 |
February-March 2003
Global Giving Round-Up
Overviews of best-practices around the world and links to learn more about them
Mama Cash helps women worldwide
Mama Cash (www.mamacash.nl), a Dutch women's fund, gathers together women's resources to support women's projects worldwide. Mama Cash uses donations it receives to make grants to organizations in the Netherlands as well as elsewhere in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the Middle East, that support women's economic and educational empowerment as well as human rights. One Mama Cash initiative is a working group for women with inherited wealth, which has been active for ten years. Its goal is to increase the financial self-confidence of women as they take on responsibility for their wealth and seek to use it in socially responsible ways.
Turkish philanthropist aims to spread the ethos of giving among his peers
Turkish billionaire Sakip Sabanci, whose family owns one of Turkey's largest conglomerates, is not only a leading donor in his country, but also one of the most outspoken advocates for philanthropy by Turkey's business elite. His family foundation has been a major donor to education and art; last year it gave $40 million to establish a private university and for other cultural and educational projects. In June 2002, the world-class Sakip Sabanci Museum opened in Istanbul. The Sabanci villa -- formerly the family residence -- has become a state-of-the-art showcase for Sabanci's collections of calligraphy, furniture and decorative arts. (The Art Newspaper, 2002)
Israeli-American venture network supports democracy and human rights at home
The Israel Venture Network (IVN -- www.israelventurenetwork.org) links Israeli-born entrepreneurs in the US with Israel-based entrepreneurs to support democracy, education and human rights within Israel. An initiative of the New Israel Fund, a 23-year-old fund that supports democracy initiatives in Israel, IVN was formed in 2001 in response to the recognition that while Israel's high-tech sector was producing tremendous wealth and intellectual capital, one-third of Israelis were growing up poor and underprivileged and the gap between rich and poor was increasing. Many IVN members are Israelis who have been successful in high tech outside of Israel. The current chair of IVN, Eric Benhamou (who also chairs 3Com and Palm, Inc.) is based in California and the IVN operates from five regional nodes in Israel, Boston, New York, Silicon Valley and Southern California. IVN members do more than just give money, they also donate time and expertise to communities to address critical education gaps.
Lebanese politician/philanthropist makes his mark at home and abroad
Issam Fares, a leading Lebanese businessman, politician and philanthropist, is supporting social investment within Lebanon and promoting Middle East understanding elsewhere in the world. In addition to forming the Fares Foundation (db.fares.org.lb) in Beirut in 1987, he has been a generous donor to Tufts University in Massachusetts, where, in 2002, he presided over the opening of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, a university-wide initiative devoted to promoting study and understanding of the region. Tufts also inaugurated the Issam M. Fares Chair in Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, the first endowed chair focusing on the region in the US. Fares heads a conglomerate consisting of banking, factory and investment businesses in Lebanon, Europe and the US.
Korean-born entrepreneur in US is role model of American Dream
Silicon Valley businessman Chong-Moon Lee, who founded computer graphics card supplier Diamond Multimedia in 1982, set a new standard for Asian philanthropy in the US last summer when he donated $16 million to help fund the new Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Mr. Lee has also funded programs in Palo Alto and New York to work with Korean-American gang members. Born in Korea and educated there and in the US, Mr. Lee established a successful pharmaceutical materials business in Korea, but left with his family in 1970 to flee persecution by Korea's military government. Lee embarked on a new life of charitable giving in 1995, when he sold Diamond Multimedia for $92 million. In 2001 he donated $250,000 to create a scholarship fund for disadvantaged Korean-Americans and also donated $600,000 to The Asia Foundation for program to train North Koreans in medicine, technology and law. (San Jose Mercury News, August 11, 2002)
Family foundation honors American volunteer slain while working in South Africa
The Amy Biehl Foundation (www.amybiehl.org), named after a 26-year-old American volunteer who was murdered in a South African township in 1993, is about to observe its ninth anniversary supporting economic empowerment and non-violence in the communities where Ms. Biehl worked. The foundation, established by Ms. Biehl's parents with widespread support from the anti-apartheid movement in the US and South Africa, funds initiatives that aim to improve the skills of impoverished youth and adults, including crafts projects (items can be purchased online through the Amy Biehl Foundation website), a community baking company, youth recreation programs, and a golf club located in a poor area near Cape Town. The foundation, based in Biehl's hometown of Newport Beach, California, also sponsors an annual Amy Biehl Fun Run and Walk which focuses on the theme of reconciliation and violence prevention.
Global Leaders for Tomorrow produce guidelines for measuring philanthropic impact
The Global Leaders for Tomorrow (GLT), a group of young leaders from business, politics, the arts, and civil society brought together by the World Economic Forum, recently released a report that aims to help donors measure the impact of their philanthropy so they act more effectively in support of constructive change. Produced by the GLT's Benchmarking Philanthropy Task Force, the report, entitled Philanthropy Measures Up, compares 20 innovative measurement initiatives and lists tools to help philanthropists better gauge the effect of their grantmaking. According to this report, fewer than 50% of all private grantmaking organizations measure the impact of their giving, even though several innovative practices have been designed for that purpose. Philanthropy Measures Up is available at the Forum's website www.weforum.org.
Volunteer radio station in Northern Ireland broadcasts for charity
For eleven years, a volunteer-run radio station in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, has plowed all its profits into charity. Called Radio Cracker (www.radiocracker.co.uk), the station originated as a national project that included 180 radio stations in all, run by a charity called Christmas Cracker that was started by the Oasis Trust. When Oasis ended the project, the Ballymena volunteers created a nonprofit organization and have continued to run the station as a fund-raising project. At the end of January 2003, they reported collecting £85,000 (US $135,500), and donated the proceeds to local programs as well as overseas, including funds for a special wing at a hospital in India (called the Ballymena wing), a school in the Sudan, a bakery in South America where street children bake bread, and to projects elsewhere in Latin America and Africa, including a recent one in Malawi aimed at addressing the hunger crisis there.
Leading Canadian philanthropist honors unsung heroes
Canadian philanthropist Jeffrey Skoll, who made his fortune as the first president of the online auction site eBay, has turned his energies towards supporting and saluting "unsung heroes" around the world. Using his resources to fund documentaries, books and other media projects to spotlight individuals who are making a difference fighting poverty and environmental degradation, Mr. Skoll asserts that it's critical to create new role models at a time of great cynicism, when top business and religious leaders have let their followers down. One of the wealthiest Canadians, Mr. Skoll, who has been based in the US for many years, ranked 30th out of 50 leading philanthropists in the US, according to a recent Business Week poll. In March he will receive the outstanding philanthropists award at a conference in Toronto sponsored by the US-based Association of Fundraising Professionals, honoring not just the amount of his giving but the innovation behind it. (Globe and Mail [Toronto] , February 17, 2003)
Philanthropy on the move: The Wheelchair Foundation provides mobility to people in need
It sounds like a simple idea, and in a way it is: the Wheelchair Foundation (www.wheelchairfoundation.org) aims to ensure that disabled poor people are empowered with the same mobility as other disabled people by getting wheelchairs to them. Launched in June 2000 with a $15 million donation by California-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Kenneth E. Behring, the Wheelchair Foundation draws on an extensive network of partnerships in the US and overseas, with corporations and nonprofit organizations, to raise funds and distribute wheelchairs. Overseas, distribution is arranged with partners on a duty-free basis to keep costs as low as possible. The foundation also draws on commercial approaches to philanthropy, including directing shoppers to companies that will donate up to a certain percentage of sales to the foundation. As of January 2003, more than 112,000 wheelchairs had been donated or pledged.
Philanthropy Ink: Major intergenerational wealth transfer imminent
Despite the recent economic downturn, the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in the US -- estimated to be at least $41 trillion -- will take place by the year 2052, according to Paul G. Schervish of the Boston College's Social Welfare Research Institute (www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/gsas/swri/). Mr. Schervish, the author of a 1999 report entitled "Millionaires and the Millennium: New Estimates of the Forthcoming Wealth Transfer and the Prospects for a Golden Age of Philanthropy", recently concluded in his new report, "Why the $41 Trillion Wealth Transfer Estimate is Still Valid: A Review of Challenges and Questions", that the massive transfer will still occur despite major changes in the economy. The complete report, co-authored with John J. Havens, was published in The National Committee on Planned Giving's Journal of Gift Planning (First Quarter 2003.)
Follow-up: New York Times reports on microcredit in Mexico
Compartamos, the Mexican microlending program created by GPC member José Ignacio Avalos Hernández (who was profiled in the December-January issue of Global Giving Matters), was the subject of an article in March 19, 2003 edition of The New York Times, highlighting the successes of organizations that extend small loans, mostly to rural women, to bring them out of poverty towards a level of self-sufficiency.
© 2003 The Synergos Institute
|
|
|
