International Affairs

The joint Government, business sector and third sector round table has submitted to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a plan to promote both individual and corporate philanthropy in Israel. The goal – to increase the percentage of contributions.

According to data presented to the Prime Minister, the State of Israel is not realizing the contribution potential of its citizens, relative to that of other countries.

Chevron Corp.'s foundation and USAID are to pour $50 million into Nigeria's impoverished delta where militants have kidnapped foreign oil workers and demanded that more oil profits come back to the region, the U.S. oil giant said Thursday. Chevron's Niger Delta Partnership Initiative and the U.S.-government funded USAID will each invest $25 million toward the development of the region over the next four years.

Give2Asia, a U.S.-based public charity promoting transformative philanthropy for Asia, announced a new partnership with Afghan Connection to improve access to education and health for nearly 100,000 children, youth, and young adults throughout Afghanistan.

U.S. donors can make tax-deductible donations online to Give2Asia in support of Afghan Connection at http://www.give2asia.org/afghanconnection, or by sending donations to “Give2Asia” by check, wire, or securities transfer.

A local nonprofit focused on bringing clean energy to developing countries is a finalist for a $1.5 million global environmental prize, competition officials announced today. E+Co, a small firm that has invested $40 million in developing countries like Costa Rica, Tanzania and China over the last 16 years, is among six finalists competing for the third-annual Zayed Future Energy Prize, based in Abu Dhabi.

NASA is looking to hand over control of U.S. science experiments on the International Space Station to a nonprofit organization, the space agency announced Monday.

The space agency issued a call for "an independent, nonprofit research management organization to develop and manage the U.S. portion of the station," according to the Dec. 2 statement.

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.

The country's top think tank said private-run enterprises were the major driving force for China's charity donations in 2009.

Private-run enterprises donated around 5.43 billion yuan ($812 million) in 2009, which accounted for about 41.35 percent of total donations from enterprises in 2009, according to an annual report on China's philanthropy development released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on Tuesday.

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 $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch from billionaire George Soros announced last week will extend the overseas presence of the influential American rights champion and ensure its financial health for years to come. But the goal of the gift is more ambitious still: to alter the way human rights are promoted in the 21st century, making rights advocacy less of an exclusively American and European cause.

When the Haiti earthquake hit back in January, the outcry and response were swift and plentiful. In this new era of the iPhone and other mobile devices, the biggest buzz in the fundraising sector was generated from the mobile-giving explosion following the disaster. But the biggest takeaway for fundraisers — all of them, not just disaster-relief organizations — is that donors have certain, higher expectations these days, and your organization must meet them.