May 1, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Imagine Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, rubbing elbows with Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, or Geoffrey Canada trying to persuade the comedian Amy Poehler to shoot a public-service announcement for his group Harlem Children’s Zone.
If Time magazine’s list of the world’s most influential people (May 2) were a cocktail party, that might be the scene. Rock-star nonprofit leaders like Ms. Richards and Mr. Canada appear on this year’s list alongside politicians, business leaders, and some less well-known charity officials, such as Ron Bruder, Bineta Diop, andNathan Wolfe.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Bruder left a lucrative career in real estate to start a nonprofit that prepares young people in the Middle East for jobs. As founder of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, Mr. Wolfe tracks viruses before they can kill people, while Ms. Diop engages women in peace-building efforts through her organization, Femmes Africa Solidarité.
Other nonprofit luminaries and donors on the list include Ray Chambers, co-founder of Malaria No More; Esther Duflo, who helped create the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab; Kathy Giusti, founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation; Azim Premji, an Indian philanthropist who has committed $2-billion to his foundation; Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist with the Great Ape Trust; and Gary White, who co-founded Water.org with the actor Matt Damon.
To read the entire list, go to: http://www.time.com.
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Fund raisers are tight-lipped toward donors about many of the realities of their jobs, writes SmartMoney magazine (May).
For example, the types of information that some charities accumulate about donors, like their real-estate records, would frighten a lot of people, says the magazine.
Other examples from the article, “10 Things Fund Raisers Won’t Say,” include:
- How much they dislike earmarked donations.
- Their reluctance to tinker with the charitable deduction.
- The fund-raising limitations of social networking and other new technologies.
- Their use of donations to create endowments and rainy-day funds.
- Their reliance on telemarketing.
To read the article, go to: http://www.smartmoney.com.
