Grants

The Institute for Museum and Library Services and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the first 12 winners of a national competition to build 21st century learning labs in museums and libraries around the country. The winners — four museums and eight libraries — will receive a total of $1.2 million in grants to plan and design the labs.

The United Methodist Church will get a surge of support for its work to eliminate deaths and suffering from malaria in Africa, thanks to a $3 million supplemental grant from the United Nations Foundation.

The grant will support administrative costs for the denomination’s Imagine No Malaria campaign, an effort to raise $75 million to empower the entire African continent to achieve a sustainable victory over malaria through prevention, education, communication and treatment.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a five-year, $30 million grant to help close the digital divide among rural populations in Vietnam by providing public libraries and post offices with Internet-equipped computers.

Building on the success of a pilot initiative, the project will be implemented by Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications with $17 million in additional support from the Vietnamese government and software from Microsoft.

The Walmart Foundation announced a two-year $750,000 grant to Veterans Green Jobs. With this funding, Veterans Green Jobs will connect with 1,000 veterans through its training and employment initiatives and place many of those veterans into full-time green sector jobs. This is the latest commitment under the Walmart Foundation’s recently announced five-year, $20 million giving initiative aimed at combating the high veteran unemployment rate.

PepsiCo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of PepsiCo, and Water.org announced an expansion of their partnership to scale WaterCredit, a market-driven model that will provide micro loans to families throughout India. This expansion will help enable approximately 800,000 people to access safe water by March 2016. The commitment is built upon a long-standing partnership between the PepsiCo Foundation and Water.org and is made possible by an $8 million grant — the largest contribution by the foundation in its 50-year history.

GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, announced the 10 winners of its GlaxoSmithKline IMPACT Awards.

Grants were awarded to The Healing Place of Wake County, Helping Hand Clinic Inc., Housing for New Hope Inc., Legal Clinic for the Disabled, Inc., Moore Free Care Clinic, Inc., North Carolina Therapeutic Riding Center, Inc., Phoenixville Healthcare Access Foundation, Senior PharmAssist, Inc., Support Center for Child Advocates and Water Street Health Services.

Blue Shield of California said it is preparing to hand out $20 million in grants to hospitals, medical groups and other healthcare providers who are setting up new partnerships to deliver medical care more efficiently. The nonprofit insurer named 18 groups of providers across California who will receive grants of as much as $2 million by Dec. 1.

The list of recipients includes St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.

Lisa Halstead, board president of GreaterGood.org, announced that grants totaling more than $2.7 million have gone to 109 charities and nonprofits operating in the United States and around the world between January and September 2011.

Foundation Source, provider of outsourced support services for private foundations, announced the launch of GrantSafe™, a free online service that lets private foundations quickly and easily confirm the IRS status of any public charity before making a grant. GrantSafe’s new public availability furthers the company’s mission to encourage informed and responsible philanthropy among the nation’s private foundations.

As part of its “Celebration of Service” initiative to honor U.S. military veterans, The Home Depot Foundation announced $1 million in grants to human service charity Volunteers of America to address the critical need for housing and services for U.S. military veterans.

Grants announced include $750,000 for 11 Volunteers of America homeless veterans programs in 10 cities. These grants will be used to build or refurbish transitional housing for 242 veterans, and to provide eight single-family homes for lease or lease-purchase by veterans with families.