The Daily Tell

Despite the fact that religion ranks fourth in terms of what causes Americans believed needed the most financial help at present – behind education, health and civic organizations – more than half of the funds given to charity go to religious causes and organizations, according to a national survey conducted by The Nonprofit Times and infogroup/Nonprofit. Although Americans claim that education is the most deserving of financial support, they fail to back it with the necessary funding.

In 1992, the same question was asked and religion ranked third behind education and health groups. Between 1992 and 2009, however, one-third of the total amount of charitable donations made went to religious groups. In 2009, that figure was $100.95 billion, and in 1992, it was $77.9 billion.

The complete list for last year placed education at the top, with 35 percent of Americans believing it is most deserving of support, followed by health at 24 percent, civic or community organizations at 12 percent, and religion at 9 percent, among others.

"Asking about which organizations are in need of financial support, is not the same as asking,"Which one do you most want to support' or even 'Which one do you think does the most important work in the world,'" said Melissa Brown, former editor of Giving USA and now a philanthropic consultant.

"It is really asking,'Which one is in such bad financial shape that you notice?' I could argue that people perceive that congregations are not in need of financial support because something like 45 percent of the population gives to a religious charity," she added.

A wildlife sanctuary in one of the poorest countries in Africa will soon be getting a much-needed helping hand thanks to two of the most famous stars in the world.

After spending Christmas with their family at the Naankuse Lodge and Wildlife Sanctuary in Namibia, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie announced that they would be donating $2 million to the nature preserve, the Associated Press reports. The location was chosen because one of the Pitt-Jolie's adopted children, Shiloh, was born in the African nation and they felt it was important for her to remained closely connected to her roots.

"We want her to be very involved and grow up with the understanding of her country of birth," Jolie said in a statement.

Jolie said that she and the owners of the sanctuary, Rudie and Marlice van Vuuren have known each other for a long time and that she had confidence that the donated money would go to good use. While at the preserve, the Jolie-Pitt were able to stay at special lodge where they helped take care of animals including baboons and foxes who had been orphaned. They were also able to release a leopard back into the wild.

The funds will mainly go toward helping to care for the native people that inhabit the area, according to the sanctuary's head of finances.

"Some of the donated funds will be used in the running of a clinic which provides free medical care to the community of bushmen, including the treatment of malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV," Dana Barrett told the AP.

This is hardly the first time that the Jolie and Pitt have made headlines for donating to African charities. In 2006, the couple donated $300,000 to help poor children in Namibia and an additional $15,000 for a school an community center, the New York Daily News reported. 

This time of year, many of us are making resolutions to live healthier or more frugally. But while we break out the scales and the accounting books, one group of dedicated students in northern California is working on a very different goal: raising awareness about homelessness.

Six college students are planning to give up the conveniences of a home or apartment and live one week on the streets of downtown Sacramento, pan-handling for money to buy food. The students hope that their unorthodox effort will help raise awareness about the region's significant homeless population and the steps that those who have shelter can take to make life more comfortable for people living on the streets.

Project organizer Adam Smith, a freshman at American River College and the founder of Hope Among the Ruins, believes public opinion about the charitable effort will be split.

"I think there's going to be a lot of people who don't agree with what we're doing, and there's going to be some people who are inspired by us," he told ABC 10 News.

Smith says that the team of six volunteers will split up into two groups of three, carrying nothing with them but backpacks, sleeping bags and small tents. They will bring no money and leave their cell phones behind, except for one in case of emergency.

While the team is admittedly nervous about the hardships of life on the streets, such as bumping into unsavory characters and encountering harsh weather, Smith and his colleagues are optimistic about the project.

"We've raised quite a bit of money," Smith told the source. "This is what we can do, but there's a lot of other organizations, and a lot of other causes."

American River College, a two-year institution located in Sacramento, serves around 35,000 full- and part-time students.

Singer Avril Lavigne claims her greatest accomplishment of 2010 was launching her charity, the Avril Lavigne Foundation, in September. The foundation helps sick and disabled children and youth.

Lavigne partnered with the Make a Wish Foundation for the project and spent most of the year working on the effort.

"The reason I started it is that I was doing a lot of work with the Make a Wish foundation and other charities, and I just really wanted to do more, so I was really passionate about starting my own foundation, so I’ve spent the last year just getting that started and focusing on what my mission is," said Lavigne to Entertainment Weekly.

"It’s a really big project, it’s something that I’m just starting, so I’m really excited to get my fans involved now that I’m going to be back out there again, and have that grow," she added.

The foundation partners with Easter Seals, the Make a Wish Foundation and the Nancy Davis Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis.

Tennis great Roger Federer and current world champion Rafael Nadal faced off once again in the second of two charity exhibition matches this week.

In the opening match in Zurich, Switzerland, Nadal suffered a 4-6, 6-3, and 6-3 defeat to his second-ranked Swiss opponent – but everybody's a winner when the proceeds go to charity, CNN reports. In this case, the event – dubbed the "Match for Africa" – raised funds for the Roger Federer Foundation, which supports local community efforts in several African countries, including Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, as well as Federer's native Switzerland. 

Tuesday's match raised nearly $2.6 million for the charity.

"It was a match for Africa, this money is going to go to a good cause – for my foundation, for kids in Africa – so I'm so proud and so happy that we all made it work, so thanks again to everybody," Federer said after the victory against his friendly rival.

"Both of us realize we are in a very privileged position, where we have everything in life, the least we can do is to help people who are in difficulty," Nadal added.

The rematch took place in more familiar territory for Nadal: It was held in Madrid, in the player's home country of Spain – likely contributing to his victory this time around. Proceeds from the second contest, called the "Joining Forces for the Benefit of Children" match, will go to the 23-year-old Nadal's charity, which benefits underprivileged children. 

It's no secret that many celebrities are generous with the wealth, but the Giving Back 30 list helps separate the givers from the Scrooges.

The list, released by the Giving Back Fund, ranks the top 30 celebrities who made the largest contributions to charities in the year past. The list for 2009 – the most recent year for which public data is available – was released this week, and not surprisingly, famous philanthropist and billionaire Oprah Winfrey topped the rankings for the third time.

Winfrey, whose dedication to female education is well-documented and who founded a school for girls in South Africa in 2007, gave $41 million to the Chicago-based Oprah Winfrey Foundation for education initiatives and programs that support women and children in the United States and abroad. In addition, the TV personality gave nearly $1.3 million to the Oprah's Angel Network.

In fact, Winfrey has topped the list every year since it was founded in 2006 except for in 2008 – that year, Paul Newman ranked first thanks to a generous donation made to his foundation shortly before his death.

Other celebrities on this year's Giving Back 30 include Nora Roberts, Meryl Streep and Donald Gummer, Jami Gertz and Tony Ressler, Lance and Cara Berkman and Charles Woodsen.

"Combined, these celebrities donated nearly $80 million of their personal wealth to charities," said Giving Back Fund president and founder Marc Pollick. "We hope that in recognizing the extraordinary generosity of these celebrities, we will encourage and promote greater and more authentic giving among those blessed with both wealth and fame." 

In spring of this year, the Cumberland River – the body of water that snakes through Nashville, Tennessee – overflowed its banks 13 feet above flood stage, drowning homes, destroying buildings and ruining entire towns. More than 30 people died and $1 billion worth of private and public property was destroyed in what quickly became one of the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history.

Now, several famous musicians who owe their success to Music City are giving back to the stricken city. Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert and other country stars are lending their pretty mugs to a charity photo shoot designed to raise money for those affected by the flooding.

For Urban in particular, the cause hits close to home. When he was 10 years old and living in Australia, his family's home burned to the ground, destroying all of their belongings.

"We lost our clothes, everything," Urban recalls. "The Red Cross gave us clothes. Friends gave us a place to live."

To help people in similar situations, Urban and the other country stars are posing for portraits next to their favorite Nashville landmarks. Urban himself chose Gruhn's Guitars.

The series of portraits will be up for auction until tonight, along with a collection of other items, including a guitar signed by Taylor Swift, a chance to meet Urban and a tour of the Grand Ole Opry. All of the proceeds from the auction will go toward families and individuals recovering from the devastating floods.

These days, gaming – which used to be synonymous with awkward male teenagers sitting in a dark basement – is a mainstream practice enjoyed by people from all walks of life, including adults, children, girls, even grandparents. If you enjoy video games, no matter who you are, Humble Bundle is now offering you a way to get your favorite games while giving back to charity.

This year, Humble Bundle launched its second Humble Indie Bundle promotion, a charity initiative which lets buyers name their price for a package of five popular and critically acclaimed games. Humble Indie Bundle 2 will let gamers pick up Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command, and Revenge of the Titans – all available for the PC, Mac, and Linux platforms and none of which use digital rights management – for the price of their choosing all this week.

Buyers will decide how to split up their own named price between between the developers, Child's Play charity, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the promotion's organizers.

Child's Play, established in 2003, is a charity movement that seeks to provide toys and games for children in more than 60 hospitals worldwide.

So far, the Humble Indie Bundle 2 has been purchased more than 65,000 times, generating nearly $500,000 in under a day. Last year, the original Humble Indie Bundle was purchased more than 138,000 times, for a total of $1.27 million, a total that the promotion hopes to surpass this year.

On average, Windows users gave $5.70 per purchase, while Mac users chose to pay an average of $7.75. Linux gamers, meanwhile, were easily the most generous, paying out an average of $13.79 per bundle, according to Gamespot.
 

Habitat for Humanity, a charity that builds homes for families, has reached an impressive milestone. The nonprofit group recently constructed its 400,000th house.

In its quest to eradicate poverty and homelessness, Habitat builds homes for needy individuals and families all across the world, from Africa and the Middle East to Asia, South America, Australia and, of course, the United States. It was founded by in 1976 by Millard Fuller, a Christian who became a millionaire at age 29 but soon thereafter sold all of his possessions, gave all of his money to charity and took his wife Linda with him to find greater spiritual fulfillment by helping others. That mission would become Habitat for Humanity.

Since its inception, the charity – which relies on volunteers, many of whom have no building experience, to log long hours hammering, sawing, nailing, gluing and painting – has built or repaired 400,000 homes. In fact, in the past 34 years, the charity has rehabbed, repaired or completed new housing for more than 2 million people worldwide.

The charity reached a total of 100,000 homes built or fixed in 2000, 200,000 homes in 2005 and 300,000 homes in 2008, and its pace is only accelerating. By 2013, Habitat for Humanity's goal is to construct or repair 100,000 homes annually.

Habitat for Humanity served a record 74,960 families worldwide during 2010, providing stable housing through a combination of new construction, rehabilitation and repairs. The group also helped an additional 6,355 families establish legal rights to a house or to land, and provided more than 46,964 individuals with technical assistance, legal help, construction training and other services.

"Throughout our history we have seen time and again that an affordable, safe and decent home is the gateway to better health, greater family stability and improved educational opportunities in every country where we work," said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. "We are pleased that even in this difficult economy, Habitat for Humanity has been able to help an unprecedented number of families around the world have a better place to live. We are seeing great results from focusing not only on building individual houses, but also on repairing and rehabbing homes and creating partnerships that emphasize total community development."

WikiLeaks: The name has been in the news a lot frequently – often negatively. The previously little-known nonprofit website achieved international notoriety for publishing hundreds of top-secret U.S. cables that, in some cases, read more like a snarky article from US Weekly than a confidential document exchanged between world leaders.

Reaction to the diplomatic cables leak has been mixed. Many government officials claim the leaks have irreparably damaged diplomatic relations with dozens of countries, and some government agencies have even warned employees that so much as looking at the leaked cables could cost them their jobs. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the leaks were "not just an attack on America … [but] an attack on the international community," while Sarah Palin suggested that Assange be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden."

However, many others support the efforts of WikiLeaks on the basis of free speech, protection from censorship and government transparency. Some believe that the site is a powerful force is keeping governments honest and revealing information that would otherwise by concealed from the unsuspecting public. WikiLeaks is a nonprofit new media outlet that uses leaks and anonymous news sources to publish material that would otherwise be kept secret or made unavailable by the powers-that-be.

WikiLeaks has in fact won a number of awards for its journalism, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award and a No. 1 ranking in the New York Daily News' May 2010 list of "websites that could totally change the news."

Furthermore, in June 2009, WikiLeaks and Assange were recognized by Amnesty International's UK Media Award in the category "New Media" for their 2008 report, "Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances." The leak concerned police killings in Kenya and was gleaned from the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

"We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies," writes WikiLeaks on its official web page. "All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly – in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances – the internet, and cryptography – the risks of conveying important information can be lowered."