A Record for Catholic-school Scholarships
In September 2015, the Inner-city Scholarship Fund run by the Archdiocese of New York announced the largest-ever U.S. gift to Catholic schooling. Christine and Stephen Schwarzman gave a record $40 Read more…
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Art of Native America to Indiana
The Eiteljorg Museum was founded in 1989 by Indianapolis philanthropist and businessman Harrison Eiteljorg, and has quickly grown into one of the country’s top repositories of high-quality Native American art Read more…
Expansion of Catholic Schooling
The first Catholic school in America was opened in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1606. In New Orleans, the Ursuline Academy opened in 1727 and is still operating today as the Read more…
Classical Music Popularized in San Francisco
The San Francisco Symphony was the first orchestra to feature radio broadcasts—in 1926, funded by local philanthropists. Almost 80 years later, in 2005, another generation of philanthropists (Evelyn and Walter Read more…
Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center
Investors Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey are interested in the new medical specialty of regenerative medicine—which is developing ways to repair, replace, or regrow body tissues that are not functioning. Read more…
Quick Action Against Ebola
Nearly 5,000 residents were killed when an epidemic of the dread disease Ebola swept west African countries in 2014. Philanthropists were among the quickest to understand the importance of nipping Read more…
Fighting Back Against Allergies
Allergies are both a common nuisance—with an estimated 60 million sufferers in the U.S.—and sometimes a mortal threat. The manifestations of allergic reaction include asthma, drug allergies, bee sting reactions, Read more…
Tamping Down Childhood Obesity
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, America’s third-largest private grantmaker, with a strong focus on health issues, announced a half-billion-dollar commitment in 2007 to research how fast-rising childhood obesity could be Read more…
Doerr Institute for New Leaders
Experts say that most of the capacity to lead people is learned, not innate. And, typically, about 70 percent of what helps people become effective leaders is learned through experience Read more…
Flexibly Incubating New Ideas at Caltech
Ron and Maxine Linde are long-time supporters of the California Institute of Technology, having trained there before building their own successful industrial firm. In 2015 they presented Caltech with an Read more…
Targeting First-generation College Candidates
There are many students with high academic potential growing up in families that lack the means or confidence to steer their child toward a top college. Of the 30,000 low-income Read more…
The 74
With strong donor support, former CNN host Campbell Brown created a nonprofit news site in 2015 focused on reporting and analysis about public-school reform. “Less than half of our students Read more…
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Jim Casey and his siblings lost their father when they were young, and were raised on very little income by their mother. To contribute to the family’s support, Jim launched Read more…
Supporting Drug Discovery as an Economic Engine
The so-called Research Triangle in North Carolina is one of the nation’s centers for biological research, and pharmaceutical innovation in particular. And Fred Eshelman is one of the whirlwinds at Read more…
Allen Invents New Methods for New Science Puzzles
Human cells are complicated machines, and scientists have recently gathered lots of detail about their sub-elements. But “nobody studies how these entities function as complex systems, and how they interact Read more…
Computing Promoted to the Major League of Scientific Prizes
The Turing Award is the highest prize in computer science. Since first being awarded in 1966 it has grown in importance along with its field. In 2007, it began to Read more…
Engineering Improvements at Harvard
In hard meritocracies like engineering and computer science, either you can solve a problem or you can’t—there is no credit for having a glitzy credential or a fancy label on Read more…
Betting on Cross-fertilization
Graduate school is typically a monkish undertaking, in which many participants become comparatively isolated from peers during their deep dive into a chosen academic subject. To balance this a bit, Read more…
Jailing Efficiently—and Less Often
Deciding which arrestees to keep in jail while they await trial is one of the more difficult and arbitrary tasks facing judges. Under-incarcerate arrestees and they may disappear, endanger witnesses Read more…
Science for the Nation in Time of Need
John Hertz was an immigrant to Chicago, from Slovakia, who made a good deal of money by creating transportation firms, including the car rental company bearing his name. During the Read more…