The Daily Tell

Although Disneyland is often referred to as the Happiest Place on Earth, a recent poll seems to disagree and says a small town in the economically hard-hit state of Michigan is actually one of the happiest in the country – due in part to its citizens’ philanthropic efforts.

The 2009 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found that the tiny town of Holland, Michigan ranks second on the list of all U.S. cities – sandwiched between Boulder, Colorado and Honolulu, Hawaii. While Holland – about 30 miles west of Grand Rapids – might not have the lush landscape or snowcapped mountains, an ABC News report indicates that the area’s propensity to give back might be what makes it so happy.

The news organization points out that a report of the Chronicle of Philanthropy recently named the region of Western Michigan – in which Holland is located – as the No. 2 most generous area in the U.S., behind only Salt Lake City, Utah.

Linda Jacobs, executive director of Good Samaritan Ministries, told ABC News that even with a 16 percent unemployment rate, the city has more than 100 service organizations which rely heavily on volunteers.

Katie Bell, partner at Global Well-Being for Gallup, said the poll shows that communities that rank high can see positive results in many ways.

"For leaders, the well-being of the residents in their respective cities, states and communities matters on many levels, with potential impact for economic development, law and order, and community pride and purpose," she said.

The philanthropic nature of Holland appears to not only be limited to its citizens as a report late last year showed that some Holland-based businesses gave back to the community often.

According to a December 2009 report from the Michigan Business Review, Fleetwood Group donated $956,073.21 last year, or $6,208.27 for each of the company’s 154 employees.

An unknown donor has given Vistamar School, a co-ed independent high school serving the Los Angeles area, a matching grant of $1.6 million.

The school said that "each new campaign contribution that it receives in 2010 will be matched, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, by a gift to the school’s endowment for financial access."

Vistamar, which serves ninth to 12th graders, said that endowment monies are set aside for financial access awards, and are supported by pledges from philanthropic groups and individuals to provide opportunities to potential students who would not be able to afford the school’s tuition.

"A vigorous financial access program ensures that Vistamar’s ability to enroll the strongest students is not restricted by their family finances," said Jim Buckheit, head of school. "That’s how we’ve been able to develop a school culture where civility, achievement, and respect for diversity are norms."

In its fifth year, Vistamar School said it has graduated 49 students who have enrolled in competitive higher education institutions throughout world.

The school owns the building it operates out of and continues to add classrooms and facilities as it grows.

The next phase of construction, planned for the summer of 2010, is aimed at bumping the capacity of the school to enroll more students from its current enrollment of 204 students to about 300, with an eye toward a maximum of 384 students. The construction will add classrooms, labs and more so as to keep class sizes consistent with current levels, even as enrollment grows.

This matching grant is the third major endowment gift Vistamar has received since it incorporated in 2002 and will bring its total endowment to $6.6 million.

As time passes since an earthquake devastated Haiti in mid-January, clean drinking water remains in desperate need for the survivors.

A recent grant of $50,000 from the Prem Rawat Foundation will go a long way toward helping people get the water they need.

The grant recipient, The AmeriCares Foundation, is working on a multi-faceted approach to delivering water to Haitians lacking clean water.
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Bottled water distributed to as many as 42,000 people in shelters, camps and medical facilities via the grant will offer two-weeks worth of drinking water, the foundation said.

Additionally, the funding will also be used to distribute purification sachets to needy communities to produce 13 million gallons of potable water. Lastly, the grant will cover the distribution oral rehydration solution and salts to 125,000 children and adults at risk of severe dehydration and water-borne illnesses, it said.

"Even before the earthquake, almost 50 percent of the population had no access to potable water," said the Prem Rawat Foundation. "Now, with the increase in broken utilities and pipelines, many more people are subject to disease from contaminated water."

This is the second grant that the Prem Rawat Foundation has made to help survivors of the earthquake in Haiti. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake the foundation made a $50,000 grant the World Food Program to provide ready-to-eat food for those left homeless.

"Providing essential aid is critical, but almost as important, is to help the people of this devastated country to begin to have hope again," said Linda Pascotto of the Prem Rawat Foundation

The foundation said it plans future grants targeting long-term recovery plans.

In today’s environmentally conscious world, consumers aren’t the only ones thinking about how they affect the world around them. Companies are also trying to be good stewards of the planet and a new report from alcoholic beverage maker Bacardi shows the steps Bacardi environmental initiatives have taken to better the planet.

In its recently released Corporate Responsibility Report 2009, the Bacardi family of brands points to some initiatives which have helped cut down on pollution and increase its giving. According to the report, the Bacardi environment initiatives have resulted in a 19.3 percent decrease in water usage over the last three years. Additionally, the company has been able to cut greenhouse emissions by 9.2 percent last year, with a 14.5 percent drop over the last three years.

Philanthropy is another element seen in the report and the Bacardi family of brands reported $3.9 million to nonprofit and community involvement programs last year, while also committing another $120,000 to Cuban storm victims as part of the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF).

Robert Furniss-Roe, vice president of Bacardi Limited and head of corporate responsibility initiatives at the company, said the steps taken in 2009 are part of an overall dedication to responsibility as a company.

"By caring about our business and the world around us, we excel in creating brands consumers can trust. We aim to strengthen these bonds of trust by acting responsibly in everything we do," he said. "Our commitment to corporate responsibility plays an increasingly important role in helping us to capture operational efficiencies and eliminate waste."

Bacardi also made news last month when it made donations to the victims of the Haitian earthquake. In another donation to the PADF, Bacardi gave $50,000 to the relief efforts in the earthquake-ravaged country to provide shelter, medicine and hygiene kits.

The Daily Tell has reported on other Bacardi environmental initiatives, including their policy of switching to PET bottles and their awards for protecting the environment.

Natalie Nakatani, an 8-year-old girl from the San Francisco Bay area, recently suffered a relapse of her leukemia and is in urgent need of a bone marrow donor.
A website, HopeForNatalie.com, asks for bone marrow donations from anyone, but people of Asian descent are encouraged especially as they are most likely to be a match for her.

Natalie’s friends and family have worked tirelessly since learning of her relapse and the dire circumstances surrounding her condition. They have spread fliers, sent emails and posted on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook in hope of finding a match for Natalie. Those interested in donating or supporting Hope for Natalie can go to Facebook.com/save.natalie or HopeForNatalie.com for more information.

Her family also keeps a blog, documenting Natalie’s struggle to survive.

"Natalie’s biopsy procedure went well. We are still waiting for the results, which may not come until Monday. Our poor little girl woke up hungry and we had to hide all the food in the room so she was not too sad to see them," Natalie’s mother wrote on February 5. "Good thing her procedure was scheduled early so she only had to fast from 10 pm until 11 am. The moment she was back in her room, she asked for food. I had to walk to a dim sum bakery that was 15 minutes away from the hospital to get her the sticky chicken rice she loves so much. It was worth the walk back up the hill since she devoured almost all of it."

According to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, more than 100,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma in 2009, and blood cancers accounted for 9.5 percent of all new cancer diagnoses.

For thousands of jobseekers in the nonprofit and volunteer sector, Idealist.org is the number one destination to find opportunities to make a world a better place. A project of the nonprofit group Action Without Borders, Idealist.org is a comprehensive website featuring job and volunteering listings, event announcements, and networking opportunities. Idealist.org gives nonprofits an opportunity to showcase their work and connect with similar-minded organizations and individuals. Idealist.org also hosts job fairs and networking conferences for the nonprofit sector.

A large percentage of Idealist.org’s budget comes from small fees the website charges organizations for job postings. Not surprisingly, the economic meltdown of 2008 has had a devastating effect on this portion of Idealist.org’s budget. Nonprofit groups went through extensive hiring freezes, and cut back on posting job listings. As a result, Idealist found its budget nearly cut in half, leaving them in the red for $100,000 a month. For sixteen long months, Idealist.org has managed to survive on a leaner budget, but they are now at a fiscal breaking point.

Idealist.org is now reaching out to the community that they have assisted for more than fifteen years. The organization is calling on anyone whom Idealist has helped find a job or volunteer opportunity, or has simply been inspired to make a difference in this troubled world. Idealist has set a fiscal goal of $500,000 to stabilize the website. The team at Idealist is seeking to diversify its revenue stream so it will never face this fiscal crisis again. But Idealist cannot achieve this goal without your help. To date, more than 6,100 Idealist supporters have stepped forward, raising an impressive $200,000.

$500,000 may seem to be a lofty goal. But Idealist.org is a complex, multi-purpose site that connects 70,000 people with 90,000 organizations around the world, with information in English, Spanish, and French. Idealist also holds dozens of events across North America, including nonprofit career fairs, graduate school fairs, and global volunteer fairs. To hold all these projects together, teams in New York, Portland, Oregon, and Buenos Aires work hard to maintain Idealist.org, Idealistas.org, and Idealiste.org, ensure the integrity of the organizations featured on the websites, reply to tens of thousands of emails, and write and publish resources for the benefit of nonprofit workers and volunteers.

By donating to Idealist.org, you can play a small but crucial part in the gradual recovery of our battered world economy, as Idealist.org continues to help thousands of people locate jobs and volunteer opportunities. By helping to put people to work in areas where the need is greatest, Idealist.org is a proven source of hope and economic opportunity. When you donate to Idealist.org, you’re not just donating to a single organization. You’re helping to sustain the entire network of nonprofit organizations.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it has awarded a $5 million grant to the Catalysis Foundation for Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating effective diagnostic measures in developing nations.

The research will focus on isolating new markers within the body that may signal a predisposition to tuberculosis and to developing more effective treatments for the disease. As it stands, researchers struggle to develop new treatments for the illness because it is difficult to measure a drug’s effectiveness due to the high cost and amount of time required to do so.

"The Catalysis Foundation’s initiative is an important opportunity to address a critical need in tuberculosis drug development and disease management by developing quantitative measures of bacterial burden," said Dr. Clifton E. Barry, a Catalysis collaborator on the new study. "Our goal is to provide new diagnostic tools to facilitate disease diagnosis, monitoring and treatment in remote geographic settings to help patients lead healthier lives free of the deadly disease caused by TB infection."

Catalysis, which was founded in 2007, has amassed a team of experts from fields including infectious disease research, global public health, government and non-governmental organizations and the pharmaceutical industry to work together.

"Our Foundation’s mission is to develop innovative diagnostic tools to accelerate the worldwide effort to eliminate deadly infectious diseases such as tuberculosis which are ravaging populations in developing countries," said Richard Thayer, chief executive, of Catalysis Foundation for Health.

Catalysis reports that 1.8 million worldwide died from tuberculosis in 2007; 456,000 of the deceased were HIV positive. Focusing the research on the developing world is especially crucial as 90 percent of all deaths from tuberculosis occur in third-world countries.

In 2008, there were nearly 13,000 reported cases of tuberculosis in the United States, which represented a 2.9 percent decrease in infections from the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

As the childhood obesity epidemic attracts increasing attention in the wake of First Lady Michelle Obama’s "Let’s Move" campaign, two foundations have teamed to help kids and their parents live healthier lives.

The Quantum Foundation has partnered with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to award a grant to the School District of Palm Beach County that will help kids and their parents eat right and get fit.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently announced a $360,000 grant to improve opportunities for physical activity and access to affordable healthy foods for children and families in Lake Worth, Greenacres and Palm Springs communities. The Quantum Foundation chipped in $20,000 needed in matching funds to begin the grant process with RWJF.

The award to Palm Beach County is one of 41 sites selected for the RWJF Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities initiative from 500 proposals, the foundation said.

"Health begins at home and this grant will teach residents in these communities how to choose the right foods, cook better and exercise together," said Jeannette Corbett, acting President of the Quantum Foundation, "and that will lead to a healthier community one family at a time."

At $33 million in donations, Healthy Kids Healthy Communities is RWJF’s largest investment to date in community-based solutions to childhood obesity. The Quantum Foundation has invested more than $80 million dollars in Palm Beach County to support the community and its residents, it said.

The long-range goal of the initiative is to foster partnerships between the public and private and to increase access to healthy food and active living opportunities for low-income families, it said.

According the Center for Disease Control, about one-third of children and youth (ages 2 to 19) in the United States are overweight or obese.

South Dakota governor Mike Rounds announced Thursday morning that the state has received $5.58 million in grants from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to train emergency medical technicians and hospital workers, according to Prairie Business magazine. The charity plans to donate the money over three years.

The money will be used to purchase high-tech patient simulators that mimic the reaction of people to certain procedures. Also, mobile units that contain classrooms, simulated emergency rooms and intensive care units and ambulances will be purchased to house the training sessions. Rather than force trainees to travel throughout the state to receive the training, the mobile units bring the training to hospitals and clinics.

Although the money was donated to the state, the government plans to divide it evenly among four separate healthcare providers in different regions of the state.

"This grant is a fantastic opportunity for South Dakota, and we couldn’t be more grateful to The Helmsley Charitable Trust," Rounds told the news provider. "Hospital staffs and EMTs from Sioux Falls to Oelrichs will benefit from state-of-the art training, but the real beneficiaries will be patients needing emergency care in South Dakota."

"This funding is testament to the strong relationship between the Department of Health and its health care partners for the delivery of emergency care training across South Dakota," the governor added.

Among the primary goals of the Helmsley Trust is to provide high-tech information technology to rural areas that struggle to maintain adequate medical technology.
Earlier this year, the trust also announced $136 million in grants to organizations throughout the United States. Some of its most recent grants and donations include nearly $1.2 million to the Camp Nejeda Foundation of Stillwater, New Jersey and $200,000 each to three Michigan charities.

The donations to Haitian relief have come in a variety of ways. One of the most popular has been the advent of mobile giving programs. The American Red Cross reported Thursday that it generated more than $32 million from its mobile giving program. People can donate $10 by texting HAITI to 90999.

The Red Cross established the donation option along with organizations such as the U.S. State Department and the Mobile Accord/mGive Foundation hours following the devastating earthquake that struck the region. Spikes in donation occurred during events like the Super Bowl and Grammy Awards; the Red Cross had promotions for the service during the commercial breaks of each event.

The funds generated by the Red Cross donations will help both the immediate and future needs of the Haitian effort. Thus far, 71 percent of the already committed funds have been directed toward food and water, 20 percent to shelter supplies and the remaining funds directed toward family services.

Beyond financial efforts, the Red Cross has transported blood and hospital ships to the island. Creole-speaking volunteers have also aided the relief effort by providing explanations of medical procedures and other translating services.

"This incredible response is an affirmation of the goodwill of millions of Americans," said James Eberhard, mGive’s chairman. "As the leader in the mobile giving space, it was our duty to respond and organize the mobile industry to allow people to give through their mobile phones. The mGive Platform saw peak periods processing over $1 million and over 100,000 transactions in under an hour."

Some have developed less conventional methods of fundraising and donation in recent weeks. Several hair salons throughout the U.S. have taken part in "Haircuts for Haiti," donating revenue made on specific days to the relief effort.