Philanthropy

83% of Americans give annually to charity. Charitable giving is clearly an integral part of the culture of successful families in this country. While Americans are generous with their giving, they are often giving inefficiently from a tax perspective. Families could be saving significant dollars by donating securities or assets with long-term appreciation to charity or to a donor advised fund (DAF) instead of contributing cash directly to charities (which is more typical). Donor advised funds have been the fastest growing philanthropic vehicle in the nation over the past few years, yet a recent survey by Fidelity Investments found that 70% of investors had ... Read Full Story

BETHESDA, MD. - August 26, 2009 - As interest in donor advised funds (DAFs) heats up, Calvert Foundation announced today that the assets in its donor advised fund, the Calvert Giving Fund, outperformed the S&P; 500/Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond 60/40 Index by 6.55 percent over the last year. Read Full Story

Top 10 lists are always interesting. The Chronicle of Philanthropy puts out a list each year of the people who have donated or committed the most capital to charity and philanthropy. This year, William Barron Hilton ranked first. For a meager $200,000,000 you too could make this list! Rank Donor Total amount Years on list 1. William Barron Hilton $1.2-billion 1 2. Jon Huntsman $750.0-million 4 3. T. Denny Sanford $474.6-million 3 3. George Soros $474.6-million 7 5. John W. Kluge $400.0-million 3 6. Sanford Weill $328.5-million 6 7. Michael R. Bloomberg $205.0-million 5 8. T. Boone Pickens $200.8-million 4 9. Robert Day $200.0-million ... Read Full Story

Image by elycefeliz via Flickr I read a blog post at Platonic Trip a while back that has stayed with me, kind of like a splinter that I just haven't been able to dig out. Its been irritating me beyond measure! The gist of the post is that the writer was amongst a group of people approached by a man asking for money to buy medicine for his sick kids. Only one member of the group gave any money. The writer of the post outlined his reasons for not giving. According to his way of thinking the man asking for the money should have ... Read Full Story

Is it worse this year? I doubt it. Every year I see stories about how the food banks are hurting, the homeless shelters are in trouble, donations are needed everywhere. This year I seem to be seeking out more opportunities to give. It makes me feel good, it sets a good example for my kids, and it helps someone. So far: The sealed anonymous grocery bag filled with canned and packaged food that will go to some family in time for Christmas. The needy family adopted by Robespierre's sixth grade class. He chose the fifteen-year-old boy who wanted a new pair of sneakers; we ... Read Full Story

Twitter This! VN:F [1.6.9_936] Rating: +1 (from 1 vote) A 365 day peace awareness campaign with multiple globally televised events in support of Global Peace and Green Initiatives. Bringing cultures from around the globe together for the common hope of a better place to live. What is the Show of Peace Concert? The Show of Peace Concert is a global opportunity for celebrities, musicians and world leaders to reach out and communicate to the rest of the world how we can all join together on the road towards peace. In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly declared September 21st as the International Day of ... Read Full Story

Keeping it simple can make a difference, and Poverty.com’s sister site FreeRice is a perfect example. FreeRice has two goals : Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. Execution against these goals resulted in a very casual online word game which, for each correctly answered multiple-choice question, contributes 10 grains of rice to end world hunger . In a quick session (that actually became somewhat of a contest with my wife) we contributed several hundred grains. It doesn’t sound like much, but it all adds up—between October 7th (when the program launched) ... Read Full Story