May 26, 2005 | Read Time: 4 minutes
No longer content to give money and walk away, today’s donors and activists are rolling up their sleeves and experimenting with new ways for their dollars to make a difference, writes Town & Country (June). In a special report on the state of philanthropy, the magazine profiles eight people who are helping to maximize charity’s impact.
Jeffrey Swartz, the chief executive of Timberland Company, in New Hampshire, is among a new breed of business leaders who are getting their employees more actively involved in volunteering. Inspired by his own experience as a volunteer at City Year, which helps troubled youths, Mr. Swartz helped to start a program at Timberland that gives employees 40 hours of paid leave a year for community service. Seventy percent of the company’s 5,600 employees have participated in the program, called Path of Service, and have donated 300,000 service hours over the past decade or so.
Wealthy young people like Cameron and Taylor Jordan are using their inheritances to support causes that interest them. The brother and sister founded Cricket Island Foundation, in New York, shortly after graduating from college. The foundation gave out nearly $2-million in grants last year to youth-leadership programs. In addition to helping to run the foundation, the Jordans work with Resource Generation, a Boston organization that educates young, wealthy donors about ways to give.
Today, philanthropy is also about tapping into new groups of donors. The magazine profiles Colleen Willoughby, president of Washington Women’s Foundation, in Seattle, which brings women together to pool their wealth and decide collectively what causes to support.
Other people in the nonprofit world are focusing on how to find new ways to tackle old problems, says Town & Country. Geoffrey Canada, president of Harlem Children’s Zone, has crafted a 10-year strategic plan that outlines how to provide support to troubled children from kindergarten until they graduate college. Mr. Canada’s long-term plan, and his emphasis on results, has helped to double the charity’s annual budget, to $25-million last year, and to separate it from the pack of groups devoted to improving the lives of kids, the magazine says.
More celebrities are finding that their star power, as well as their wealth, can have an impact, writes Town & Country. A Unicef ambassador since 2001, the actress Tea Leoni has shored up support for the organization through fund raisers, but also goes on trips to observe its work around the world. Paul Newman, the actor, has awarded thousands of charities with more than $150-million in profits from the food company he created 23 years ago.
In addition, the magazine includes a look at:
- Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, who has raised more than $40-million for Alzheimer’s disease. She joined the board of the Alzheimer’s Foundation in 1983, shortly after her mother, the actress Rita Hayworth, was diagnosed with the disease. “The Alzheimer’s Association became my family. I adopted them, and they adopted me,” she says.
- The way Unicef is working to help rebuild Sri Lanka after it was ravaged by the tsunamis. Four months after the disaster, children are back in class but have a world-weariness beyond their years. “There wasn’t a school we visited where the children didn’t cry out the word ‘tsunami’ on seeing us, as if to register its power,” Pamela Fiori writes in the magazine. The aid workers she meets, meanwhile, often live only slightly less trying lives. After spending years and even decades overseas, many of them have no home to return to, the magazine says.
- The role the trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, have played in expanding its building and art collection. In an article on the revamped museum, the magazine explores what factors drive the generosity of MoMA’s trustees, who underwrote 80 percent of the $740-million raised to date for the project. David Rockefeller, who recently pledged $100-million, gives in part to deepen his family’s long-standing support for the museum. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, a trustee since 1992, describes herself as a “caretaker” of paintings that she says are destined for MoMA’s collections.
