The Daily Tell

The Noyce Foundation, a philanthropy that provides support to young science students across the country, recently announced a $1.7 million donation to the 4-H Council towards its science, engineering and technology program.

The foundation, created in the memory of Intel co-founder Dr. Robert Noyce, believes this partnership with the 4-H system will help it achieve its goal of attracting a million young people to work in science, engineering and technology by 2013. The 4-H’s SET program provides a non-formal, out-of-school education experience that offers hands-on learning that applies national science teaching standards and encourages critical thinking to foster youth development.

The 4-H Council, the nonprofit arm of the national organization that works to provide youth with leadership experience and life skills, believes the donation will bring benefit to society by investing in the education of the next generation.

"Noyce’s investment will allow 4-H to expand state and county-level SET leadership teams which are integral to reaching our goal of addressing the nation’s critical workforce shortages by building the next generation of youth excited about careers in science, engineering and technology," said National 4-H Council president Donald T. Floyd, Jr.

4-H, supported by its adult dedicated volunteers, now helps 6 million young people throughout the year, with 5 million involved with its science, engineering and technology projects. Through summer camps and after-school activities, 4-H projects involve environmental protection, agriculture, animal science, computer science, renewable energy, robotics, and rocketry.

Children in 4-H programs are nearly two times more likely to go to college and are 25 percent more likely to start giving back to the community, according to youth development research by Tufts University.

Two other foundations named after major computer tech creators gave to nonprofits helping students go to college. The Gates and the Hewlett foundations recently contributed $3.6 million to the Academy for College Excellence to help unprepared students learn computer skills.

Clean Out Your Office, a Massachusetts company that specializes in the disposal of electronic waste, is donating dozens of discarded computers to an after-school program based in Boston.

Through a partnership with Victory Generation, a faith-based nonprofit organization with a mission to build and sustain after-school services in low-income communities, the company delivered nearly 100 PCs to 11 schools and church centers. COYO plans to supply more computers to the after-school sites and has also made the goal of the partnership to give each of the 543 after-school students in the program a computer for their home by June 30, the Daily News Tribune of Waltham reported.

Janine Spinola Taylor, director of education for Victory Generation, called the charity donations from Clean Out Your Office a "win-win" situation that will surely be a benefit to society by giving less fortunate students a more equal playing field.

"It shows an after-school program meeting another business and collectively they serve the needs of children who do not have a computer," Janine Spinola Taylor, director of education for the partnership, told the news provider. "Without a computer, they are not able to compete in school and do the after-school work. The computer divide would have only increased."

If it were not for the company’s charity, the after-school program would have to pay from $200 to $300 for a refurbished computer, according to COYO’s cofounder.

COYO picks up its computers from small corporate customers – universities, law firms, and IT companies – that pay for the removal and recycling of monitors, copiers, printers and servers. COYO now waves $17.50 in recycling fees to customers who will donate their computers to Victory Generation.

For businesses and organizations in other areas who would like to donate, computerswithcauses.org offers to pick up computers and donate them to a school, veterans center, homeless shelter, or another cause affiliated with its global computer education program.

Approximately 192,280 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009. Last year also saw 27,360 prostate cancer-related deaths, according to report from the National Cancer Institute. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports this form of cancer, which usually occurs in older men, has consistently ranked as a top killer of men of all races in the U.S. over the years.

To help fight this fatal disease, the Kansas University Cancer Center will establish a clinical high-risk prostate cancer prevention program at the Richard and Annette Block Cancer Care Pavilion. The program is made possible because of a $1 million donation from Burns & McDonnell, one of the largest engineering and design firms in the state.

The funds will be used to expand personnel and create an endowed fund for the program, reports the Kansas City Kansan. The donation might also help the hospital toward its goal of receiving the National Cancer Institute’s designation.

The center’s prostate cancer program is already ranked as one of the country’s 13 "Clinical Centers of Excellence" by the Urology Times. Now, it hopes to strengthen its clinical and research efforts in prostate cancer prevention.

Doctors affiliated with the center hope to one day serve all cancer patients, but for now they think it is worthwhile to invest their limited funds on prostate cancer therapies and prevention.

Dr. Jeffrey Holzbeierlein told the Kansan, "This disease is the second leading cancer killer of men in the United States. Obviously, it is only useful to screen for early detection if one either has effective treatments for the disease or has prevention strategies to decrease a person’s risk for developing the disease."

For their part, officials at Burns & McDonnell hope their gift will inspire others in the business community to make similar donations. CEO Greg Graves told the Lawrence Journal-World & 6News that in economically trying times it is increasingly important for business leaders to engage in social efforts.

With its wide array of interactive exhibits, thought-provoking shows and cultural features, along with a steady stream of young students and families coming in everyday since 1830, administrators at one of Boston’s biggest museums feel they could use an upgrade to their computer systems.

Now Microsoft has made it happen.

The computer tech company, known for its long history of contributions to charity, gave $1.9 million worth of software and other support to the Museum of Science in Boston, the museum announced recently. The endowments include the most up-to-date Microsoft Office programs as well as server and development tools.

In a statement, leaders at the museum celebrated a continuing partnership with Microsoft that has comprised of not only financial charity but corporate volunteerism involving Microsoft’s 1,000 Boston-area workers.

"This is a milestone partnership," said Ioannis Miaoulis, president and director of the museum. "We all look forward to the collaborations Microsoft will make possible, from corporate volunteer programs to new exhibits that showcase the latest innovations in technology."

The museum has been a beneficiary of Microsoft ’s philanthropy since 1997, according the statement. The computer company is not alone: Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and MathWorks, both of Massachusetts, stand along with Microsoft as what the museum calls its premier partners.

"We are pleased to support one of Boston’s most vital institutions," said Ted MacLean, general manager of Microsoft’s strategic alliances division. "The museum is undergoing exciting changes in the ways it presents information and delivers educational information. We are thrilled to help make these shifts a reality."

Microsoft founder and board member Bill Gates has made education the focus of his philanthropy, giving back to the community by recently pledging $335 million in grants to enhance the performance of teachers in four major cities around the country, Tampa Bay’s St. Petersburg Times reported.

It’s not every day that big corporations just give away the costly, high-class art they own. But in the case of Safeco, giving back to the community along with protecting the heritage of its paintings and sculptures goes hand in hand.

Safeco, a national insurance agency owned by Liberty Mutual, donated $3.5 million worth of fine art from its private collection to a nonprofit art consortium in Washington state, where the company is based.

Among the 800 pieces of art are works from globally-renowned artists, including Fay Jones, George Tsutakawa and Jacob Lawrence, all of whom reign from the northwest U.S.

Safeco is proud to put its artwork in the hands of the nonprofit, the Washington Art Consortium, by putting the pieces in museums all over Washington.

"The Washington Art Consortium is our perfect partner, and we look forward to watching the collection come to life in museums across our state," said Safeco president Michael Hughes. "Safeco has a rich legacy in art investment expanding more than 30 years, so it was important to find a donation partner that could preserve the collection in such a way that would honor the rich history of the Northwest and its art."

The Washington Art Consortium claims to be the first group of its type in the country: an educational cooperative that engages in a partnership with seven art institutions to secure photos, paintings on paper and other works by distinguished artists of the last century. The partnership aims to encourage an appreciation for art among the public.

In Washington’s neighbor to the south, Oregon, Bank of America was also giving back to the community through art last month by offering a $600,000 corporate donation to the Portland Art Museum, and also planned a permanent endowment, to allow children and teenagers to visit for free.

Actress Demi Moore’s selected cause, Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) will be awarded the top prize of $250,000.

GEMS is the nation’s largest non-profit organization designed to empower American girls and young women, ages 12-21 who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking.

A long-time anti-trafficking advocate, Demi Moore unleashed the power of her social media network to get out the vote for her cause to benefit GEMS. “The Pepsi Refresh Grant will allow GEMS to train 10 former victims as outreach workers and employ them to go back to their community and refresh the lives of thousands of victimized girls. I believe the work that GEMS is doing is nothing short of heroic!,” says Demi Moore, who along with her husband, Ashton Kutcher, launched The DNA Foundation committed to protecting the freedom of the world’s most vulnerable citizens by forcing sex slavery out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

“I am thrilled that GEMS has gained powerful allies in Demi Moore and The DNA Foundation and honored to be the beneficiary of a Pepsi Refresh Grant. The grant will support us in the important work of transforming survivors of domestic trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation into future leaders. This transformation is most evident with GEMS Outreach workers, young women who advocate for legislation to protect other young victims, challenge misperceptions of survivors and educate and support peers and at-risk girls,” says Rachel Lloyd, GEMS founder/Executive Director.

“I am excited that GEMS won the Pepsi Refresh grant. As a GEMS Outreach worker, I travel to juvenile detention facilities, group homes, and schools, to educate girls on the issues of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. This is very important to me because often girls have no idea what really goes on and if I can reach them before an exploiter ever does they will know the truth of what that life really offers. I let them know that if they have been a victim of trafficking, GEMS is a place where they can get help and wont be judged,” says Shaquana, also a survivor who with the support of GEMS, graduated as high school valedictorian and is now a college sophomore.

Pepsi will also award $100,000 to support Kevin’s cause, SixDegrees.org, which will distribute thousands of $20 SixDegree.org Good Card, a gift card which they can use to support a charity of their choice. Demi and Kevin’s ideas are one of hundreds that have been submitted from around the country for a chance to win some of than $20 million available from the Pepsi Refresh Project.

Media Inquiries:
Muhammida El Muhajir | 718 496 2305 |
muhammida@suninleo.com

For more info on GEMS: www.gems-girls.org

For more info on Pepsi Refresh: www.refresheverything.com

For more info on Demi and Ashton Foundation: www.demiandashton.org.

The Daily Tell recently featured an article written by Rachel Lloyd, founder of GEMS.

The city of Chicago was forced to make dramatic cost-cutting and debt-reduction moves during the height of the recession. A state report from the Office of Budget and Management said the city’s revenue fell by $96 million last May.

Top News revealed that many of the financial shortfalls resulted in limiting services offered to urbanites at a time when they likely most needed them. The source says public safety budgets were slashed in an effort to save cash.

Now, the people of Chicago might find their quality of life on the mend thanks to a series of grants totaling $6.5 million provided by the Chicago Community Trust. The foundation will offer this money to organizations and programs that will provide basic human needs, strengthen education initiatives and promote community development, reports Philanthropy News Digest.

A good portion of the funds will go toward alleviating hunger in the city. The Greater Chicago Food Depository will receive $75,000 to help distribute food donations and fight food insecurity in the city. The organization also offers training programs to low-income individuals to help them break their cycles of poverty.

The University of Illinois at Chicago also received a significant share of the funds. The institution will use some of the money to directly improve education offered in the Windy City by strengthening its own curriculum. It will also allocate some of the funds to the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Urban Planning to assist with another goal of the Chicago Community Trust – urban development.

A total of $1.7 million was awarded specifically for urban planning initiatives. Grant recipients include the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation, and the Center for Economic Progress.

Officials at the Chicago Community Trust Fund hope these grants will help bring relief to Chicago in the aftermath of the recession and prevent future crisis in the city.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is giving back to the community in California through $1.2 million of grants designed to help dozens of disparate campaigns and nonprofit organizations that serve economically disadvantaged areas.

The endowments, which will aid 54 organizations that are giving back to society in a variety of ways – from battling teen pregnancy, to improving the performing arts – were approved by the foundation’s board this past November and were announced last week.

The foundation awarded a grant to the Bayview Hunters Point Foundation, a nonprofit human services agency, based in San Francisco. It aims to use the $150,000 grant to open a youth center and clinic that offers pregnancy prevention and mental health services.

On another note, two grants were given by the foundation to two music-oriented causes, also based in San Francisco. The Hewlett Foundation gave $100,000 to the EXIT Theatre, for the expansion of its four-venue, 250-seat "theatreplex," which provides constant opportunities for any willing actors and low cost rentals of performance areas to production crews. A $250,000 grant was given to the Music National Service Initiative as well, a national nonprofit with a team of 20 music teachers in four major cities – deemed a "musical Peace Corp" by the organization – to teach music full-time in hospitals, public schools, public schools and parks.

Adding an environmental aspect to the well-rounded set of endowments is a $250,000 grant to the Coalition for Clean Air, of Los Angeles, that will work to lessen the level of air pollution in Los Angeles and the Central Valley.

As the result of other Hewlett Foundation contributions to the RAND Corporation, a study published today revealed striking connections between two different fields: health and the environment. California’s pollution has caused more than $193 million in hospital care from 2005 to 2007, according to the report.

Teach for America, a nonprofit organization combating educational inequity with a corps of recent college graduates who devote two years to teaching, will triple its staff in Miami-Dade, Florida’s most needy neighborhoods through a $6 million grant it received last week.

Teach for America will be able to dedicate 350 local teachers to the area by 2014, it announced on Friday, because of the grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, an organization that promotes journalism and giving back to the community. Founded by the Knight brothers who co-owned the Knight Ridder media company, which was the second-largest newspaper publisher until it was bought in 2006 by The McClatchy Company, the Knight Foundation helps philanthropy efforts aimed to benefit society in the 26 communities where the Knight Brothers owned newspapers.

The partnership will allow Teach for America educators to help more than 25,000 students in the Miami-Dade area, the nonprofit said.

Teach for America first expanded to the Miami-Dade area in 2003, and the organization says it has produced tangible results, through fast-paced reading advancement and improved test scores.

"The typical Miami-Dade student in a Teach for America teacher’s classroom advances 1.5 reading grade levels over just one academic year," the nonprofit said in a statement.

The organization also points to improved FCAT scores at Central Senior High School, where Teach for America recruit Kimberly Williams "quadrupled" the number of her students passing the FCAT retake.

The Florida Department of Education’s commissioner said that the nonprofit has some of the finest educators working for them and that Teach For America is an excellent way to raise educational success levels for students from low-income backgrounds.

"Miami-Dade is home to some of the best teachers in the nation," said Education Commissioner Dr. Eric J. Smith. "The expansion of Teach For America through this generous grant from [the] Knight Foundation is going to push that progress even further."

According to figures from the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, about 1 million people across the U.S. struggle with the disease with another 60,000 diagnosed each year. But funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research recently donated $3.5 million to research projects which hope to better understand the disease.

The foundation, started by actor Michael J. Fox in 2000, announced this month that it was awarding $3.5 million to nine research organizations who we are studying the LRRK2 gene – which is thought to be "the most common genetic contributor to the disease," according to the MJFF.

In addition to receiving funding, the nine research groups will share results of their testing and create a consortium to get a better understanding of LRRK2 with the hope of creating therapy for those suffering from the disease.

The MJFF has targeting LRRK2 as a high priority and has allocated almost $17 million to studies and initiatives focused on LRRK2.

Earlier this month the foundation awarded $1 million to seven other research projects developing research tools and technologies to help fight the disorder.

Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 and made a public announcement of his ailment in 1998. To date, his organization has donated close to $175 million to organizations researching the disease.

It would appear that the fundraising done by the MJFF pales in comparison to the costs associated with Parkinson’s each year. According to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, the disorder costs nearly $25 billion each year in the U.S. alone – which includes direct and indirect costs associated with the disease.