Think You Know the Nonprofit World? Take Our News Quiz
Test your knowledge about MacKenzie Scott, donor-advised funds, celebrity giving, and more
December 20, 2024 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Need a breather from the year-end fundraising rush and holiday preparations? Take a short break with our news quiz, featuring questions that represent some of the biggest storylines in philanthropy for 2024. See what you know about big donors, marketing campaigns, donor-advised funds, and much more. You just might find some surprises.
To find the stories these came from, see the links below the quiz.
Answers
1. D. Taylor Swift, who made the gifts while on her Eras Tour, which had grossed more than $1 billion in July, when the piece was written. Her team asked the recipients not to disclose the amounts given, but they were enough in total to pay for hundreds of thousands of meals. From Did Taylor Swift Create a New Era for Food Bank Donations?
2. E. All of the above. From Breaking a Fundraising Taboo, about how Charity:Water used levity to highlight divisions between people and how it brings them together.
3. D. A $20 billion drop in giving because the change nearly doubled the standard deduction. From Donors Likely Giving $16 Billion Less Each Year After Tax Law Change, Report Finds.
4. B. Less than 5 percent of gifts from donor-advised funds are made with the intent of hiding the donor’s name. From: Meet the New Stealth Donors
5. D. Nonprofit leaders who left their jobs to become consultants. From: The Empty C-Suite: Nonprofit Executives Are Leaving to Become Consultants
6. A. Steph and Ayesha Curry, who wrote an opinion piece for the Chronicle about their gift. From: Steph and Ayesha Curry’s Plea to Philanthropy: Don’t Let Pandemic-Era Tutoring Programs End
7. C. A board chair mistakenly made a $100,000 gift to the wrong charity. From: Gifts From DAFs Are Nearly 10% of All Giving. How Nonprofits Are Trying to Court Those Donors
8. B. 67%. From: Giving Continues Its Decline, Down 2.1% in 2023. Can Fundraisers Turn the Tide in 2024?
9. B. Jared Isaacman, Trump’s pick to lead NASA. Jared and Monica Isaacman were on the Philanthropy 50 list of biggest donors for a gift they made in 2021. From: Why a Young Billionaire Who Led Trip to Space Gave $125 Million to Children’s Hospital
10. C. Take a sabbatical. She wrote an opinion piece about her own sabbatical and how “being able to talk about exhaustion in the past tense feels like a powerful milestone to me.” From: Sabbaticals and the Case for More Rest for Leaders of Color
11. C. Libraries, fire stations, and schools built by world-renowned architects such as Eero Saarinen and I.M. Pei. The town is now a hub of mid-century American design, thanks largely to industrialist and philanthropist Joseph Irwin Miller. From: How 70 Years of Design Philanthropy Transformed a Midwestern City
12. B. The MacArthur Foundation. This was the first year that grant applicants to its 100&Change contest were required to address diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. From: $100 Million for Equity: MacArthur’s New Big Bet and Mandate
13. A. Using artificial intelligence personas to solicit donations. Givzey has signed up 13 organizations to use an A.I. tool for 18 months. From: The A.I. That’s Already Raising Money
14. B. Finding Common Ground. Hundreds of nonprofit groups are working to close divides in this country, many with similar names. While there’s a small California law firm called Finding Common Ground, that name doesn’t show up (yet) in IRS directories of registered nonprofits. From: How Much Is Philanthropy Spending Toward a More Perfect Union?
15. C. $4.5 billion. Bloomberg in 2018 became an early champion of making big gifts for free or low-cost tuition when he gave $1.8 billion to Hopkins for financial aid. From: Michael Bloomberg’s New $1 Billion Gift to Johns Hopkins Matches the Year’s Biggest So Far
George Anders, Rasheeda Childress, Marilyn Dickey, Ben Gose, Elizabeth Haugh, Drew Lindsay, and Jim Rendon contributed to this quiz.
