Health

The Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation announced Together on Diabetes^®: Communities Uniting to Meet America’s Diabetes Challenge, a 5-year, $100 million initiative to help patients living with type 2 diabetes better manage their disease beyond the doors of their doctor’s office – in their homes and communities – and for the course of their disease.

Health care organizations in California, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania were awarded $1.6 million to support their efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic health care disparities in communities across the United States. The funding provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change expands the program’s grant portfolio to include projects evaluating interventions in a variety of different settings.

Agencies that serve individuals with developmental disabilities continue to bring millions of dollars into the region’s economy, with four organizations achieving combined revenues of nearly $280 million last year.

Those four organizations, led by the $109.3 million People Inc., are among 248 organizations with combined revenues of $1.94 billion, according to the Business First 2010 Million Dollar Nonprofits research report.

We'd like to introduce SOFII to those of our readers who don't know about it and share some of the fundraising efforts that have made it into the site's Best of the Best Showcase.

The parents of a boy who lost his battle with cancer have donated $30 million to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto with the goal of helping more children survive the disease. The donation, believed to be the single largest private gift to pediatric cancer in North America, will establish the Garron Family Cancer Centre and fund research into childhood cancer.

Aaron’s Staff, a nonprofit organization in Helena, is getting many people’s goat this month by threatening to deliver an unruly goat to their front door. The goat giveaway is a fundraiser for the organization where unless participants buy fictional goat insurance, their name will be entered into a raffle to win a goat — whether wanted or not. Aaron’s Staff assistant director Marilyn Shultz said the fundraiser is a fun and different way to raise money for a good cause.

Aaron’s Staff provides respite care for children with disabilities and special needs, she said.

Both fundraising revenue and donor growth remain flat from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2010, according to the 2010 Target Analytics donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance: 2010 Second Quarter Results report.

Labor Day Weekend won't be the same.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association said Wednesday that the telethon comedian Jerry Lewis has hosted annually since 1966 will run a scant six hours next September, less than one-third its customary 21 1/2 hour length.

Chevron Corporation announced that it will commit an additional $25 million to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, raising its 6-year investment in the organization to $55 million. Chevron is now the single largest private sector donor to the organization. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is one of the largest funders of programs to fight global epidemics.

In its largest gift ever to a Charlotte institution, the Leon Levine Foundation will announce today a gift of $20 million to Carolinas HealthCare System to create a cancer institute that will bring higher levels of care to communities across the Carolinas. Although headquartered in Charlotte, the new Levine Cancer Institute will expand access to cancer specialists, treatment, research and support services for patients served by 32 hospitals owned or managed by Carolinas HealthCare, the third-largest public hospital system in the country.