Author Archives for Michael

This year alone, Los Angeles County will spend $1 billion caring for our homeless neighbors, with more than half of that going to physical and mental healthcare.

The health effects of homelessness are staggering. In accordance with our mission to lead positive systemic change in Los Angeles, CCF is focusing attention on increasing the supply of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) units.

Data has proven that PSH is the most effective way to end chronic homelessness and we believe it should be how the City of Los Angeles invests to effectively combat this crisis. PSH is a cost-effective measure that combines affordable housing with services that help people facing complex challenges to live with stability, autonomy and dignity.

CCF has joined a coalition of foundations, housing developers and lenders to propose a plan to triple the number of PSH units every year in the City of Los Angeles.

A first-quarter charitable initiative reaped rewards for Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Great Lakes Bay Region as well as other community organizations and individuals.

aThe groundwork for the Serving for Aces service challenge was laid in 2015 when SYM started counting the number of aces served during the Dow Corning Tennis Classic and donating to a local charity based upon the final count,a said Rod Coleman, president of SYM Financial Advisors, sponsor of the Serving for Aces Challenge. Each documented service ace added to the total tournament ace count, resulting in a check for $2,324 to 2016 charitable partner Big Brothers Big Sisters.

aOur goal for 2016 was to make an even greater impact than before by taking the idea of a aservice acea to a whole new level and inspiring acts of service all across our community,a Coleman said.

Of course, the reported “attitudes” are based on secondhand information, so take it for what it is worth.

The report finds that 67 percent of those who took part in the survey said their clients’ philanthropy had increased over the past decade, and 80 percent projected that it would further increase in the coming decade. A mere two percent predicted that philanthropic activity among the ultra-rich would decrease over the coming decade.

In terms of motivations for all of that activity, personal fulfillment was cited by slightly more than half (52 percent), closely followed by “a sense of purpose,” selected by 51 percent of participants, and “a sense of duty or responsibility” (48 percent).

Eight area organizations will be making the Milaca area a better place after receiving Rum River Community Foundation grants on Saturday, March 19, at the Stone’s Throw Golf Course.
Recipients for 2016 were the RecFest, Milaca Community Education, the Milaca Fine Arts Council, Holiday Helping Hands and the Give Me Five mentoring program, Milaca Community Special Olympics, Milaca High School robotics team, and the Milaca Youth Baseball Association.
The Rum River Community Foundation was created to connect people with projects that are important to the community. The foundation is affiliated with the Initiative Foundation.
Here’s a snapshot of the grant-funded projects:
RecFest: RecFest, Milaca’s annual bluegrass festival, received a $300 grant that will help fund music workshops during the 3-day festival.
Milaca Fine Arts Council: The foundation presented $500 to the Milaca Fine Arts Council to assist with expanding its gallery. Give Me Five is an after-school mentoring program for students in grades 5-8.
Milaca Community Education: The foundation presented $500 to Milaca Community Education to fund a workshop with the Prairie Fire Theater. The theater will come to Milaca for a week and work with students, who at the end of the workshop will present a community play.
Milaca Youth Baseball Association: The foundation awarded $500 to the youth baseball association to help in obtaining a portable baseball mound for the baseball field in Pease.
And Finally, the foundation presented $1,000 to the school district’s robotics team.
This is the fifth year that the Rum River Foundation has made monetary awards to Milaca-area projects and organizations.

More than 85 percent of the gifts the school gets come from a group of 100 or so benefactors virtually none of whom, by the way, is an alumnus.

To make matters considerably more challenging, Paul Smith’s gets by without the support of state funds (unlike any number of technical colleges), on a relatively small $27 million endowment. Sandy Weill, as he is known, was formerly CEO of Citigroup, and over the last few decades he has given so many hundreds of millions to so many causes, especially in New York City, that the Weill name has become virtually ineluctable. Though nobody in their family has studied there, in 2002 they set about donating more than $10 million to help the college build a new library and student center both of which were named for her and raised nearly $30 million more from other donors.

In 2015 the Weills pledged their largest gift yet, $20 million, to be spent at the discretion of the administration and trustees, on whose board Joan sits with a major condition attached: The entire college had to be renamed Joan Weill Paul Smith’s College. The school’s effort to redefine (or simply ignore) forever fell short, he wrote, “of showing that its name is holding the College back from being a shining success both in enrollment and in producing successful college graduates.”

And with that bit of bad news, the Weills rescinded their gift. (“She didn’t even have the humility to demand the name be changed to Paul Smith Joan Weill’s College,” he added.) One online commenter suggested the Weills deserved a prize “for the grossest pseudo-philanthropic act of the year.”

By this logic the only true philanthropy is anonymous, the kind that “sounds no trumpet,” as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. (According to Titan, Ron Chernow’s biography of the co-founder of Standard Oil, Rockefeller also believed that plastering your name on a university, as fellow tycoons Carnegie and Leland Stanford had, fostered dependency.)

More recently, in 2014, Gert Boyle, the chair of Columbia Sportswear, was revealed as the secret patron behind a $100 million bequest to the Oregon Health & Science University, which seemed odd, since Boyle had given significant gifts before publicly. After Woodruff’s gift Nichols, who has written five books on fundraising, measured the number of $1 million and $5 million gifts in the same realm. “I want to give my money away rather than have somebody take it away,” Weill once told the New York Times.

Naming rights or, rather, renaming rights have become a touchy
issue in these gilded times, because the size of some gifts to established institutions can rival the amounts that that were required to build them in the first place. (Paul Smith’s College was initially endowed with a $2.5 million donation in 1937, which would be about $42 million today.) Nearly always the subtext is the brashness not merely of big money but of new money (what Apley called the “horsey and sporting set”). ‘Come on, though, it’s not WASPs giving Jews a bad name, it’s Jews giving Jews a bad name,’ one said.”

But if so much discomfort arises from Jews giving buildings Jewish names, plenty of people see the value of that struggle.

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Recently, hundreds of newspapers – including the Wall Street Journal, New
York Times, Chicago Sun Times and dozens upon dozens of smaller newspapers –
have started charging for online access.

Grants approved for New Tecumseth arts groups

Merck Foundation Awards Grant to American Cancer Society for Program to Improve Access to High-Quality Cancer Care in Underserved Communities | Business Wire Merck Foundation Awards Grant to American Cancer Society for Program to Improve Access to High-Quality Cancer Care in Underserved Communities $1.58 Million Grant Supports Patient Navigation Program, Empowering

KENILWORTH, N.J.–()–The Merck Foundation (the Foundation) and the American Cancer Society access to high-quality care, patient empowerment and care coordination. Cancer Society to help empower those touched by cancer to navigate the Caregiver Support, American Cancer Society. cancer patients in vulnerable communities in Arizona, New Mexico and New guidance and support for cancer patients, their families and caregivers. The American Cancer Society is a global grassroots force of 2.5 million Cancer Society Media Contact:
Evelyn Barella, 810-610-5234
or
American Cancer Society Investor Contact:
Katherine Sharpe, 404-329-5705

Merck Foundation Awards Grant to American Cancer Society for Program to Improve Access to High-Quality Cancer Care in Underserved Communities

Cancer Society Media Contact:
Evelyn Barella, 810-610-5234
or
American Cancer Society Investor Contact:
Katherine Sharpe, 404-329-5705

Need for scholarships right here in New Canaan

At the Community Foundation, we know that some families in our town face real financial need and require assistance for even the basic expenses of living.

For example, our Touch A Life grant program supports local residents with urgent essential expenses; this community charity initiative made 57 payments totaling nearly $20,000 last year alone, benefitting 125 New Canaanites. New Canaan Community Foundation‘s scholarship program is a critical part of this patchwork quilt of college education financing for local students.

Bequest for New Canaan students

Our Sapienza scholarship program was established in 2006 through the generous bequest of Mrs. The New Canaan Advertiser, 42 Vitti Street New Canaan, CT 06840

Kids’ community garden gets $3,500 ‘seed’ grant | OregonLive.com Teacher Stephanie Sayles of Joan Austin Elementary School in Newberg stands with her fifth-grade students in front of a large field that is the future site of the community garden and forest. The Joan Austin Elementary School community garden was chosen by Fiskars to receive a gardening grant. They know about nutrition and find out the benefits of vegetables by “growing and tasting veggies they may not have ever eaten,” she says.

Gardening helps kids relate to math and science, and when they’re outside, they connect to the land and environmental issues.

Ideas on how to get your kids hooked on gardening: Garden columnists Dennis Peck and Marcia Westcott Peck: Your backyard vegetable patch could yield a lifelong harvest.
Offspring in the garden: Keeping kids safe and smiling near the soil: Gardening expert and author Melinda Myers welcomes her grandchildren to her garden. Schools encourage gardening because it bring awareness to the source of food, as well as interest in subjects like health, science and caring for the environment.
Thumbs up for green-thumb schools: Gardening teaches kids math, science and healthy eating: Recognizing the skills that come from gardening, Oregon and nonprofit organizations offer information and grants to schools to support campus gardens.
Kids build garden box, learn to work with tools, grow healthy food: When kids build a small gardening box, they learn about tools, safety as well as growing plants, science and math, water conservation and healthy living, says Mel Bartholomew, author of “Square Foot Gardening With Kids.”

Because of this value-added education, Sayles’ class received $3,500 in cash and tools from Fiskars’ 2016 Project Orange Thumb to support their community garden and future urban forest.

Her students were one of 30 groups awarded the annual prize out of more than 400 that applied.

Seattle Tilth, a nonprofit organic gardening and urban ecology organization with learning gardens and children’s programs in Seattle, was also one of the winners.

The award was based on the program’s environmental stewardship, healthy lifestyles and nutritional awareness, according to Fiskars’ news release.

Sayles says the school-wide organic garden idea came about last year after a successful recycling and composting program.

The Project Orange Thumb “seed” money will allow the kids to plant edible vegetables, herbs and flowers in eight raised garden beds.

The 4-by-7-foot cedar garden boxes were built and donated by the neighboring Newberg Christian Church. “Now that we have the grant, we can start creating the garden space hopefully this spring,” says Sayles.

The raised beds are about 10 feet apart to allow for safe movement of kids, shovel handles and garden carts, she adds.

If the gardens can grow enough vegetables and fruit, the kids want to offer the produce to the school cafeteria, with the surplus to be given to the community.

–Janet Eastman

jeastman@oregonian.com
503-799-8739
@janeteastman