The Rich (Organizations) Get Richer
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The boarding school I attended recently announced a $25 million gift from one of its trustees. I don’t begrudge my alma mater its big gift. I’ll also note that the…
Read More Wealth and Charity
[Note: This article was also published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on May 19, 2021.] The rich are richer than ever before. We have to keep this in mind when we…
Read More Stress Test
Fewer and fewer Americans are making charitable contributions, and we need to ask ourselves why. Certainly, economics plays a major role. “Gilded Giving 2018,”a report from the Institute for Policy…
Read More The Greatest Philanthropist You’ve Never Heard Of
. Julius Rosenwald isn’t much remembered today, but eighty years ago he was considered one of the “big three” of American philanthropy, along with John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.…
Read More Playing the Percentages
Ah: the end of the year! Donors are racing to register their charitable contributions before January first. Nonprofits are counting on a December bounty. But what, besides tax advantages, is…
Read More Roger’s Rule
The most generous donors don’t want to pay for everything themselves. When I was a young (still in my twenties) executive director of a small human service agency we had…
Read More All Bequests Are Generous; Some Can Also Be Smart
Those of you with an oil-burning furnace may be familiar with efficiency percentage tags. If you don’t heat with fuel oil: When the oil company maintenance crew comes at the…
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