Three years into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, hedge-fund co-founder David Gelbaum walked into the California Community Foundation, put $105 million into a fund, and asked that it be funneled Read more…
Astronomical observations demonstrate that as much as a quarter of the universe is made up of some material which is invisible to conventional measurements. The gravitational effects of this invisible Read more…
A site near the geographic center of North Carolina that housed one of the world’s largest textile mills until it went bankrupt in 2003 has since had $781 million of Read more…
The most influential tool in astronomy and astrophysics over the last generation has been the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2014, construction began on a new instrument that will provide images Read more…
Texan George Mitchell spent his work days peering downward, deep into the earth, where he was one of the most successful men of his generation at finding valuable oil and Read more…
Mauricio Miller’s bio states that more than two decades of working in social services left him “disenchanted with the social sector’s approach to fighting poverty” and wanting to try something Read more…
Gerald Chertavian co-founded one of England’s fastest-growing companies while living there in the early 1990s, then cashed out in 1999 at age 34 to devote the rest of his career Read more…
Bill Daniels completed a couple years of junior college before serving as a fighter pilot in World War II, but never returned to campus or received a degree. He subsequently Read more…
Former Intel co-founder Andrew Grove wanted to overturn the common assumption among educators, parents, and students that technical education is for less intelligent people. So he funded vocational-training scholarships at Read more…
George Roberts was co-founder of the pioneering private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and when he entered philanthropy he brought the mindset of an investor expecting returns, only this Read more…
In the 1980s, Sister Falakah Fattah and her husband, David, used the House of Umoja, a neighborhood group they founded, to help Philadelphia’s gangs negotiate truces and reduce violence. Robert Read more…
A group of Chattanooga, Tennessee, businessmen led by Hugh Maclellan, the chairman of his family’s foundation, sat down in 1997 to confront the hard facts about collapsing families in their Read more…
Until recently, anyone hoping to slip the surly bonds of Earth needed to talk to a federal bureaucrat; there was no such thing as a private or nonprofit space effort. Read more…
When Dave Phillips reached his mid-50s as managing director of a large accounting firm, he retired early and joined his wife Liane in attacking poverty in his home town of Read more…
James Simons was a mathematician before he earned billions operating a hedge fund, and since he and his wife Marilyn established their charitable foundation in 1994 their philanthropy has focused Read more…
Recognizing that low-income workers in Manhattan were having trouble budgeting, saving, and staying out of debt, a former New York City school teacher raised $85,000 from donors including Atlantic Philanthropies Read more…
Alfred Sloan, son of a machinist, finished an electrical engineering degree at MIT in three years, graduating as the youngest member of his class. He later presided over the rise Read more…
Industrialist and philanthropist Charles Koch has spent years studying and promulgating what he calls “principled entrepreneurship”—the combination of “judgment, responsibility, initiative, economic, and critical thinking skills, and sense of urgency Read more…
George Eastman had no wife or children and believed in giving while living. One of the world’s richest men, he gave away more money ($2 billion in current dollars) than Read more…
After Tom Owens retired from his successful career as an IT entrepreneur, inspiration from Mother Teresa led him to pour his energy and money into helping poor and homeless people Read more…