Education

The Dalai Lama is putting his money where his mouth is.

The Tibetan spiritual leader has given $50,000 from his personal trust to support research into the science behind kindness and compassion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The grant to the school's Center for Investigating Healthy Minds comes after the Dalai Lama promoted its work during a visit to Madison in May.

The university’s Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity chapter will be donating an estimated $8,000 to $10,000 to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, a branch of the fraternity’s national philanthropy after the success of the Aug. 25 Sam Adams concert on Davis Field. Lambda Chi takes part in many philanthropic events such as the Watermelon Bust, a volleyball tournament with Delta Zeta sorority to raise money for the Brian Piccolo Cancer Fund, as well as several others. The fraternity made local history by choosing to donate 100 percent of their profits from the successful and well-attended benefit

Annual Golf Outing Fundraiser Set for September 17 NEW YORK, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Michael Lynch Memorial Foundation, a program that has provided $1.6 million in college scholarships to children of firefighters and victims of the September 11 attacks as well as other U.S. disasters, today announced its 2010 grant recipients. The awards, which this year totaled more than $250,000, go to high-school students who have demonstrated academic excellence, participated actively in school programs and athletics, and contributed selflessly to their communities, often while working part-time jobs to help support themselves. The Foundation also announced that its annual

European universities are increasingly turning to American-style fund-raising methods in an effort to amass endowments that would in turn give them greater economic independence and stability.

Some have even adopted U.S. methods of managing their endowments. The British elite universities have led the way. Last January, Cambridge took another leaf from the Ivy League handbook in raising £300 million through the bond market — the first bond issue ever by a British university.

Neutrogena, the #1 dermatologist-recommended skin care brand, announced today that, with the help of teens across America, the Wave for Change campaign achieved its goal of raising $200,000 for communities in need.  The donation will be divided among three causes in the US and globally, as determined by teens on Neutrogena's Facebook Page.

The Board of Trustees of The Prudential Foundation recently approved $3.575 million in grants to nonprofit organizations dedicated to quality public education, enhancing community-based economic development, and sustaining livable communities.

The drill for new college students remains pretty consistent: grab a campus map, buy some overpriced textbooks, save those quarters for laundry and don't forget to call home. On a growing number of campuses, first-year students are hearing another message. Please give. Not for tuition, but instead as a young donor. With alumni-giving rates at record lows and lagging state support of postsecondary education, public and private schools alike are focusing their efforts on building lifetime loyalty among still-impressionable students. Some schools start small. Fundraisers at Emory University in Atlanta pass out piggy banks for freshmen to collect spare

But major college fundraisers know there have been fewer alumni willing to whip out their checkbooks these days. So they've been focusing almost exclusively on major donors for large gifts -- a strategy that paid off this week with news of some record-breaking increases in private contributions. "The number of million-dollar gifts are up dramatically," said Gene Tempel, president of the IU Foundation, "and we've been emphasizing those major gifts." The Bloomington-based foundation helped Indiana University raise $342.8 million in fiscal year 2010, a 38 percent increase from 2009 and the second-highest amount ever. Purdue and Notre Dame reported

The Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded a three-year, $5.2 million grant to the DeLeT teacher education program at Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.

According to an evaluation commissioned by the foundation, DeLeT represents a “paradigm shift” in the preparation of Jewish day school teachers, integrating graduate coursework with a yearlong immersive field experience in partner schools. As of this summer, the program will have prepared more than 130 Jewish day school teachers, working in 40 schools across the U.S.

After a year of steep drops in private giving to higher education, college fund raisers expect the amount of money raised in the fiscal year that just ended on most campuses to be 4.3 percent higher than the year before, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education's Fundraising Index. The index, an online survey of senior fund raisers at the council's 2,000 member institutions, had a 7.5-percent response rate. The index was released on Monday, during the association's annual conference here for top fund raisers.