The Daily Tell

Looking to help and inspire philanthropists across the country, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has created the "Build a Stronger America," which will give entreprenuers a virtual space to discuss their various ventures while also helping them voice their opinions regarding the current economic climate.

The campaign, which officially went "live" at the recent Inc. 500 conference in Washington, will help entrepreneurs and business owners to convene at a website (BuildaStrongerAmerica.com) to discuss their various ideas and the problems that some may face to get them off the ground.

Additionally, "Build a Stronger America" will also look to influence the current political discussions underway to try and mend the economy by creating a "united voice" for independent businessmen and women to add their input.

"Entrepreneurs are the key to our country’s economic recovery because they are creating the jobs and innovations that will bring us out of this decline and into sustainability and growth," said Carl Schramm, the Kaufmann Foundation’s president and CEO. "As a group, entrepreneurs are the silent heroes of our economy, and their success is heavily reliant on many factors outside of their direct control. The Kauffman Foundation is proud to give them a platform for the first time to share their stories and amplify their voice."

Chris Gardner, the CEO of Gardner Rich & Co. and co-author of the book that inspired the film The Pursuit of Happyness, threw his support behind the Kaufmann Foundation’s initiative, praising the opportunity that the it will give entrepreneurs to "come together to make their voices heard."

The "Build a Stronger America" initiative is one of many programs set in place by the Kaufmann Foundation to promote entrepreneurship-friendly government policies and promote new business’ use of the most current technology available. Among its other initiatives that promote similar ideals are FastTrac and the Urban Entrepreneur Partnership.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has announced that 49 gifted students from low-income houses will be the recipients of scholarships to help them either attend or complete their studies at college cross the world.

According to the foundation, the scholarships will provide up to $50,000 per year for up to six years to for "high-achieving, low-income students," many of which who also benefited from the foundation’s Undergraduate Transfer and College Scholarship programs.

Among the many recipients of the scholarships are Jarrad Aguirre, a former figure skater and 2009 Rhodes Scholar who plans to complete a degree in medical anthology, medicine, and public health after watching her mother survive breast cancer and a friend succumb to AIDS.

Lalita Booth, another recipient, is a once-homeless single mother who founded a nonprofit organization that teaches financial literary to low-income learners, foster teens, and high school students while in college and is pursuing both an MBA and MPA at Harvard University.

"These students represent a generation of new leaders. At a time when getting advanced degrees is so critical to professional success, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is committed to helping exceptional students like these pursue their dreams so they can make a difference in the world," said Dr. Lawrence Kutner, the foundation’s executive director.

A profile of the 49 scholarship recipients found that 15 were international students who hailed from Afghanistan, China, Vietnam, Nepal, Myanmar, India, Russia, Ecuador, and Nigeria. The recipients will attend many prestigious graduate and professional schools including Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles, New York University, Brown University, University of Oxford, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

According to its website, he Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a private foundation that focuses on helping children with great talent to live up to their potential through its Young Scholars program.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of its popular beer, Guinness & Company has announced that it will partner with the Clinton Global Initiative to develop a micro-lending program for underfunded prospective entrepreneurs in America.

The commitment, made through the company’s new global philanthropic program called the Arthur Guinness Fund, will launch with a $750,000 investment in the independent nonprofit Youth Business America.

Youth Business America (YBA) was established in 2008 through a Clinton Global Initiative commitment by Youth Business International (YBI), an international nonprofit founded by the Prince of Wales that leads a global network of independent entrepreneurship support initiatives in different countries.

YBA gives entrepreneurs in underserved communities a loan, a volunteer mentor, and other business development services – a model which has allowed these otherwise unfunded entrepreneurs to see survival rates similar to those of the small enterprise startup market.

The Arthur Guinness Fund grant will go toward expanding YBA’s reach to more local communities, in which the country’s already weak job market is at its worst – the nonprofit estimates that the unemployment rate in many of YBA’s underserved communities is more than 25 percent.

The Guinness grant will also go toward helping the nonprofit’s administration costs, and will allow Guinness & Company staff to serve as mentors to the participating entrepreneurs.

"Youth Business America and Guinness believe that there is a real opportunity to take advantage of two factors in America – the long-standing commitment to small business, and the culture of volunteerism – to build a program that promotes self-employment and creates jobs using the resources and skills of the business sector," the organizations announced.

Support for entrepreneurs also means support for the economy as a whole, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that startup companies accounted for more than 14 percent of hiring between 1993 and 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Tibi Galis and Alex Zucker work for the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing genocides around the world. The AIPR’s mission is to identify and target areas where genocide has yet to happen, but potentially could. This NGO has created a unique approach to genocide that combines academic expertise with pragmatic government engagement. Through seminars and other outreach programs, the AIPR facilitates the networking of genocide experts and key government ministers to stop a genocide before it has a chance to take root.
In my interview with Mr. Galis and Mr. Zucker, we discussed the AIPR’s work, the nature of genocide, and solutions for the future.

DT: How do you help spread genocide awareness?
AIPR: We help governments think about how they can organize programs about genocide. We organize seminars about genocide prevention, always making sure these communities grow constantly. Our group has close ties to the UN, who can help us reach out to government ministers. Another big part of our work is developing a curriculum of genocide prevention, which can lead to government policies for genocide prevention.
DT: Have you met any opposition from any governments for your work?
AIPR: No government has refused to partake in our programs. The reason is that we insist on building a community of civil servants. There have been reluctant countries, but after they interacted with us, they wanted to participate. We help governments to grow from the inside to reform their policy. Sometimes bureaucracy can be difficult—we have to go through so many channels—so you have to attack the issue from many angles. We have built these links because with a community of civil servants, we can directly deal with genocide on the ground level.
We seek to prevent genocide by reaching out to mid-level ministers who could rise to the level of leadership. We also work with genocide experts. People who study genocide can now actually work with government ministers who deal with genocide directly. This is a new community building effort; this is the first time academics can talk to the policy makers.
DT: What parallels have you discovered between the Holocaust and today’s genocides?
AIPR: The biggest similarity with all genocides is that they are committed by ordinary people. That’s why public relations is so important. We must draw upon the memory of the Holocaust to highlight the causes of modern genocide. Of course, every genocide is different, but genocides all share the common trait of being a specific process. These processes start in a certain way, but all end with the government trying to exterminate a certain group. Genocide scholar Barbara Harff has outlined specific “predictors” that indicate a genocide is possible. These predictors include:
1. The more isolated the country, the more likely a genocide can occur
2. The ruling regime is easily identified with a majority or minority group.
3. Genocide has taken place before in the area; habituation can occur.
4. There is a continued history of strife and political upheaval.
DT: What are some mistakes western governments make with regards to genocide? Have there been any successes?
AIPR: One of the biggest mistakes is dealing with genocide as a legal issue. This is counterproductive because genocide then must be defined after it’s done, after the genocide has been achieved. Samantha Power, author of “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, says the US has never intervened in genocide because debate has taken place of action. The AIPR wants governments to be attentive long before genocide can occur.
Genocide intervention must have popular support. That is why leaders must galvanize public opinion, not just respond to public opinion. There must be a back and forth dialog with regards to genocide.
Two success stories took place in Kenya and Macedonia. In both countries, everything was in place for things to go wrong. After the election in Kenya, ethnic strife was widespread. Fortunately, the community stepped in to stop genocide. There was intense diplomatic effort from the UN and western countries in Nairobi that diffused the tension; they were able to convince the leaders of the political parties to control their constituents. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, there was a large immigration of Albanian refugees into Macedonia from Kosovo. There were different ethnic groups ready to start fighting. In that tense situation, civil servants in Macedonia gave out the signals that genocide was possible. Diplomatic efforts by NATO helped the different parties meet their needs, and genocide was prevented.
DT: What can an ordinary person do to help prevent genocide?
AIPR: There are several things a person can do to help.
1. Dedicate their attention to issue, and become as informed as possible on genocide issues.
2. Volunteer for organizations working in genocide prevention and awareness.
3. Promote genocide prevention with their local leaders, and hold their politicians accountable on the issue.
4. Make sure to try to change all forms of discrimination and discriminatory policies in their own country. We all need to strive to make our own society better.
5. Change their view of people around the world. We must stop thinking of people outside our culture as being completely different from us, and instead build a more international understanding of the right to life and protection.
Essentially, we must all strive to make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights really universal.

Tibi Galis is the Managing Director and Alex Zucker is the Media Relations Officer of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. To learn more about the AIPR, visit their website www.auschwitzinstitute.org. Through generous grants and individual donations, the AIPR is able to continue its campaign of practical, ground-level genocide prevention through international seminars, coalition and network building, and university course offerings.

Grants were awarded recently that will help the waterways around Chesapeake Bay.

The $2.8 million in grants were awarded by Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to 32 organizations. The goal of the grants is to help clean up and preserves the water that flows into the bay.

Chesapeake Bay Program Director Jeffrey Lape noted that the 32 organizations will have a positive impact on the area’s watershed.

"This year’s projects will restore 620 acres of wetlands, plant 32 rain gardens and 172 acres of streamside forest buffers, and fence off 23 miles of streams to exclude livestock," Lape said.

The Piedmont Environmental Council received a $75,000 grant, which the organization will use to create incentives for farmers to install fencing and forest buffers along the Upper Hazelnut River in Virginia. The fences and buffers will keep livestock away from the river.

A $75,000 grant was given to the GreenTreks Network and will be used for a marketing campaign. Through the use of video, the Reign in the Rain campaign will encourage people to practice measures that will reduce the amount of polluted runoff that flows into the waterways near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Ducks Unlimited got a grant of $20,333 in order to restore wetlands in Delaware. In all, the money will be used to help 473 acres of wetlands, including 84 acres of rare Atlantic White cedars.

The Small Watershed Grants Program has awarded $23.6 million since 2000. Some of that money has been used to procure other funds, which means the program has helped Chesapeake Bay waterways to the tune of more than $92 million.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is a nonprofit organization that was established by Congress in 1984. The goal of the organization is to help natural habitats and species native to the country through raising funds by public and private means.

For the 38th straight year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation have announced its annual naming of new MacArthur Fellows, with 24 new inductees making up the new group for 2009.

According to the foundation’s website, the new Fellows were all chosen for their "creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future" after being recommended for the award by nominators who had been specifically invited by the foundation to do so. Each Fellow will receive $500,000 in what the foundation calls "no strings attached" support over the next five years, allowing them to spend the money in any way possible without any stipulations or reporting requirements

Among the recipients are 36-year-old economist Esther Duflo from MIT, who was nominated for her analysis of the cycle of poverty in South Asia and Africa, as well as 43-year-old Theodore Zoli, a bridge engineer for the HNTB Corporation who is making technological advances in protecting transportation infrastructure from natural disasters.

The other 2009 Fellows selected by the foundation are Lynsey Addario, Maneesh Agrawala, Timothy Barrett, Mark Bradford, Edwidge Danticat, Rackstraw Downs, Deborah Eisenberg, Lin He, Peter Huybers, James Longley, L. Mahadevan, Heather McHugh, Jerry Mitchell, Rebecca Onie, Richard Prum, John A. Rogers, Elyn Saks, Jill Seaman, Beth Shapiro, Daniel Sigman, Mary Tinetti, and Camille Utterback.

"Through these Fellowships, we celebrate and support exceptional men and women of all ages and in all fields who dream, explore, take risks, invent, and build in new and unexpected ways in the interest of shaping a better future for us all," said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci.

The inaugural class of MacArthur Fellows was named in 1981. Including this year’s additions, there have been 805 MacArthur Fellows named since the program’s inception.

The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust recently announced its continued commitment to aid Maricopa County, Arizona foundations by awarding almost $4.3 million in grants to 29 nonprofits in the area.

The grants were awarded from May 12 through September 14 and spread the funding evenly among seven different categories of organizations: arts and culture, children healthcare and medical research, older adults, Piper Academy grants, Piper Pellows organization grant, religious organizations, and other organization.

Among the recipients of the grants will be the Summer Youth Program Fund, which received its second three-year grant of $300,000 to support summer programs for troubled youths in the area, and the Valley of the Sun United Way, which received $625,000 over three years to continue their Adopt-A-Pool-Fence program.

The Arizona State University (ASU) Foundation received the largest portion of the grant, getting $2.5 million over 60 months to allow Dr. Leland Hartwell to continue working on the Partnership for Personalized Medicine (PPM).

Hartwell, a Nobel Prize winner, was recently named to lead the PPM, which was launched by the Piper Trust in 2007 to work towards "improving the effectiveness of health care while reducing its costs, and advancing science education," according to the trust.

"Dr. Hartwell already has transformed one worldview of science, earning a 2001 Nobel Prize for insights into the genes that control cell growth," said ASU President Dr. Michael M. Crow. "ASU provides a dynamic environment that will support the type of big ideas he has to help shape health care in the coming decade."

The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust is a private independent foundation dedicated to "changing lives and strengthening community" in Arizona’s Maricopa County. Since beginning to award grants in 2000, the trust has invested more than $250 million in local nonprofits and programs.

University of Florida alum, trustee, and namesake of their Warrington College of Business Administration Al Warrington has announced that he is continuing his philanthropic relationship to his alma mater by committing a deferred gift of $16 million to establish an endowment that will privately fund faculty positions in the college.

The faculty positions funded by the new endowment, which will be called the Warrington Faculty Fellows Endowment, will be in the accounting and entrepreneurship fields along with others that will be determined at a later time. Income generated by the endowment will also cover the full salary and benefits for the positions.

"We have an incredible faculty at the college, as evidenced by some major publications that evaluate our team to be the finest business faculty in the nation among public or private institutions, which is the good news," said Warrington. "The bad news, though, is we haven’t added enough professors, as evidenced by a very high student/teacher ratio."

"This gift, which is being accompanied by others, will help address this issue. I hope this gift will encourage others to join in supporting this singularly most important need at our college of business," he added.

Warrington graduated from UF in 1958, earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration. After working at Arthur Andersen & Co. for 32 years, he resigned and became the founding chairman and co-CEO of Sanifill, Inc. and a founder and vice president of House of Cheatham, an Atlanta-based health and beauty aids manufacturer.

He has also since become a founding member in a group that acquired an oilfield service company in Houston, and also was a member of a group that acquired Gulf Coast Mechanical, a company that coats air conditioning and generator coils.

With the donation, Warrington College of Business Administration is now over the $100 million mark as part of the university’s $1.5 billion "Florida Tomorrow" campaign. The funds also are eligible to be matched by Florida’s Trust Fund for Major Gifts, which could potentially bring the total amount of the endowment to $32 million.

Recently, a California foundation donated $8.2 million in grant funds to a variety of organizations in the state.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation made the grant donations during the spring of this year, with funds going to 36 different organizations. The efforts of the organizations focus on helping disadvantaged and diverse communities in the state.

The grant funds were given to organizations that involve themselves in one of the foundation’s four areas for grants. Those include the population, the environment, education, and the performing arts.

The largest amount of grant funds was given via the foundation’s efforts in education. Grants totaling more than $6 million went to 16 organizations, including the Advancement Project. The Advancement Project received $600,000, which will help the Los Angeles-based group continue to work toward improving inner-city schools.

The foundation’s performing arts project granted more than $1 million in funds to help low-income and diverse communities take part in art programs. For example, a $300,000 grant went to San Francisco’s Community Music Center, which offers a number of free and low-cost shows and also provides after-school music programs.

The population portion of the foundation donated $30,000 for strategic planning to the Latino Community Foundation in San Francisco. The Latino Community Foundation will use the funds to help promote philanthropy in the Latino community, and will also try to curb unwanted teen pregnancies in the community it serves.

Eleven organizations will benefit from the $989,000 in grants donated from the Hewlett Foundation’s environmental section. Included in those is a $110,000 grant given to the East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. The group works to reduce the high impact pollution has on disadvantaged communities.

Along with the grants awarded in spring, the Hewlett Foundation recently announced more than $154 million in grants to organizations located in the United States and abroad. Like the spring grants, the $154 million in funds given focuses on the foundation’s four grant initiatives.

As part of a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has entered into a partnership and provided the UK-based organization Riders for Health (RFH) a grant to help improve methods of medical and health care transportation methods in Africa.

The grant will be utilized by RFH to both demonstrate and evaluate the impact that having viable transportation has on the continent’s health systems as Stanford’s Global Supply Chain Management Forum oversees the plan’s logistics. Through the research RFH is hoping to show how increased mobility through Africa’s skilled health care workers can result in increases in their productivity, efficiency, and coverage of "key health care interventions."

"For years, Riders for Health has been an effective logistics arm, serving as the last mile for health care delivery in Africa. We are very privileged to be partnering with them to make use of supply chain and logistics advances to scale up their operations," Said Hau Lee, the Director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum at. "We are pleased that Riders’ grant from the Gates Foundation means that we can support Riders to save lives, while at the same time pushing the research frontier on the important subject of health delivery logistics,"

According to its website, RFH was established as an independent non-governmental organization in 1996 in the UK that currently has programs in Gambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, and Lesotho.

Barry Coleman, the co-founder and executive director of Riders for Health, added that increased mobilization would make it easier for immunization programs to be carried out and that the program’s efforts had "the potential to transform the delivery of health care across the whole of sub-Saharan Africa."