Individual Giving

Selena Gomez is using her fortune to help a cause that hits close to home. The singer/actress—who revealed that she was diagnosed with lupus in a Billboard cover story in October 2015—donated to the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, which fired up the Selena Gomez Fund for Lupus Research, People first reported. The…

Amazon launched AmazonSmile in 2013. AmazonSmile is a means for consumers to shop and donate to their favorite charities at the same time. AmazonSmile essentially offers the same selection as Amazon—except the company will donate a 0.5 percent of the eligible purchase price to a charity of the consumer’s choosing...

Boston Medical Center has received a $25 million gift—the largest in its history—and plans to use the money to fight what it calls the “heartbreaking” public-health crisis caused by drug addiction and the opioid epidemic. The donation to BMC, which serves more low-income patients than any other medical facility in New England, will create the…

A Virginia man who died at home while playing a 24-hour video game marathon was part of an online livestreaming community where members sometimes go to extremes to build their audiences, experts say. Thirty-five-year old Brian Vigneault spent about 22 hours playing the online wargame "World of Tanks" on the streaming platform Twitch.tv. He told…

One of the toughest challenges in our sector is getting donors to give time and time again—to get one-time donors to become repeat donors. Perhaps it’s showing donors the impact that the organization is making or having a mission powerful enough for donors to want to be a part of the organization. Perhaps simplifying the…

Rihanna is Harvard-bound—not to study, but to pick up the university's prestigious Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award. The Barbados-born singer will receive her award next Tuesday at the university. "Rihanna has charitably built a state-of-the-art center for oncology and nuclear medicine to diagnose and treat breast cancer at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown, Barbados,"…

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,…

Attention! There’s been a technological development—GuideStar, the largest database providing information on nonprofit organizations, has partnered up with Facebook to create Facebook’s charitable giving tools...

Today is Feb. 14th, so Happy Valentine’s Day! In celebration, let’s explore some information on how couples donate to charities. Fidelity Charitable recently released a report called “How Couples Give,” which was based on survey responses from 694 Fidelity Charitable donors who are either married or live with their significant other...

There is definitely the tendency in our sector to write off “in-memoriam” donors as one-time donors, yet I think we must understand the emotional connection and make an effort to grow that relationship—with tact and in the gentlest, most-loving way possible...