habitat for Humanity in Oakland and thought the…
Environmentalist Makes His Cause Work for Him, Too
Tom Soto didn’t mind spending his early 20s as a penniless environmental activist. The charismatic leader was president of the Coalition for Clean Air in California, a board member of the California League of Conservation Voters, and board secretary of the Mono Lake Committee, which he helped…
By Susan Gray
Contributor
New Charity Hopes to Infuse Non-Profit World With Business Thinking
Vanessa Kirsch, founder of the national youth group Public Allies, remembers cringing the many times she heard foundation executives tell her: “Sorry, your group is just too successful. We can’t fund you.” Ms. Kirsch pounds a fist on a table at the recollection. “What kind of disincentive is that?”…
By Susan Gray
Contributor
Scientists Warned of Strings on Gifts
Corporate gifts to academic scientists often come with ethically troubling strings attached, according to a new study. In some cases, scientists who receive such gifts are expected to use them to test company products, for example, or to give the company the right to any patentable results produced…
Lilly: $128-Million to Higher Education
The nation’s wealthiest foundation, the Lilly Endowment, in Indianapolis, has announced that it will give $128-million to help colleges and universities. That amount is almost one-third of the $413-million that the $12.7-billion fund plans to award this year. The endowment awarded $42-million to…
Rhode Island’s Accidental Philanthropist
Alan Shawn Feinstein makes fighting hunger a way of life Last month, soup kitchens and food banks across the country announced that they had raised nearly $33-million during 11 days in February. The remarkable fund-raising blitz came after Alan Shawn Feinstein, a Rhode Island man who years ago…
By Susan Gray
Contributor
The school day for 2,000 youngsters in New York City and Jersey City, N.J., includes lessons in counting out dance steps along with the usual arithmetic courses, thanks to the National Dance Institute. Once a week, instructors for the New York non-profit group hold mandatory dance classes for boys…