Tripling a Community Foundation (San Antonio)
John Santikos owned 11 cinemas, some shopping centers, and open land in San Antonio and southern Texas. When he died, he left those assets, worth more than $605 million, to Read more…
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Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
Henry Phipps was one of Andrew Carnegie’s most trusted partners, and ended up owning more of their steel operation than anyone but Carnegie himself. After the sale of the company, Read more…
Ansari Institute for Global Engagement With Religion
Rafat and Zoreen Ansari are not extraordinarily wealthy, but they are both physicians earning good salaries, and have lived modestly during full careers in a suburb of South Bend, Indiana. Read more…
Hillel International
Hillel is a charity that provides services and instruction in Judaism to college students. With chapters on 550 campuses in the U.S. and Canada, and 56 more abroad, it is Read more…
Religion Newswriters Foundation
Fieldstead and Company, the philanthropy operated by Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, has a special interest in the intersection between religion and art, and often funds exhibitions, creation, research, and journalism Read more…
Ben-Gurion University
Howard Marcus was a dentist who left his native Germany when Hitler came to power. He and his wife Lottie lost to the Nazis most of their family members who Read more…
Founding Israel
In the year when Israel was reborn as a modern state, 1948, American Jews donated $150 million to the infant nation—four times the total amount raised by the American Red Read more…
The Scheide Collection
William Scheide made a gusher of money in Western Pennsylvania’s early oil industry. After he retired he pursued a passionate interest in book collecting. At his death, his son continued Read more…
History Philanthropy
Washington-area financier David Rubenstein, who has a passion for U.S. history, has focused his philanthropy in the national capital region. The goal of many of his gifts, he has said, Read more…
Ford and Carnegie Create Public Broadcasting
The Ford Foundation inaugurated public broadcasting with a 1951 grant that developed programming to air in a few cities the next year, as National Education Television. Over the following decade Read more…
Natural-History Education
Over a 20-year period, investor Richard Gilder donated more than $125 million to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He also devoted much time and brainpower—for Read more…
Parks Over Freeways
As in lots of cities that get transected by highways, when eight subterranean lanes of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway were slashed through downtown Dallas, the surrounding neighborhoods were damaged. But Read more…
Jack Horner
Though he lacks academic credentials, Jack Horner has revolutionized paleontology with the help of a gaggle of independent-minded donors. After flunking out of college seven times then serving a tour Read more…
Healing Horned Owls and Breeding Bugs
Oracle software chief Larry Ellison has long shown philanthropic interest in wildlife. Now he is taking an active role in sustaining threatened animals. He is making a major donation, estimated Read more…
Creative Approach to Disease Research Pays Off
On the same day in August that he and three other Johns Hopkins University researchers published in Science their breakthrough explanation of sources of ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Read more…
Young Americans Center for Financial Education
In 1984, Bill Daniels read an article in the Denver newspaper about a fifth-grade class that couldn’t get funding to start a business. A successful cable-TV entrepreneur, Daniels decided there Read more…
Helping Transitions to Freedom
“When I was working with the Slovaks, I realized there are no books written, no roadmap, for a country to transition from an authoritarian government to a free society. Studying Read more…
Gestating an Iran Deal
President Obama’s 2015 decision to end sanctions on Iran in return for promises of increased nuclear accountability did not emerge on its own. It grew directly out of years of Read more…
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
In the 1980s, researchers uncovered the genetic cause of cystic fibrosis. But by the late 1990s only incremental improvements in treatment were in place, despite decades of investments in researchers Read more…
Doubling Wisconsin’s Endowed Chairs
John and Tashia Morgridge were high-school sweethearts in Wauwatosa, then attended the University of Wisconsin. John later led Cisco Systems from startup with 34 employees into one of the country’s Read more…