Health

Blackbaud announced that Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation selected Blackbaud Friends Asking Friends® as the online and offline event management solution for its newest fundraising event, Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer. The Foundation, which supports Canada’s leading cancer research institution, Princess Margaret Hospital, is using Friends Asking Friends combined with an innovative social media campaign to expand its supporter base and raise money for cancer research.

Fundraisers should remember the famous words by V Foundation founder Jim Valvano: "Don't give up; don't ever give up."

Toms Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie's dream came true when the company donated its millionth pair of shoes, a few weeks ago.

The milestone is "an opportunity to say thank you to the million people who have bought Toms Shoes," Mycoskie told The Associated Press while visiting Argentina. "We see it as the beginning of what we hope will be something greater — we're helping kids avoid diseases like hookworm in Guatemala, and podoconiosis in Ethiopia — a terribly debilitating disease that's completely preventable with shoes."

American charities that provide health care to poor people overseas have been hit hard by the recession, according to a study released Tuesday.

Cash gifts from private donors for nonprofits’ global health work dropped by 33 percent from 2008 to 2010, according to the study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, in Seattle. Corporate donations of medicines and equipment dropped by 59 percent in that time, although the decrease was due in part to a new method the researchers used to measure the value of products.

Amy Heller has found the answer to the question on every charity executive and board member's mind: How do nonprofits engage the next generation of donors?

"It's about making philanthropy fun, social, relevant and transparent to donors," says Heller.

WGIRLS, which works to provide underprivileged women and children with a quality education, financial independence and self-sufficiency, was started by Heller and a group of other professional women in New York who initially came together to socialize, with a bent on doing something good for their community.

The Global Alliance for Vaccine Immunization, co-founded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will create an advocacy group to raise $3.7 billion amid reduced donor contributions following the global financial crisis.

The group is expected to start operating in the first quarter of 2011 and will include human-rights activists who will lobby government leaders for money. The funding is needed to introduce new vaccines and roll out existing ones, she said.

Wednesday is World AIDS Day, and many celebrities will stop communicating via Twitter and Facebook. They will not be resuscitated, they say, until their fans donate $1 million.

It’s all part of the latest gambit by the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys to raise money for her charity, Keep a Child Alive, which finances medical care and support services for children and families affected by H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa and India.

When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen pledged this summer to give away most of his fortune, he singled out brain science and biology as among the likely beneficiaries.

Now, the Mercer Island billionaire is following up with $9.4 million in grants to seven research teams, including two at the University of Washington.

The projects include efforts to build tiny microscopes that can peer into the living brain and to identify the neurons that control anxiety and aggression.

As the Iraq and Afghanistan wars drag on, a growing number of grant makers around the country, like the Wolslager Foundation, are paying closer attention to the vast and escalating needs of service members, veterans, and their families.

But experts working to shape and expand grant making to help service members and their families say the philanthropic response has been too small, slow, and piecemeal. They say reluctance to get involved with military causes and ignorance of the immense needs are among the reasons too few grant makers are getting involved.

Overstock.com announced that it has teamed up celebrity designer Angelo Surmelis to celebrate Veterans Day. Overstock.com will be selling the "angelo:HOME Hero Chair" designed by Angelo Surmelis. In addition, through the end of the year, every time an Overstock.com customer purchases the "angelo:HOME Hero Chair", $50 dollars of that purchase will go directly to the Wounded Warrior Project. To learn more about the chair visit www.overstock.com/woundedwarriorproject