Award-Winning Medical Inventor Discovers the Simple Joy of Giving
Dayton, Md. A chance meeting 35 years ago at a local YMCA helped lead last year to one of the biggest pledges — $30-million — ALSO SEE: DATABASE: America’s Most-Generous Donors RELATED STORIES: Top Donors of 2005 ever recorded at the University of Maryland at College Park. Back in the early 1970s,…
By nicole lewis
Contributor
The safety net a $5-billion endowment provides is also the biggest challenge for the J. Paul Getty Trust, writes Michael Rushton, a Georgia State University professor of nonprofit management in The Wall Street Journal. The Getty Trust has attracted much attention after Barry Munitz, its president,…
A Business Guru’s Helpful Advice
Working in the nonprofit world, I have developed a little maxim: Beware of those in business who proffer frameworks promising easy answers to complex challenges. Like the first model of a new car, these frameworks often seem better at first glance than they do when the rubber meets the road and the…
By PHIL BUCHANAN
Contributor
7 (Bad) Habits of (In)effective Foundations
For all their bold talk, foundations today are making a remarkably limited impact on public policy. That is because they are locked into some bad habits that render their grant making less effective than it might otherwise be. Those habits flow from one significant, erroneous assumption about how…
By WILLIAM SCHAMBRA
Contributor
OPINION: KENNEDY CENTER PRESIDENT
During his five-year tenure as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Michael M. Kaiser has turned the staid institution into one of the nation’s most innovative and buzz-worthy performing-arts centers, writes The Washington Post in an editorial. Mr. Kaiser has succeeded…
How to Prevent Politicians From Misusing Charities
Members of Congress, lobbyists, and much of official Washington have been bracing for fallout over the scandal involving Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist who lavished favors on lawmakers and is cooperating with prosecutors after pleading guilty to corruption charges. Politicians have grown so…
By Rick Cohen
Contributor
After Katrina: What Foundations Should Do
America’s private and corporate foundations have given at least $130-million to nonprofit efforts to help the Gulf Coast region recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy and the Foundation Center. That is small-potato giving for America’s…
By PABLO EISENBERG
Contributor
The Best Way for Boards to Operate
For the past several years, Congress and state officials have been threatening to impose new regulations on nonprofit groups and their boards, but legislators and regulators cannot ensure the viability and integrity of nonprofit organizations. That’s the time-honored job description of trustees,…
By Hugh B. Price
Contributor
Two graphic desigers in New York applaud the International Committee of the Red Cross’s decision to adopt a third symbol for use in armed conflicts meant to demonstrate the charity’s neutrality in a column in Business Week. The symbol, a crystal that looks like a square tilted 45 degrees, is…