Rebecca Cheptegei had done what many athletes can only dream of. At 33 years old, the long-distance runner from Uganda qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics and competed during the women’s marathon event, finishing in 44th place. Less than a month later, Cheptegei was dead. On Sep. 1, Cheptegei’s boyfriend doused her in gasoline and set her on fire during a disagreement, burning 80% of her body. Four days later, Cheptegei died from her injuries. 

Following Cheptegei’s death, Kenya’s sports minister Kipchumba Murkomen said the government would seek justice for Cheptegei. (Cheptegei lived and trained in Kenya.) “This tragedy is a stark reminder that we must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which, in recent years, has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” he wrote in a statement.

One day before Cheptegei was attacked, 21-year-old American gymnast Kara Welsh was shot eight times by her boyfriend, who has since been charged with first-degree intentional homicide. 

These cases are not isolated. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls violence against women, especially intimate partner violence and sexual violence, “a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights.” The WHO estimates that around 1 in 3 women around the globe has experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives, predominantly intimate-partner violence. 

Meanwhile, however, dedicated philanthropic funding for women and girls’ organizations remains chronically low. According to the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, giving to women and girls’ organizations represents a mere 1.8% of all charitable giving in the U.S. 

When it comes to funding to end gender-based violence around the globe, a report from the Equality Institute and the Accelerator for GVB Prevention estimates that the baseline investment in gender-based violence prevention by private philanthropy is somewhere between $100 million and $150 million per year — a paltry amount, really, considering how prevalent this violence is across the U.S. and abroad. How many elite universities received alumni gifts of that size over the past year?

Reliance on a small set of dedicated funders also leaves fields like GVB prevention vulnerable if and when one of those grantmakers pulls back. Once one of the biggest funders for women and girls’ issues, including addressing gender-based violence, Peter and Jennifer Buffett’s NoVo Foundation shifted its focus away from this work in 2020, leaving many “heartbroken and stunned.” 

Despite the comparatively small amount of funding for addressing gender-based violence and supporting survivors, there are still a number of funders working in this space. To that end, here are some of the key funders supporting efforts to address gender-based violence in the U.S. and around the globe. 

Ford Foundation

Unsurprisingly, the Ford Foundation is one of the biggest funders working in this space. Through its Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice program — which funds in the U.S. and around the globe to address the intersection of race, gender, disability and ethnic injustice — Ford also supports efforts to end gender-based violence, particularly in the Global South. Its approach is to strengthen feminist ecosystems, facilitate global coordination and investments, shift narratives and social norms, and expand knowledge, evidence and practice. Ford’s budget for this work is $22 million annually plus an additional $45 million from its BUILD Initiative. 

“We are taking a feminist approach to tackling gender-based violence, listening to what survivors want, and paying particular attention to the intersection of race, class, ethnicity and sexual identity. By placing women and girls — and feminist organizations — at the center of the conversation, we believe we can reduce the systems and structures that have enabled violence to persist,” wrote Nicolette Naylor, formerly a special advisor for Ford’s international programs. 

In 2021, Ford announced it was committing $420 million over five years to tackle gender inequality, focusing on multiple issues, including “the growing epidemic of gender-based violence.” Ford co-led the U.N. Women’s Generation Equality Forum’s Coalition on Gender-Based Violence and directed $159 million of the total $420 million to organizations preventing and responding to gender-based violence. The funds were earmarked for international and regional efforts in Latin America, India and Southern and Western Africa. 

Grantees include Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres, Masimanyane, the International Network to End Violence Against Women and Girls, Prevention Collaborative, GVB Response Fund 1, Enfold Proactive Health Trust, Sonke Gender Justice Network, Deaf Women Included, and ActionAid Nigeria.

Oak Foundation

Formally established in 1983 by British billionaire Alan Parker, who helped build Duty Free Shoppers, the Oak Foundation works internationally to address issues of social and environmental concern, especially those that impact disadvantaged people. Its work is centered on seven programs: environment, preventing child sexual abuse, housing and homelessness, international human rights, issues affecting women, learning differences, and its special interest program. 

In 2023 alone, Oak awarded more than $31 million through its Issues Affecting Women program, which supports women’s efforts to create, lead and grow movements to achieve equity and justice. Oak supports programs in the Balkans, Brazil, Central America, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S., as well as organizations in Moldova, Bulgaria, the North Caucasus and India. Oak explicitly names as part of its work supporting women-led, rights-based services that address violence against women. 

Oak also backs the National Coalition for Life Without Violence, a Moldovan network focusing on reducing gender-based violence and building public awareness around the issue. Other grantees include Aide aux Victimes de Violence en Couple, European Network for the Work with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence, Stopping Family Violence and Association ViolenceQueFaire, FreeFrom and MADRE.

Isabel Allende Foundation

Chilean-American author Isabel Allende launched her foundation in 1996 as an homage to her daughter, Paula Fries, who died in 1992. Following her daughter’s death, Allende wrote a memoir titled “Paula” and used the income generated from the book’s sales to establish the Isabel Allende Foundation. Allende continues to support the foundation with income from her other books — she’s one of a number of globally bestselling author/philanthropists, several of whom we profiled here. As of 2013, the foundation had about $11 million in assets. 

The foundation is primarily dedicated to supporting women and girls in order to secure reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence. It works alongside nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chile, as well as with national and international organizations. 

Past grantees include the Global Fund for Women, Ms. Foundation, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, the Center for Reproductive Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Thistle Farms, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and If/When/How. 

Kering Foundation

Based in France, the Kering Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Kering, a corporation that owns several luxury brands, including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and Alexander McQueen. Its foundation was launched in 2008 to address gender-based violence. It works alongside its partners in six countries: the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Mexico and South Korea. In recent years, it expanded its work to include violence against children, nature conservation and sustainability. 

The Kering Foundation’s strategy is focused on three pillars: resourcing partner organizations with increased and flexible funding to guarantee services to women and children; creating safe workplaces and offering support to colleagues impacted by domestic violence; and influencing new actors and audiences to take action and raise awareness and funds to end violence. 

Last year, the foundation’s Caring for Women dinner raised more than $3 million to benefit the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault and the Malala Fund. It also cofounded One In Three Women, a European network of companies committed to pushing back against violence against women. Other past and current grantee partners include the Mediterranean Women’s Fund, Red Nacional de Refugios, Casa di Accoglienza delle Donne Maltrattate, and FreeFrom. 

Collective Future Fund

The Collective Future Fund is a pooled philanthropic intermediary fund that launched in the heyday of the #MeToo movement. Its goal is to bring together social justice movements, survivors and donors to heal, resource and mobilize toward a future that is free from gendered, sexualized and racialized violence. The fund is fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 

Current funders include several on this list, like the Ford Foundation, Oak Foundation and Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, as well as other progressive stalwarts like the General Service Foundation, Foundation for a Just Society, Libra Foundation and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Chanel Foundation are also supporters. Past donors include the NoVo Foundation, MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving, Open Society Foundations and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Since 2020, CFF has awarded $27 million to 112 grantee partners; average grant awards are around $130,000. CFF’s grantees work to advance structural change, collective healing and address the root causes of violence. In 2021, CFF announced it was awarding $11 million over several years to support survivor-led organizations, including Black Women’s Blueprint, the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, Justice for Migrant Women and the National Women’s Law Center. It also awarded $3 million in 2019 and $4 million in rapid-response grants in 2020. Last year, CFF announced it was awarding $3.4 million over two years to 29 organizations that center survivors. 

MacKenzie Scott

One of the biggest figures in philanthropy today, MacKenzie Scott’s gifts through her philanthropic vehicle Yield Giving cover a lot of ground, and she often shifts from one priority area to another. But one consistent focus is funding for women and girls. For example, in 2020 and 2021, she partnered with Melinda French Gates on Equality Can’t Wait, a $40 million grant contest to expand women’s power and influence in the U.S. by 2030.

According to Yield Giving’s grant database, Scott has awarded a total of 2,325 gifts earmarked for sexual and gender-based violence, though this may be an incomplete list of her grantmaking — and since recipients self-report their focus areas to Yield Giving, those gifts aren’t all going toward organizations that specifically prioritize the issue. 

That said, Scott’s groundbreaking philanthropy has reached an impressive collection of groups prioritizing GVB prevention and support for survivors. They include Women Helping Women, Purposeful, African Women’s Development Fund, Equality Fund, Avalon Healing Center, Womankind, Equality Now, Mujeres Unidas en Justicia, Educación y Reforma, Marian House, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, Esperanza United, Global Fund for Women, MADRE, FreeFrom, the Fund for Global Human Rights, Raksha, Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and The Second Step.

Bonus: Melinda French Gates

Melinda French Gates is an important funder to watch in this space. For more than two decades, French Gates co-chaired the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After her divorce from Bill Gates in 2021, French Gates remained at the foundation for another three years until she announced her departure earlier this year. In 2015, French Gates established Pivotal Ventures, which works to advance social progress and expand women’s power and influence, both in the U.S. and around the globe. 

Although neither the Gates Foundation nor Pivotal Ventures have particularly focused on addressing gender-based violence, they have awarded some grants in this space. Pivotal Ventures, for example, has supported the Collective Future Fund, and the Gates Foundation has awarded grants to the African Women’s Development Fund, the Global Fund for Women and the U.N. Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women. 

But French Gates’ departure from the Gates Foundation presents an opportunity for her to transform the way she gives and who gets her money. And the next chapter in her philanthropic story is well underway. Earlier this year, French Gates announced she was committing $1 billion by 2026 to advance women’s issues, noting in an op-ed that there has been a “tremendous upsurge in political violence and other threats” to women and girls’ safety. With billions left to give, it stands to reason that as French Gates further develops her philanthropy to safeguard women’s rights, addressing gender-based violence will be a pivotal part of that. 

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Other funders working in this space include the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Ms. Foundation for Women, Equality Fund, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Gender Funders CoLab, Fund for Global Human Rights, Global Fund for Women, Libra Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Girls Rights Project, and Jewish Women International.

When the National Park Foundation announced a $100 million grant from the Lilly Endowment last month, it was not only the largest award in the organization’s nearly 60-year history, but also the latest in a series of fundraising coups this year for America’s national parks. 

In May, Connie and Steve Ballmer gave $25 million to the foundation, which is the official nonprofit fundraising arm for the National Park Service. And in February, anonymous donors granted $40 million to help with the dire housing crisis at Yellowstone National Park. 

The foundation has now raised $815 million toward its $1 billion capital campaign, ensuring it will meet its goal, and “likely” long before its 2028 deadline, said Will Shafroth, CEO of the National Park Foundation. “The opportunity is to turn $100 million into $300 million,” he said. 

Yet the mega donations are also a reminder of how static government budgets have made the more than 400 parks — which span the Rocky Mountains’ stark natural beauty to iconic civil rights sites like Little Rock Central High School — more reliant on private dollars, even as visitor numbers neared record levels last year.

Federal funding for the National Park Service has been flat in recent years, limiting its ability to upgrade aging facilities, advance conservation or improve visitors’ experiences, argued Shafroth in a recent IP op-ed arguing for more philanthropic support for national parks. 

“Private partnerships and individual donations are more crucial than ever to take care of these national treasures,” he wrote.

A growing fundraising engine

The National Park Service’s budget may be stagnant, but fortunately, the checks from private donors keep coming. Around 60 individuals and institutions have made gifts of $1 million or more to the National Park Foundation since 2018, according to its website. 

These include a $13.4 million award from the Mellon Foundation in 2022 as part of its Monuments Project. Other institutional supporters include the Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation, Davis Family Foundation, Glenn W. Bailey Foundation, Malott Family Foundation, Carolyn and Chuck Miller Foundation and Pisces Foundation, as well as the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. 

These recent gifts — Lilly’s in particular — rival some of the largest-ever cash gifts for the parks. Robert F. Smith’s Fund II Foundation gave nearly $39 million in 2016 for projects that include preserving the former homes of Martin Luther King Jr. And Shafroth said financier David Rubenstein’s gifts over the years to restore the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and other national icons also total around $50 million. 

The foundation’s capital campaign actually marks a doubling of its ambitions from its 2016 fundraising push, whose original goal, $350 million, was quickly raised to $500 million after early success, as Tate Williams wrote for IP at the time.

The recent fundraising successes have in part been a result of the parks’ rising popularity, Shafroth said, due to post-COVID rush outdoors and the need for a refuge in a politically fractured time. “They serve as a place where we come together as a people … they’re a physical manifestation of our democracy.”

The other reason? Shafroth and his peers are better at asking for money. The network of more than 400 fundraising organizations associated with the national park system are now more experienced at explaining their work and making a case to billionaires and big institutions for supporting the nation’s parks, monuments and historic sites, he said.

“There are people with substantial means that are looking for ways to intelligently invest their dollars, kind of on a wholesale basis, if you will, and using intermediaries to retail the money out,” he said. “The foundation and our partners have elevated [our] collective game, if you will, so that we’re now in a position to do that at a greater scale than we used to.”

One goal for the new funding is to build the capacity of the parks’ fundraising network, Shafroth said, including land trusts and the roughly 250 volunteer organizations, known as “friends groups,” that typically raise money on behalf of individual parks. The foundation’s $1 billion campaign is part of a larger push with those groups to raise $3.5 billion.

Money will also back ecological efforts like restoring coral reefs at Florida’s Biscayne national park and bolstering trout populations in Western parks. Another goal is more basic: making sure park staff have places to live, such as by making use of low-income tax credits. 

“Housing issues at the parks are at a crisis proportion right now,” he said. 

A grant for parks, but not an environmental grant

The Lilly Endowment may seem like an unlikely candidate to give the National Park Foundation a record award. Scan its past grants and you won’t find a lot of traditional environmental groups, aside from its hometown zoo and the Nature Conservancy. 

The foundation’s priorities, after all, are community development, education and youth, and religion. And it’s better known for regional funding in its home state of Indiana than for grantmaking with a national scope, although this is certainly not the first time it’s kicked in a big national commitment. See its $100 million unrestricted grant to the United Negro College Fund this January. 

But the 87-year-old funder’s fast-growing endowment — powered by massive gains in Eli Lilly and Company stock — topped $62 billion last year, a 50% rise from the year before that could oblige its grantmaking to increase by an incredible $1 billion annually to meet the 5% foundation payout threshold. Getting such enormous sums out the door has, perhaps, encouraged it to interpret its directives even more broadly.

Besides, a green label is arguably a simplistic one for a grant to the National Parks Service, which also manages historic sites like Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home and the new national monument for Emmett Till. 

“We do not view this as primarily an environmental grant,” said a Lilly spokesperson in a statement. “While we hope that it will be beneficial for the environment, we see it as also furthering our interests in history and culture, quality of place, and recreation.”

Lilly has made a series of grants to national cultural institutions over the last few years, including a $10 million grant to the Washington National Cathedral and $5 million for the World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. 

The record-breaking National Parks grant is also an extension of past support for green spaces in its home state. Lilly approved more than $80 million in funding in 2023 to improve and expand public parks in Indianapolis and, even more recently, $50 million for Indiana’s state parks.

Big philanthropy’s long history with America’s outdoors

Recent mega gifts for national parks from the Ballmers, Smith and other ultra-wealthy individuals — not to mention massive foundations like Lilly and Mellon — might seem like a new level of government reliance on the largesse of philanthropists. Yet America’s richest have long been closely involved in supporting America’s outdoors.

John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the oil baron, served as a sort of straw buyer in the then-controversial plan to create Grand Teton National Park, acquiring tens of thousands of acres that his son, Laurance, ultimately donated to the parks service in 1949. 

That gift was “generationally significant,” Shafroth said. “It basically showed a way that the private sector, individuals [and] families could make something happen relative to our national treasures.” (Laurance would later help push for the creation of the National Park Foundation, giving today’s billionaires a place to send their checks.)

It’d be hard to put a dollar figure on such an award, but more recent gifts can be quantified. In 2016, Roxanne Quimby, cofounder of Burt’s Bees, donated over 87,000 acres of land worth around $75 million to create a national monument in Maine’s Northern woods.

“Not just the icing, but the cake too”

The National Park Foundation’s fundraising success has been more than matched by friends groups. Chapters in the Great Smoky Mountains, Arcadia and Yosemite have each raised more than $40 million in recent years, said Phil Francis, who served in the National Parks Service for more than 40 years and is chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks. 

Yet that success belies a deeper funding gap. Explaining the groups’ work at staff trainings in the 1980s, Francis would tell new employees: “Here is a way to pay for the icing on the cake.” That has changed. “Now, the friends groups collectively are paying for the cake, too.”

Like the National Park Foundation itself, many are funding housing and other basic operations, filling in where government funding falls short. As Francis laid out in a March op-ed in The Hill, staffing at the national parks has dropped 13% over the past decade despite visits rising 10%. 

Natural spaces not only help our ailing climate and boost mental health, they pencil out in economic terms. The discretionary budget of the parks was approximately $3.5 billion in 2023, while the economic contributions of the national parks to the U.S. economy topped $55 billion that year, according to the Department of the Interior. 

“I wish I could find a business that I could invest money in and get that kind of return,” Francis said.
Instead, Congress slashed the parks budget by $150 million in 2024, though a dozen parks broke their all-time visitor records the year before and overall visits rose to 325 million. The National Park Foundation and friends groups should not be expected to make up for those shortfalls, and certainly cannot cover the roughly $15 to $20 billion in deferred maintenance the parks need. But they do help. And the friends groups can even lobby for some budgetary change.

Given former President Donald Trump’s elevation of bogus stories about Haitians in Ohio during Tuesday’s presidential debate, we thought it would be a good idea to provide our readers with a quick roundup of funders and nonprofits working to support these legal recent immigrants. In the face of misleading information spread by right-wing outlets, it’s important to note that immigrants as a whole are significantly less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States, so these organizations are simply doing for Haitian refugees what nonprofits and individuals alike have always done for our country’s immigrants — helping them acclimate, heal from past traumas and eventually become contributing members of American society. 

We were able to find three organizations that are either providing direct help to Haitian refugees in Ohio or that have funded organizations which have helped them — and presumably will continue to do so.

Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS) 

This Columbus, Ohio, nonprofit’s mission is “to help refugees and immigrants reach safety and stability, sustain self-sufficiency and achieve successful integration into the Central Ohio community.” In addition to refugee resettlement, its services include support with employment and family, legal and newcomer services. CRIS, which is an affiliate of Church World Service, has a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of State to receive and place refugees in the local community. It was founded in 1987 as an outreach service of the Buddhamamaka Society, which itself was launched in 1987 by refugees from Laos. CRIS reported net assets of $574,536 in 2022, and its funders include the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation, the Harry C. Moores Foundation, the United Way and several federal, state and corporate entities. 

Haitian Community Help and Support Center

Founded last year in Springfield, Ohio, this organization works “to guide and assist refugees and immigrants, especially Haitian nationals residing in Clark County and surroundings, in the following areas: housing, interpreting, job search, welfare assistance and other services. We anticipate connecting the individuals in need of services to the institutions where those services are provided in any way possible.” A very new, very small grassroots organization, this nonprofit is the only one mentioned here that was founded and is run by Haitian immigrants themselves. It received $5,000 from the Clark County, Ohio, nonprofit Welcome Springfield and has been soliciting community donations via Paypal.

Ohio Access to Justice Foundation

This legal aid nonprofit, which was originally launched in 1993 as the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, works to “improve access to justice and ensure that legal aid societies and other resources, programs and services address the unmet civil legal needs of low-income and underserved Ohioans.” In other words, its remit goes well beyond supporting immigrants and refugees. However, IP readers, funders in particular, may want to check out this organization because, as an established entity in Ohio, it is well placed to vet and steer donations to smaller nonprofits on the ground; in fact, in 2023, three of its grantees were involved in supporting the area’s newest Ohioans. While there’s no guarantee that donations made to the foundation will go specifically to Haitian immigrants, the donation form includes an “Additional Comments” section where donors can potentially specify their preferences.

There’s no doubt that an influx of immigrants — like Springfield, Ohio, experienced — can potentially be destabilizing to a community, particularly given the weakened social safety net that this country offers to citizens and immigrants alike. There is also no quick and easy answer to these issues; instead, what’s needed is a coordinated, ongoing response from government, the private sector and philanthropy alike, and potentially a realignment of tax, legal and immigration policies. In the meantime, funders and individuals alike with an interest in issues including public health, education, transportation and more may want to consider adding grants and donations to immigrant-serving nonprofits to their giving portfolios. One thing is certain — spreading lies about any group of people, particularly those without the wherewithal to fight back, helps only those who rely on punching down as a political strategy.

Dawn Wolfe covers issues including criminal justice funding, LGBTQ philanthropy, and philanthropic reform. She can be reached at: dawnw@insidephilanthropy.com. Other than a brief interruption caused by two squabbling housecats, no pets were involved in the writing of this article.

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9/11 was just the second day of high school for me at a new school and a day I’ll never forget as a native New Yorker. I still remember the smell that lingered over Manhattan for what seemed like months. But in the wake of the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., philanthropy stepped up.

At the time, the philanthropic response was so immense that the American Red Cross and September 11th Fund issued public statements saying that they did not wish to receive more money. Yet, approximately $500 million made it to these two organizations by June 2002, according to a Ford Foundation report.

Another anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is also a prime moment to remember veterans funding. Our Grantfinder page for Veterans and Military tracks philanthropies aiming to serve the more than 18 million veterans living in the United States today. Notably, around 2 to 3 million of those veterans served in Iraq or Afghanistan in the post-9/11 era, and many of them went on to face challenges involving healthcare, housing, disabilities and mental health.

In this non-exhaustive list, we’ll be running down some of the top philanthropies that support veterans.

Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund

Howard Lutnick, head of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, landed a job at the firm right out of college in 1983 and by 35, he was chairman. The company lost 658 employees — two-thirds of its workforce — in the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Lutnick lost his own brother and likely would also have been inside the North Tower at the time if not for the fact that he took his son to school for his first day. 

Lutnick turned tragedy into purpose and started the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund with his sister Edie, president of the fund. Every year on the company’s 9/11 Charity Day, Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group donate 100% of their revenues to the fund in support of direct services charities around the world. The fund has raised and distributed more than $300 million. A top cause is supporting veterans and their families, including the nonprofit Building Homes for Heroes in Island Park, New York.

Call of Duty Endowment Fund

One of the biggest video game franchises of all time also leverages its success to help veterans through the Call of Duty Endowment Fund. It was cofounded by Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision Blizzard, the American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. The endowment helps veterans find high-quality careers by supporting groups that prepare them for the job market and by raising awareness of the value vets bring to the workplace. It recently wrapped up another year of its fundraising CODE Bowl, where U.S., UK. and Canadian military esports teams compete. 

Leveraging the powerful Call of Duty brand, CODE has placed more than 130,000 veterans in jobs since its 2009 founding. In our conversation a few years ago, CODE Executive Director Dan Goldenberg emphasized that he believes employment is the top issue facing most veterans today. “The public conception of where the need is is off-kilter,” he said at the time. “More than 3 million have served since 9/11. Of those, about 2,000 have lost a limb. Not taking anything away from these folks who deserve all the help they can get. Fact is, though, everyone leaving the military needs the job.”

Craig Newmark Philanthropies

Craig Newmark, the mild-mannered founder of Craigslist, is also a major supporter of veterans through his Craig Newmark Philanthropies. The motivations here are personal: Newmark is the son of a World War II veteran. Newmark has donated more than $100 million to veteran-focused groups nationally and in local communities.

Some of this work includes leveraging tech, like a nearly $5 million gift a few years ago from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to the Bob Woodruff Foundation and the National Veterans Intermediary (NVI) supporting development of a new assessment tool to determine the capacity of communities to address the needs of veterans returning to civilian life. Other gifts, including establishing a scholarship for veterans at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, speak to the scale of Newmark’s commitment to this cause. 

Gary Sinise Foundation

When it comes to his giving, actor Gary Sinise, aka Lieutenant Dan in “Forrest Gump,” stays true to the character he once played. In 2011, he established the Gary Sinise Foundation, which squarely focuses on supporting military veterans, first responders and their families. The foundation’s signature R.I.S.E. (Restoring Independence Supporting Empowerment) program focuses on building adapted smart homes for severely wounded servicepeople.

Sinise, who had been interested in this cause since the ’80s, started doing “handshake tours” with United Service Organizations (USO), meeting a new generation of men and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. “The more I did, the more I wanted to do. Putting my boots on the ground. Going to the war zones. Going to the hospitals. Going to the events that would support [veterans] in different ways,” Sinise told Inside Philanthropy.

Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation

The foundation of Wall Street power couple Steven and Alexandra Cohen has given over $1.2 billion since its inception. In 2016, the foundation launched the Cohen Veterans Network with a $275 million gift. There are now 24 Cohen Veterans Network clinics around the country, focusing on caring for post-9/11 veterans, active duty personnel and families — emphasizing ease of access, short wait times and treating the entire military family and serving veterans regardless of role or discharge status. 

Cohen, worth more than $20 billion as of this writing, has a son who joined the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2010s. 

Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation

Billionaire GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons started the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation to support a range of causes. The foundation’s Military and First Responders grantmaking program focuses on supporting major veterans organizations including Semper Fi & America’s Fund, the National Museum of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Headstrong Project, a national organization that offers “stigma-free, evidence-based, trauma-focused mental health treatment for our nation’s military, veterans, and their associated family members.”

The foundation has also shown an interest in backing veterans work at universities, including the University of Baltimore, which has received nearly $7 million. Grants here have focused on career-focused education for vets. Like others in this rundown, Bob Parsons himself has close ties to this community — he’s a Marine Corps veteran.

Marcus Foundation

Bernie Marcus — along with Arthur Blank — attained billionaire status as cofounder of home improvement giant Home Depot. In an interview several years ago, Marcus told IP that he got involved with Shepherd Center, a hospital focusing on the medical treatment, research and rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury and disease. The institution puts out a monthly magazine, and Marcus was moved by a story it published about a young soldier suffering from a spinal injury at a VA hospital. 

He began supporting the Shepherd Center and started a post-9/11 veterans-focused program called Operation Share, pivoting away from spinal cord injury and instead focusing on traumatic brain injury and PTSD, where he felt there was a greater need. This later escalated into the creation of the Marcus Institute for Brain Health at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical, which serves military veterans, first responders and retired athletes.

For his 90th birthday, Marcus and his old business partner Blank committed $20 million each to the Gary Sinise Foundation’s Avalon Network. “There are people who are the finest product we have in the United States,” he said, referring to those who serve.

Pritzker Military Foundation

The Pritzker family of Chicago, well known in philanthropy and in politics, includes retired Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Pritzker, who inherited stakes in the family’s Hyatt chain. Unsurprisingly, she prioritizes military and veterans issues in her philanthropy through several charities. The Pritzker Military Foundation serves as the grantmaking arm of Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago, preserving American military history as well as restoring historic military artifacts and making them available to the public.

She also works with the Women in Military Service Memorial Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Women In Military Service For America Memorial. “There are not very many monuments dedicated solely to women who have served,” Pritzker once told IP. “Only one I can think of is in New Orleans, Marine Corps Molly, honoring those who fought starting in World War II.”

Bob Woodruff Foundation

Last but not least, the Bob Woodruff Foundation, bearing the name of the “ABC News Tonight” anchor who was seriously injured in Iraq, has supported veterans since 2006. Its recent focuses include community-building, employment, housing, and food insecurity — as well as the mental health of veterans and their kids. 

The foundation receives significant support from other funders, including MacKenzie Scott and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, as well as the NFL, Bread Financial and Veterans on Wall Street. It’s raised tens of millions since 2007 through its annual Stand Up for Heroes gala.

In mid-August, Lori Pourier, the Oglala Lakota founder and senior fellow of the Rapid City, South Dakota-based Native arts service organization First Peoples Fund, attended the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts’ Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The annual market draws more than 100,000 visitors and features the work of over 1,000 artists from more than 100 tribal communities in North America and Canada. 

While artists “are starting to see high-end folks pulling back from buying Native art,” Pourier told me in a late August conversation, many artists were thriving. Indeed, the show’s winner in basketry, Cherokee/Penobscot craftsman Caleb Hoffman, studied under a First Peoples Fund (FPF) Artist in Business Leadership fellow, Passamaquoddy basketmaker Jeremy Frey. “It’s wonderful to see so many artists enjoying so much success,” Pourier said. 

Pourier’s insights underscore how funders are conceptualizing their support for Native artists. Equipped with fellowships and grants, practitioners can achieve professional success while navigating a fraught economic climate. But Native artists do not operate in isolation. Given that the arts are inextricably linked to Native life, funders view their support as a means to achieve broader aims, like reestablishing post-pandemic intergenerational connections and positioning artists as agents of community development and social change.

“While there are new and emerging opportunities surrounding Native arts and artists, the very core of Native arts is anything but trendy,” said Catherine Bryan, a vice president at the First Nations Development Institute. “Art is a cultural asset for Native communities and is deeply intertwined in Native lifeways — languages, traditional beliefs and ceremonies, land and food systems.”

I reached out to Pourier, Bryan and Nicole Yanes (Opata), director of institutional philanthropy at NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led grantmaker dedicated to building Indigenous power, to get their take on the state of the field. Here are four funder action items gleaned from their feedback.

Reestablishing intergenerational connections

The sustainability of traditional Native arts “depends on intergenerational learning and interaction, and as art forms and artistic skills are passed down, so, too, are knowledge systems that Native art embodies,” said First Nations’ Bryan. The pandemic disrupted the transmission of knowledge and practices across Native communities, and arts funders are committed to reestablishing and strengthening these connections.

First Nations, which aims to sustain the lifeways and economies of Native communities through advocacy, financial support and knowledge sharing, has provided roughly $6 million to 33 Native-led nonprofits and tribal programs working to sustain traditional Native arts, artists and lifeways through its Native Arts Initiative and First Americans’ Cultural Treasures Initiative, which receives support from the Ford Foundation and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies. Grantees have used the funding to build staff and organizational capacity, build out arts programming and invest in renovation projects.

FPF is also helping Native artists and organizations regain their footing in a post-pandemic climate. 

Last year, the fund was one of eight arts service organizations rooted in communities of color selected by the Wallace Foundation to participate in its Field Studies program. Working with research scholars and Native culture bearers, the FPF will “produce community-informed survey measures that more accurately reflect and capture the ways in which Native peoples engage with and work within the arts and culture sector and tribal economies.”

With funding from the Doris Duke Foundation, FPF published Brightening the Spotlight, a 100-page report educating funders on how best to support American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native creators working in performing arts disciplines. In August, it announced the Native Performing Arts Fellowship, which provides grants of up to $10,000 for Native individuals who practice or work in fields like theater, dance and music.

Last but not least is the FPF’s Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Awards. Named after the fund’s founder, the award provides a $50,000 grant to four to six Native artists who “sustain culture through language, ceremonies and tradition practices through their art,” Pourier said. Check out 2024’s awardees here. 

With the impacts of the pandemic gradually dissipating, First Nations’ Bryan shares Pourier’s sense of cautious optimism about the state of the field. 

First Nations’ community partners are “leveraging hybrid programming and opportunities to reach broader audiences through virtual mediums, and they’re doing it all with renewed urgency,” she said. “They know they are in a race against the clock to regain and protect the knowledge lost during the pandemic, and to ensure their programming is sustainable and able to support the sharing and teaching of knowledge and artistic skills between culture bearers and community members.”

Galvanizing community development 

Funders recognize that in addition to transmitting knowledge to younger generations, Native artists play a critical entrepreneurial role in supporting their communities’ economic sustainability. 

“Our work in helping artists has always included a financial education component so they can successfully operate a business,” Pourier said. With funding from the defunct ArtPlace America, the Bush Foundation and others, the fund launched Rolling Rez Arts, a state-of-the-art mobile arts space, business training center and bank in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. (FPF’s other institutional funders include the Jerome, Kresge and Ruth Arts foundations.)

The fund’s Cultural Capital Fellowship is a year-long program that provides $10,000 in funding to artists and culture bearers’ work in their community. Pourier said many fellows have leveraged that seed money to generate additional support to grow their businesses. Others go on to serve as consultants to help entrepreneurs in other tribal communities get projects off the ground. “We’ve created this whole army of trainers,” Pourier said.

Another offering, the Native Arts Ecology Building Grant, supports organizations uplifting Native artists in their communities. And last year, FPF, Lakota Funds and Artspace Projects, Inc., announced the opening of Oglala Lakota Artspace, a Native-run studio space in the heart of the Pine Ridge Reservation. “It’s an amazing space led by artists,” Pourier said.

Yanes encouraged philanthropy to trust in Native artists, even if their ideas may be too “radical” for some funders. “When Indigenous people can mobilize the resources and invest directly in our communities,” Yanes said, “we can do it from a deeper understanding as direct practitioners because we understand the issues and solutions from a place of love for our people and our planet.”

Social change activism and movement-building

Native arts funders, like their peers across the arts philanthropy ecosystem writ large, are supporting artists advancing social or political change.

The NDN Collective’s Radical Imagination Program, which provides a two-year grant of $100,000 to 10 Indigenous artists, artist collectives or small nonprofits that are “deeply engaged with their communities to develop alternative visions of a new future,” is especially instructive because it merges the goal of cultivating an ecosystem of community-minded Native artists with the mechanics of galvanizing change.

“Through artistic interpretation, we are able to see what the future that we are fighting for looks like,” said NDN Collective’s Yanes. “What does it look like when we have torn down all the dams and the salmon is running? When we have rebuilt our food systems? When we have stopped oil companies from extracting from our resources? When we envision it, and we imagine it, it will happen.” 

With Yanes’ commentary serving as a conceptual backdrop, here are some key issues on Native artists’ radars as they engage in and with movements — and how funders are investing in them.

The history of the U.S. Native American Boarding Schools

Native artists are addressing the forcible abduction of Native children by government agents to send them to government- and church-run boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries. FPF Artists in Business Leadership Fellow Denise Lajimodiere of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Belcourt, North Dakota, cofounded the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition; this year, the Mellon Foundation awarded it a $516,480 grant through its Presidential Initiatives program.

Native-led organizations also are partnering with the Department of the Interior on developing the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. Launched in 2021, it’s a comprehensive effort to “recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and to shed light on the traumas of the past.” 

“There’s been a lot of collaboration under the Biden administration across departments to engage tribal communities” around the initiative, Pourier said.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act calling for “the protection and return of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony.” Last December, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a final rule providing processes by which tribal nations can repatriate the remains of ancestors and sacred cultural objects held by museums and federal agencies.

First Nations’ Bryan called the “ethical return of tribal artifacts that were stolen from tribes over centuries of colonialism to tribal nations” a “compelling movement in the field of Native arts.” 

Pourier agreed. “There’s a movement through intermediaries to help tribes get the facilities to bring those artifacts home,” she said. One important intermediary is the Going Home Fund. Launched by the Association of Tribal Libraries and Museums to facilitate the return of “material culture” to Indigenous communities, the fund has received support from the Mellon and Henry Luce foundations.

Climate change

Grantmakers are supporting Native artists tackling climate change. “Our tradition keepers are sustaining culture at the community level,” Pourier said. “They’re also the ones that are leading the work around climate change because they’re most directly impacted. The natural resources they depend on for their food systems are at risk.”

First Nations’ Bryan noted that several basket-weaver nonprofits and programs in its network “are focused on understanding and protecting their plant ecosystems and developing strategies to address the detrimental impacts of climate change on their traditional basketry and underlying knowledge systems. Their goal is to ensure that community members have access to materials needed to continue making traditional baskets and continue passing on this knowledge system to future generations.” 

Development projects threatening Native communities

Pourier said that artists are supporting efforts to remove the Dakota Access Pipeline and stop the development of the Constantine-Palmer Mine, a mining project that threatens five species of salmon in Alaska’s Chilkat River watershed. Pourier cited Tlingit weaver Lani Hotch, a Community Spirit Award winner and Cultural Capital Fellow, who launched a weaving project earlier this year to raise awareness about the need to protect salmon and the Chilkat River.

Advocating for the Native arts within the broader context of racial justice

Advocates are calling on philanthropy to provide increased support for Native arts holistically, tying funding to the larger social justice movement and issues like “Native control and stewardship of land, Native foods systems, Native language immersion programs, and more,” said First Nations’ Bryan. “Our work always involves encouraging philanthropy to do better when it comes to investing in Native communities.”

Earlier this year, First Nations launched Advocacy and Research for Economic Justice, a program focused on conducting research advocating for philanthropy to make greater investments in Native-led organizations and tribal programs, and providing financial education to Native communities. 

The initiative includes the Building a Movement for Native Justice Project, which centers on boosting scholarship about Native environmental, social or economic justice, and providing Native communities, policymakers and funders with the tools and resources to advance economic justice for Native communities.

“In bringing this project to life,” Bryan said, “we recognized that art must be at the forefront of any movement for change.” As a result, First Nations launched “Justice Through the Eyes of Native Artists,” a virtual gallery featuring the work of Native artists sharing what Native justice means to them. 

NDN Collective’s Yanes also called on philanthropy to support artists through a more holistic lens, calling on funders to invest in Indigenous organizations, communities and artists engaging with front-line organizers, advocates and policymakers. Artists can “communicate solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges, such as climate change, dismantling structural racism and capitalism,” Yanes said. “These issues and solutions should not become trends within philanthropy, but the norm of what and how we invest in art.”

Pourier noted that FPF partners with organizations like the Intercultural Leadership Institute, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, Alternate Roots, the Center for Cultural Power and the National Folklife Network to generate support for tradition and knowledge keepers across all communities of color. 
“I’ve been doing this work now for almost 30 years, and it can be really exhausting,” she said. “There’s been some positive movement, and hopefully, the major funders like Mellon, Ford and Doris Duke will continue to do the work they do. But there’s still a lot more philanthropy can do to support Native arts and culture bearers.”

Children whose parents are in the military don’t sign up to serve, but they make sacrifices nevertheless. Frequent moves mean that military kids often have to leave behind friends, schools, teachers and familiar communities — then start all over again in a new place. Meanwhile, their parents leave home on deployment, often for months at a time. In some cases, a parent comes home injured or traumatized — or doesn’t come home at all. 

“As we say all the time, it’s an all-volunteer force, but military kids don’t volunteer,” said Dr. Margaret Harrell, chief program officer at the Bob Woodruff Foundation. 

Given the challenges they face — against the backdrop of a global youth mental health crisis — it’s no surprise that military kids are experiencing high rates of mental health problems, too. A 2023 survey conducted by the National Military Family Association, for example, found that 40% of military teens had low mental wellbeing. According to that report, “Compared to our 2022 numbers, reports of moderate and high mental wellbeing decreased, while reports of low mental wellbeing increased by nearly 12 percentage points.”

Mental health and well-being is one of the Bob Woodruff Foundation’s seven focus areas and has been for a number of years. Initially, the foundation backed programs that primarily served adults, but it is now zeroing in on military children’s mental health, as well. It’s an area that aligns with the foundation’s mission to “ensure that our nation’s veterans, service members and their families — those who stood for us — have stable and successful futures.”

The Bob Woodruff Foundation was created by ABC news anchor Bob Woodruff and his family after he experienced a traumatic brain injury while covering the war in Iraq. Bob and his wife, Lee, believe veterans and those serving in the military should receive the same high-quality care and support he did after his injury. 

The foundation helps veterans and those serving in the military with food, housing and legal assistance support. It also assists military families with fertility issues, as IP’s Dawn Wolfe reported. The foundation’s Got Your 6 network, a directory of its grantees and partner organizations, developed with the support of Craig Newmark Philanthropies (another stalwart veterans funder), aims to increase awareness of and create connections between veteran-serving organizations to streamline those services. Two years ago, the Bob Woodruff Foundation added military kids’ mental health to its areas of focus. 

“In 2022, we made a commitment to invest at least a million dollars in children’s mental health in 2023,” Harrell said. “We made that investment and have continued with that in 2024. The idea is hopefully to catch and support and mentor kids before they need clinical services. But we’re also funding clinical services, and investing to increase the number of clinicians. We’ve invested over a million and a half dollars in military kids’ mental health and wellbeing — it’s something we’re really committed to.”

Children at risk

Children’s Research Triangle, a Bob Woodruff Foundation grantee, serves children experiencing mental health issues — military and nonmilitary alike. It is headquartered in the Chicago Loop and has 15 community partner sites in underserved Chicago communities. It works with high-risk children and youth, many of whom have experienced violence and other forms of trauma. Children’s Research Triangle also conducts research and works with professionals who interact with traumatized children — in schools and shelters, for example — providing training in trauma-informed care. 

Children’s Research Triangle began working with military children in 2010, when it received a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. “The program has grown from there,” said Dr. Linda Schwartz, the organization’s chief executive officer. “We’ve had our staff trained in a variety of interventions that are sensitive to the needs of military-serving families.”

Schwartz described the differences in mental health she sees in military children compared to other kids. “I think the symptomatology itself isn’t what’s unique, I think it’s the context that they arise in,” she said. “Being separated from a caregiver, being worried about the wellbeing of a caregiver, is obviously huge. And the impact this has on the parent who’s still at home, depending on how that parent is coping with having a partner who is not home and potentially in harm’s way. And when the family member returns home, their physical and emotional state is a driving factor in how the child is doing. Is the parent coming home with serious physical injuries, PTSD or other forms of mental health issues? We also have children who are dealing with grief and the loss of a parent.” 

The frequent moves military families often make add to the challenges. “The adjustment of moving — making new friends, starting over in new school systems repeatedly — that’s hard on any child,” Schwartz said. “And then the family has to access resources and support groups and support systems in a new city, a new town, over and over again.”

Military kids’ experiences may be different, but the ways mental health issues show up, while taking a variety of forms, are similar to those of other children. 

“The whole host of mental health issues that we see is very concentrated in this population, because having a parent in the military is such an intense stressor,” Schwartz said. “It stresses the whole family system. The child has their reaction, and the parent has their reaction, the child reacts to the parent’s reaction. We see children who have secondary traumatic stress: Their parents exhibit stress symptoms, and then they adopt those same symptoms, as well. It’s the whole gamut of mental health issues in a concentrated way.”

Care on site

Funding from the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which began two years ago, has allowed Children’s Research Triangle to provide direct support for military kids at the Evanston Vet Center, which is part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

“Once we received the funding from the Bob Woodruff Foundation, we were able to have our therapists provide services for children directly at the Vet Center, which breaks down so many barriers,” Schwartz said. “The services are free, for one thing. It also breaks down the transportation barriers that so many of our clients face just getting to a clinic. And the Vet Center is a place that military families trust already. Being a part of a system that they trust allows us to more seamlessly help families.” 

Accessing care in a familiar, convenient setting helps erode stigma, which often prevents families from seeking mental healthcare. “Stigma is a barrier for anyone seeking mental healthcare,” Schwartz said. “Having the support and endorsement of people that they already know and work with at the Vet Center really helps.”

Philanthropy’s evolving role

In addition to its support for Children’s Research Triangle, the Bob Woodruff Foundation is backing other programs that provide mental healthcare for military children. In some cases, the foundation supplements coverage provided by TRICARE, the healthcare program for those in the military and the national guard, veterans and families, to make care affordable. One grantee is working to provide mental healthcare in schools that have large populations of military children. The foundation is also supporting training for clinicians interested in treating military kids. 

Until a few years ago, mental health generally flew under the radar as a philanthropic focus, drawing only a tiny fraction of funders’ vast spending on health causes. But with attention to the problem on the rise — and an ongoing mental health crisis affecting young people in particular — that appears to be changing. A new organization, Mindful Philanthropy, is providing guidance for funders who want to include mental health in their funding portfolios, and a number are doing so. From big, donor-backed grantmakers like the Ballmer Group, the Blank Family Foundation, Morgan Stanley, Pivotal Ventures and the Susan Crown Exchange, to an array of smaller supporters, the funding landscape for mental health is growing brighter.

Schwartz applauded this rise in philanthropic attention on mental health. “One positive pandemic outcome is that there is now more support,” she said. “We’re seeing funders really step up and appreciate the need to fund mental health services for high-risk youth, because intensive, quality mental health services are not inexpensive. As mental health providers, we’re very appreciative that there are more foundations focusing on mental health — and youth mental health in particular.”

Still, military children’s mental health doesn’t have broad philanthropic support, despite the need. Some local and regional foundations provide such funding, but we weren’t able to identify national funders providing support in this area. (We’d love to hear about any funders we’ve overlooked).

For now, the Bob Woodruff Foundation seems to be the primary funder in this space — and it isn’t going anywhere. “For the foreseeable future, I can’t imagine it not being a priority for us,” Harrell said. “Of course, I would love to see the system get fixed and all these issues go away — then we can look somewhere else for problems to solve. We can all wish for that.”

It’s hard to believe that hip-hop is over 50 years old, rising from a modest genre that took off in the “Boogie Down” Bronx in the ’70s, becoming the target of political consternation in the ’90s and helping mint billionaires like Dr. Dre in the 2020s. Today, in terms of sheer numbers and reach, it just might be the most popular form of music in world history. Heck, we even had Snoop Dogg bopping all around Paris and giving expert commentary during the 2024 Olympic games.

In recent years, we’ve put together lists of top celebrity philanthropists, including NBA givers and other athlete donors, and most recently, top musicians who give. All of these lists reflect the fact that many media figures are making more money than they ever have, some of which is going toward philanthropy. These figures also have their enormous platforms to put to use. Last month, Snoop’s table tennis commentary went viral, as did this fun Olympics explainer video with Snoop and Kevin Hart, which has amassed over 2 million views.

For this rundown, we’ll be looking at rappers like Snoop and their charities. What kinds of organizations are they giving to? Who helps them with their philanthropy? And what can we expect from these figures down the line? In the words of Warren G, “regulators, mount up!”

Snoop Dogg

Taking Long Beach by storm in the early ’90s as a pioneer of the West Coast hip-hop sound, Calvin Broadus, 52, aka Snoop Dogg, has come a long way — so much so that Celebrity Net Worth (for what that’s worth) pegs his fortune at $160 million. His Snoop Youth Football League focuses on serving inner-city youth aged five through 15, teaching them sports skills as well as emphasizing academics.

Snoop has also made other gifts over the years, including donating $25,000 to Mothers Against Police Brutality in collaboration with Colin Kaepernick, whose own giving focuses on social justice and criminal justice reform. The Long Beach rapper also helped raise money during COVID and partnered with Stephen Curry to refurbish a series of play spaces, including an indoor basketball court in Long Beach, California. 

50 Cent

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson found success not only on the mic, but also in film and television, and even with his own video game. On the philanthropic front, he started the youth-focused G-Unity Foundation, which has partnered with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship to help young people develop entrepreneurial skills. The foundation also runs the G-Unity Business Lab within the Houston Unified School District to bolster the business careers of underrepresented people.

G-Unity also partners with sports teams like the Sacramento Kings and the Houston Rockets to support local charities. “It’s like a cheat sheet. I probably wouldn’t be involved as much in philanthropy, but having the relationships makes it easier,” 50 Cent told Forbes.

Lil’ Kim

Unapologetic raptress Lil’ Kim started the Lil’ Kim Cares Foundation, which focused on helping the survivors of domestic abuse, though the current status of the foundation is unclear. She’s also a strong fundraiser, once bringing in $4 million for the M.A.C. AIDS Fund alongside R&B legend Mary J. Blige.

Lil’ Kim has been a longtime LGBTQ advocate. She has participated in gay pride festivals, including the Pride March in New York City, as well as performing at Atlanta Black Pride and D.C. Black Pride.

Nicki Minaj

A few years ago, Nicki Minaj became the first female rapper to amass a net worth of over $100 million, giving her the horsepower to scale up on the philanthropic front in the coming years. She runs the Student of the Game scholarship program, through which she helps pay off students’ college tuition or student loans. She has also provided support for an array of causes and organizations, including the St. Jude’s Home for Girls in her native Trinidad. 

On a global level, she’s also worked with Life In Its Poetic Form Christian Ministries Inc., which has provided clean wells in an Indian village. “This is the kind of thing that makes me feel the most proud,” Minaj wrote in an Instagram post. 

Eminem

Detroit’s own Marshall Mathers focuses on the Motor City in his giving. His Marshall Mathers Foundation provides assistance to disadvantaged and at-risk youth in the city. The foundation has given grants to places like Excellence for Detroit, which prepares youth for college, South Oakland Shelter in Michigan, and the Michigan AIDS Coalition. 

He also created the Verses Program at Michigan State University’s Community Music School in Detroit, which aims to teach the fundamentals of literacy through song and lyrics. His record label Shady Records and Marshall Mathers Foundation have also partnered on philanthropic projects, including with Detroit’s Downtown Boxing Gym, which hosted a youth tutoring program. 

Chance the Rapper

Everyone feels good when they hear a Chance song. The socially conscious Chicago rapper started SocialWorks to empower youth through the arts, education and civic engagement. SocialWorks has donated more than $5 million since its 2016 founding through its five initiatives: OpenMike, Warmest Winter, Kids of the Kingdom, The New Chance: Arts & Literature Fund and My State of Mind. Through OpenMike, SocialWorks and the Chicago Public Library come together to provide a safe space for young people to express themselves. My State of Mind, meanwhile, is a digital mental health tool to help Chicagoans access mental health resources. 

Chance’s mental health focus runs in parallel with those of other celebrities who have also spoken about and funded these issues, including Kevin Love and Selena Gomez. 

Cardi B

Born in Washington Heights, Manhattan, 31-year-old Cardi B’s growing local giving includes a six-figure gift to her Bronx high school, I.S. 232. And that wasn’t the first time she’s shown a willingness to support the Bronx. On the heels of an unfortunate fire a few years ago in an apartment complex there, Cardi B covered the funeral costs of the victims of the blaze, along with repatriation expenses for victims who will be buried in Gambia, West Africa. 

Cardi B said in a statement to CNN: “I’m extremely proud to be from the Bronx and I have lots of family and friends who live and work there still. So when I heard about the fire and all of the victims, I knew I needed to do something to help.”

will.i.am

Always a memorable figure, will.i.am started the tech-oriented i.am.angel foundation to support in-school STEAM education programs in Southern California. i.am/Angel focuses on initiatives like its i.am College Track after-school tutoring center and college scholarship aid program, and the Boyle Heights STEM Magnet High School, a public high school in East Los Angeles focusing on STEM education and work readiness.

will.i.am also founded i.am scholarship, which has awarded over $1 million to nearly 140 students involved in the foundation’s i.am STEAM and i.am College Track programs. 

Queen Latifah

Don’t quote me on this, but Queen Latifah’s “Just Another Day” might be the best female rap track of all time. Besides hip-hop, she has also made her impact in Hollywood. Latifah serves as co-chairman for the Lancelot H. Owens Scholarship Foundation, Inc. started by her late mother, Rita Owens. The foundation provides scholarships to economically disadvantaged students, mainly in the Newark area.

According to Variety, scholarship beneficiaries are expected to pay it forward after the opportunity. “You have to reach back because at the end of the day, you have to allow kids to learn what their talent is,” she said. “How can you not root for the underdog in life and give back?”

Just last month, Inside Philanthropy’s Michael Kavate outlined several of the most notable developments in climate giving this summer — always timely in light of regular reports of record-breaking temperatures, extreme weather events and other impacts on our quickly warming planet. The majority of climate philanthropy aims to address the causes of human-induced climate change, including through policy and practices to reduce greenhouse gases or encourage green technology and industry. But in the last year, we’ve also seen philanthropy tackle the ramifications of climate change in an area of more basic science — specifically, its impact on the neurobiology of humans and animals. 

Today, the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute, announced the launch of the Allen Discovery Center for Neurobiology in Changing Environments. Based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, the new center will investigate the impacts of climate change on the behaviors and nervous systems of marine animals. 

The announcement from the late Microsoft cofounder’s organization comes almost exactly a year after the Kavli Foundation, another pace-setting science funder, launched its Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems grantmaking program. Operated in partnership with the National Science Foundation, that program supports research into how brains and neural processes — both human and animal — are affected by changing environments.

As I wrote at the time, Kavli saw this emerging area of science as necessarily interdisciplinary in its mission to understand how brains and neural systems adapt to warming and other changes in the planetary climate. The same will be true of the new Allen Discovery Center.

Scientists will focus first on four marine species: staghorn coral, the slipper snail, the painted sea urchin and the three-spined stickleback fish. They’ll use genetics and other specialties to accomplish goals such as developing neural maps for each species, understanding environmental impacts on behavior and sensory perception and identifying genetic variations that may be involved in adaptation to changes in the oceans, such as temperature, acidity and other factors, according to Scripps Marine Biology Professor Martin Tresguerres, who will lead research at the center.

“If you want to see what happens when you have climate change or some other stress, it’s essential to first know how things work normally,” Tresguerres told me. “We know the importance of neural maps and their fundamental mechanisms for neurobiology, but in the past, it’s been very difficult to study them.” In just the last decade, advances in genetics, imaging and related technologies have given scientists the ability to answer questions about neurobiology and behavior that would previously have been difficult or impossible to study.

Laying groundwork for more effective conservation

Scientists at the new Allen Discovery Center will seek to identify the mechanisms behind resilience or vulnerability among species and populations as they face rapid changes in ocean conditions. Such knowledge will be crucial for predicting and potentially mitigating the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems, Tresguerres said. Along with Tresguerres, the new center will be co-led by Scripps scientists Amro Hamdoun and Deirdre Lyons. They’ll work with interdisciplinary researchers in from several institutions: UC San Diego, the University of Southern California, the Carnegie Institution, the University of Virginia and MacEwan University. 

The center’s transdisciplinary approach will engage specialists in genetics, population genomics, cutting-edge microscopy and animal behavior, among others. As one of the world’s top oceanographic research institutions, Scripps operates several ocean research vessels that let scientists study marine organisms in their natural habitats. Those findings from the field will in turn guide research in the laboratories to understand basic function, and ultimately, potential biological changes to cells, neurons and genes, Tresguerres said.

All this research can eventually have practical applications in conservation and elsewhere as governments and private organizations seek to adapt to a warming planet. “The molecular genomics and the functional basis of these mechanisms can help identify vulnerable species or resilient species, and then move forward with conservation or more active intervention,” Tresguerres said. 

The research center is funded at $10 million over four years by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, with a total potential for $20 million over eight years. (Technically, the Allen Frontiers Group recommends funding directions to the Allen Family Foundation; the money comes from the family foundation.) For a deeper dive into the still-evolving philanthropy of the Allen Family Foundation, including the Vale Group LLC (formerly Vulcan), and the $20 billion fortune Paul Allen left after his 2018 death from cancer, take a look at Ade Adeniji’s recent overview of Allen ecosystem giving.

This new climate and neurobiology center at Scripps is the latest in the Allen Discovery Center program, which has been running since 2016. The Allen Institute and the Frontiers Group have launched six Discovery Centers in total, but two have cycled off, leaving four currently in operation. Last year, I wrote about the establishment of Allen Discovery Center for Neuroimmune Interactions at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. Like the center at Scripps, it was initially funded with $10 million over four years, and will potentially continue with $20 million over eight years. 

A new iteration on the Allen funding playbook

The new Allen Center’s focus on neurobiology comes straight out of Allen philanthropy’s scientific DNA: The Allen Institute was initially founded in 2003 to map gene activity and cells of mouse and human brains. Teams at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics continue to study basic mammalian neurobiology in behavior, decision-making and memory. 

But for Allen, the interest in climate change in neurobiology was new, according to Kathryn Richmond, executive vice president at the Allen Institute. The Scripps proposal for climate and neurobiology studies came in response to a call for a new Discovery Center that the Frontiers Group announced in summer of 2023. 

Dozens of applications were submitted, Richmond said, but the Scripps proposal stood out for its scientific ambition, its multidisciplinary approach and its commitment to open science. “Obviously, we have a huge footprint in neuroscience,” Richmond said. “But the things that excited us most about the Scripps proposal were not only the audacious effort to go and make some of these neural maps, but also to run it with an open science approach — we’ve seen how that can be catalytic, how it can really lift all boats in the field. We’re excited about supporting the Scripps center, and we’re excited to see what other funders, like the Kavli Foundation and the [National Science Foundation] are doing in this and in working together to have the most impact.”

Much remains unknown about the impacts of climate change — including its implications for human and environmental health, water resources, agriculture, and so many other areas, and I suspect that more funders of basic science will follow Kavli and Allen’s lead in the coming years, developing funding strategies that directly address how climate change impacts biology and other fields of research.

Financial services firms often focus their philanthropy on financial literacy and economic mobility. Principal Foundation, the nonprofit philanthropic arm of the 150-year-old global investment management company Principal Group, has the rare distinction of tapping the power of creative writing as part of this effort. The foundation, which has an endowment of $215 million, launched a national short story contest last year about money and personal finance. Called “Money Chronicles,” its goal was to inspire contemplation and conversation about the financial narratives people carry with them from childhood that negatively impact their financial decisions as adults.

This August, the foundation launched a second short story contest (IP covered the first one here) and added a new project — this one aimed at getting kids to think about the limiting money narratives they may already have begun to believe. Called “Debunking Money Myths,” the classroom-based initiative asks students to think, talk, interview and write about the money myths they’ve heard. These may include such chimeras and fire-breathing-dragon-like beliefs as “it’s bad to use credit cards,” “renting is always throwing away money,” “talking about money is rude,” or “only rich people need financial advisors.”

The foundation gave $50,000 to We Are Teachers, a national community of more than 3 million educators, to support the creation and distribution of the curriculum. “Our research shows that young folks — their narratives, their perceptions around money — are formed when they’re growing up by their families, their neighborhoods, what people around them are doing with money,” said Jo Christine Miles, director of Principal Foundation and of Principal Group’s community relations. Miles, who joined me by Zoom from Principal Foundation’s headquarters in Des Moines, created last year’s short story contest as well as this new initiative, which taps last year’s winning stories. “We hope this will encourage students to carry those conversations outside the classroom into their homes and communities.”

“Debunking Money Myths” is also designed to support educators. Some 35 states now require schools to teach personal finance, but “not all school districts or all states have ready-made materials,” said Miles. “In addition to advancing our goal of promoting money conversations and having people unpack their own money stories, we’re also putting a resource out there for teachers.”

Money problems? Let’s talk about it.

Debunking Money Myths is a free, downloadable lesson plan on financial literacy that teachers of fifth graders and up can tailor to their classrooms. It includes financial literacy worksheets that seem so helpful that I want to fill them out myself. It also asks students to read and reflect on one of the 17 winning stories generated by the foundation’s 2023 “Money Chronicles” contest, which it launched in collaboration with The Center for Fiction and Short Édition. Miles said the foundation views the classroom collaboration as an extension of the story initiative: “Our first year was just to inspire people to think about their own money narratives and stories, reimagine them, destigmatize conversations about money and the stories that people are carrying from their childhood. This year, we want to continue that but go deeper with youth.”

I read most of last year’s stories, which hit upon themes such as debt, the replacement of handmade goods by factory production, the costs of addiction, and the struggle to find work and housing. They struck me as being written by adults for adults. 

Meanwhile, there is a lot of excellent YA literature out there about money. This was true even before the explosion of YA as a hot category. I still remember lines from the 1965 Newbery Honor book “The Noonday Friends,” about Greenwich Village tweeners growing up in poverty, which I read as a fifth grader. 

Why use adult stories in a program for kids, rather than ones written for this age group? “They are really, really short,” said Miles. “They’re imaginative. They’re real. Sometimes, we underestimate a young person’s ability to understand big, complicated, hairy issues. Truth be told, many of them are witnessing some of the same issues, struggles, and challenges in their own homes and communities. So in some sense, they feel seen by a story like that.”

Sharing stories of money, year two

In August, Principal Foundation also announced a call for entries for its second edition of Money Chronicles: A Story Initiative. The contest, which will generate new stories for the educational program, is open through October 2. This is a longer admission period than last year’s contest; Miles said the foundation hopes to generate more submissions this year, and wants to give people more time to write. 

Principal is dedicating about $200,000 to this year’s contest and has tweaked the process in other ways. This year, judges will pick one winner, who will get $1,000, and up to 20 finalists, who will each receive $150. As with last year’s winning tales, these new stories will be distributed through Short Édition’s little blue, print-on-demand machines, each about the size and shape of a parking meter, located in six cities: New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Seattle, Charlotte and Iowa City. Stories will also be available to print out from Short Édition’s kiosks worldwide and online. 

Miles is the rare executive in this field to bring a deep appreciation for the power of the written word. Last year’s short-story-based approach was something of a risky move on her part. I asked her how her fellow employees received it. “We got a lot of great feedback once it ran,” said Miles, who noted that at least one person from Principal Group plans to submit a story this year. “It’s the first time this is happening, that a C-level exec from the organization submitted. That makes me smile.”

For kids, back-to-school season means a fresh start and all things new: new teachers, new classrooms, new schedule, new subjects to learn. But for many teachers, it means grappling with a familiar problem: scant resources to supply their classroom and provide their students what they need in order to learn.

“Never underestimate a public school teacher,” Tim Walz said when he accepted the vice presidential nomination; research shows that teachers regularly go beyond the call of duty when it comes to making sure their students have what they need to learn, routinely spending their own money to cover shortages in their classrooms. Teachers report spending an average of $610 out of pocket for school supplies, with educators of color and those working at high-needs schools spending $15 to $65 more. The Association of American Educators put the number slightly higher —$673 — in a survey of teachers conducted last year, adding that “only 7% of survey respondents felt their students have what they need for academic success without out-of-pocket purchases.” 

Nonprofit funding platform DonorsChoose aims to ease some of these financial burdens and help teachers provide what their students need. DonorsChoose posts teachers’ requests for basic classroom supplies, class special projects and support for field trips. Then it vets each request and donors can choose to fund all or part of teachers’ requests. 

Created in 2000 by Charles Best, a high school teacher in the Bronx, DonorsChoose has raised more than $1.68 billion since it was founded, supporting over 907,000 teachers and 3 million projects. Many individual donors respond to requests on the platform, but DonorsChoose also relies on funding from private foundations and corporate philanthropies, as well as several state departments of education. According to the organization’s 2023 annual report, “corporate, foundation and state partners gave $81 million to projects this year, supporting 77% of all funded projects.” 

The back-to-school season is one of DonorsChoose’s busiest times of year. 

“It’s when education is on the minds of so many people across the country,” said Katie Bisbee, chief revenue and marketing officer at DonorsChoose. “It’s a great catalyzing force to not only encourage people to donate, but to encourage teachers; now is the moment to post your classroom projects. At this point, 88% of public schools have teachers that are using our site. I think that partners see DonorsChoose as a way to reach America’s teachers directly.” 

Matches, music and STEM

While much of DonorsChoose’s funding channels support from small donors, larger funders are stepping up to support DonorsChoose during the current back-to-school season. The Gates Foundation, for example, has been a long-time DonorsChoose supporter. Beginning in 2014, the foundation has provided an annual donation to kick off the back-to-school season. This year, Gates provided a $2 million match donation; funds to any DonorsChoose project will be matched until the funds run out. Bill Gates himself thanked donors to the back-to-school campaign on LinkedIn. 

Education is also a priority for the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation, another DonorsChoose supporter. In August, the “Big Bang Theory” creator’s philanthropy provided $500,000 in music resources for Equity Focus Schools, a DonorsChoose designation for schools that have a student body that is at least 50% BIPOC and where at least 50% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

United Airlines is providing a $1.25 million match that will triple donations to DonorsChoose aviation projects and double donations to STEM projects in Equity Focus Schools in areas where the airline’s employees are located. “[United]’s mission is to inspire the future workforce by giving students the resources that can teach them and inspire them to become engineers and aviators,” Bisbee said. 

To celebrate its 100th anniversary, corporate funder Kleenex will provide one school with $100,000 for classroom resources through DonorsChoose, and $4,000 each in DonorsChoose credit to 100 additional schools. Kleenex is partnering with Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of George W. Bush, on the initiative. 

Another DonorsChoose funder is Panda Cares, the philanthropic arm of Panda Restaurant Group, which teams up with DonorsChoose to support teachers in the areas where it operates. Other backers include Steph and Ayesha Curry’s Eat.Learn.Play and the Paul E. Singer Foundation, as well as corporate giants including Samsung and 3M, according to the DonorsChoose 2023 annual report.

Teachers know what their students need, and tracking their requests on DonorsChoose provides a map of the challenges young people face today. Many teachers request basic classroom supplies — from pencils to ed tech equipment — but more than half say they need warm clothing, toothpaste and other hygiene products, according to the DonorsChoose annual survey of educators who use the site. 

Since 2020, DonorsChoose has included a Warmth, Care & Hunger category on its website, and it has seen a 110% increase in these requests since then. To take just one example, Ms. Hines, a teacher in Staten Island, requested hygiene supplies and winter clothes for her students and their siblings. “Right now, we are in need of underclothing like underwear, undershirts and socks to replenish missing sizes,” she wrote in a post seeking $604; her request is now fully funded. 

Student mental health is also a concern for many teachers, the survey found, which is no surprise, given the high number of young people experiencing mental health problems today. DonorsChoose has seen an increase in requests for items teachers can use to support student mental health. “We’ve definitely seen an increase in teachers requesting social-emotional learning resources,” Bisbee said. “A lot of teachers are also creating calming or cozy corners in their classrooms, with bean bag chairs, books and journals, and cozy lighting.” 

But given the levels of distress many students are experiencing, some teachers, like a high school teacher from New York, want more help. Responding to the DonorsChoose survey, the teacher said, “[We need] training and professional development that help teachers to manage classroom stress, and implement strategies to support students’ wellbeing; easier access to school psychologists and social workers who can provide additional support and intervention; a possible peer-support program to foster connections and provide additional sources of support.” 

Supplying classrooms, boosting morale

Today, as schools struggle to recover post-pandemic, already slim school budgets will soon be chopped further at this month’s end of federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds, a COVID-era provision. 

As a country, we clearly need to do a better job supporting our schools and educating our children. This also means fairly compensating our educators. The DonorsChoose survey found that 49% of teachers report working at least one alternate job to supplement their teaching salary. 

There’s a lot wrong with that picture, and private philanthropy shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for inadequate public funding for schools. At the same time, teachers’ testimonials provided to DonorsChoose show that the kindness of strangers — from small donors and large philanthropies alike — doesn’t just provide practical help, but a morale boost, as well. Ms. De La Rosa, a teacher in Tennessee, provided this testimonial to DonorsChoose: ”Every single time I get a donation, it feels like a little tiny cheering squad telling me that what I do is important and people are happy to support both my students and myself.”