Disaster Relief
March 22, 2017 at 8:36 am
Some of the world's most influential billionaire philanthropists plan to launch a powerful digital platform to harness the avalanche of data sent from satellites each day—and make it freely available for humanitarian and environmental causes. Bill and Melinda Gates—who are also custodians of legendary investor Warren Buffet's billions— have joined forces with Pierre Omidyar, founder…
March 14, 2017 at 1:39 pm
Mercy Corps, a leading American charity that uses Turkey as a base to aid hundreds of thousands of civilians upended by the war in neighboring Syria, was forced to curtail its work last week after the Turkish government abruptly revoked its registration to operate. “Our hearts are broken by this turn of events, which comes…
March 3, 2017 at 11:33 am
In our digitally dependent era, there are various ways to donate funds online. A donor can make a donation through their smartphone faster than we can count to 10. Technological innovation is at its peak right now, and we think it’s going to continue to grow and grow—rapidly, too. Included in the countless forms of online payments are bitcoins. What are do you think? Is bitcoin the currency of the future?...
February 21, 2017 at 1:16 pm
Philanthropy can be a funny business. Let’s say you’re a do-gooder in Malawi, and you hear about a little girl who has been attacked by a crocodile. She is badly hurt, but her family has no money for medical care at a private clinic. What do you do? The traditional philanthropic approach would be, approximately,…
February 17, 2017 at 10:52 am
The MacArthur Foundation has chosen eight semi-finalists for 100&Change, a competition awarding a $100 million grant to the nonprofit or for-profit organization with the most distinguished, world-changing proposal. Submitted ideas include changing the way we care for orphans, treating blindness in Africa, providing virtual access to specialty medical care for the underprivileged and more...
December 5, 2016 at 10:55 am
After tragic news broke Saturday morning of the deadly Oakland warehouse inferno, the Oakland A's launched a fundraising effort to help the fire victims and their families. The team launched a relief fund on their YouCaring crowdfunding site, requesting fans to donate money to help the victims. The team pledged to match the donations if…
October 17, 2016 at 9:23 am
Tragedy has hit Haiti—again. Local officials put the death toll from Hurricane Matthew above 1,000, and a cholera epidemic is likely to drive that number higher. At the center of the devastation, in the rural western part of the country, homes have been shredded by fierce winds and crops have been wiped out. Residents, who…
July 11, 2016 at 11:14 am
Legislation introduced in the Senate last week would open the American Red Cross to outside oversight that it has long resisted. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the bill following his staff's lengthy investigation that raised questions about the charity’s spending after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and documented how Red Cross leaders resisted an earlier congressional inquiry...
July 1, 2016 at 9:33 am
Last week, I went home to West Virginia, but I did not expect to drive right into a 1,000-year flood. Disaster hit my home state in a big way. That said, what impressed me the most when seeing the flooded areas was how West Virginians are working very hard to survive in any way possible...
June 30, 2016 at 10:44 am
An earthquake fractured many lives in Haiti in 2010, with 1.5 million losing their homes and 160,000 losing their lives. To help Haitians pick up the pieces, many donated to the American Red Cross, which received about $487.6 million in donations. Those funds went to the Haiti Assistance Project, an initiative that projected to build 700 homes in the nation's poor neighborhood of Campeche...
