Soros Offers $50-Million for N.Y.C. Needy at Robin Hood Gala

Attending Tuesday night’s Robin Hood Foundation event in New York, the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros pledged $50-million to provide basic support for the city’s rapidly growing needy population if the organization can match his gift in each of the next two years, The New York Times reports.

Fund-raising experts termed the gift one of the largest ever made to provide basic services such as food and shelter, as opposed to financing strategies to respond to them on a larger scale. Mr. Soros said he hoped the pledge would encourage other big-league donors to follow suit. “We do some cutting-edge things in advocacy on many issues, and we will continue to do that,” he told the Times. “But this is an exceptional situation, and it calls for an exceptional response.”

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