WHAT WE’RE READING ELSEWHERE
Software billionaire Judy Faulkner is ramping up a plan to give away most of her estimated $7.7 billion fortune. Faulkner, the 81-year-old founder and CEO of the Epic Systems health-care-software company, signed the Giving Pledge in 2015, but had a slow start in philanthropy. Over the past five years, though, her Roots and Wings Foundation, led by her daughter, Shana Dall’Osto, has used a trust-based approach to give $200 million to 320 groups working on early-childhood development. The goal is to get to $100 million annually in the next few years, Dall’Osto said. (Forbes— subscription)
In a departure from his usual practice, Bill Gates has given $50 million to the main nonprofit supporting Kamala Harris’s bid for the presidency, according to sources cited by the New York Times. Gates has previously avoided making large political contributions in order to keep his philanthropy nonpartisan, and he has not publicly acknowledged this donation. But in a statement to the Times, he said that “this election is different, with unprecedented significance for Americans and the most vulnerable people around the world.” After consulting with philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, Gates made the gift to Future Forward USA Action, which is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that can spend a limited amount on political activity. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “is significantly concerned about potential cuts to family planning and global health programs if Mr. Trump is elected,” sources told the Times. (New York Times)
A network of groups linked to major Republican donors and conservative billionaires is bankrolling an extensive effort to scrutinize voting procedures. Backers including Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Hobby Lobby founder David Green, Donors Trust, the Bradley Impact Fund, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation have given more than $140 million to these groups, which are 501(c)(4) organizations. The groups’ tactics include “scrutinizing voter registrations on an industrial scale and working to slow down the vote count, bury local election officials in paperwork and lawsuits, and elect like-minded politicians at the state and local levels who will support efforts to contest the vote.” Supporters of the effort say they are trying to ensure the integrity of elections, but an elections expert said, “They’re designed to set the stage for claiming the election was stolen post-election.” (Wall Street Journal — subscription)
An under-the-radar conservative think tank bankrolled by Texas billionaires has been quietly setting the agenda for a second Trump administration. The four-year-old America First Policy Institute counts among its staff and leaders former members of the executive branch and White House staff under Trump, and one of its executives now co-chairs his transition team. Launched by Christian conservative oil billionaire Tim Dunn and two other wealthy directors of a right-wing Texas think tank, Cody Campbell and Tim Lyles, America First has developed a plan for staffing and a policy agenda for every federal agency. (New York Times)
Over the past several years, huge donations that enabled prestigious medical schools to eliminate tuition may have exacerbated the inequities they were designed to combat. In a ballooning field of applicants, drawn by the lure of free tuition, wealthier students still hold the advantage, resulting in a lower percentage of admissions for students who are Black or categorized as “financially disadvantaged” at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. The NYU school received $100 million from Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone and his wife, Elaine, several years ago to eliminate tuition. Nor do the gifts seem to have routed more students into underserved regions or less lucrative specialties, as schools and donors had hoped. (Atlantic)
Opinion: Darren Walker, the outgoing head of the Ford foundation, warns of a “gathering crisis of leadership,” in government, business and the nonprofit world as boards choose to play it safe and pick leaders who won’t make waves during a time of intense polarization, in an essay for the New York Times. A toxic media environment has resulted in a culture that “shuns and shames,” resulting in leaders who avoid public controversy, Walker writes. He says he fears the loss of democracy if more leaders don’t take courageous action. (New York Times)
As San Francisco Mayor London Breed promises more aggressive sweeps of homeless encampments as part of a pre-election downtown revitalization plan, the nonprofit GLIDE has launched an effort to take a gentler path, by steering people to shelter and developing relationships with homeless people. The nonprofit has a team of seven ambassadors who clean the streets of the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood and check in on people needing help. (KQED)
The world’s largest internet archive, a nonprofit, is under siege from hackers who have taunted it for its shoestring budget but demanded no ransom. Launched in 1996, the Internet Archive has preserved more than 900 billion web pages in its Wayback Machine. It went offline last week after hackers leaked the information of millions of users and left a derisive message on the site. Archive director Brewster Kahle said it has “industry standard” security and before this year seemed to have escaped the notice of hackers. “Kahle said he’d opted not to prioritize additional investments in cybersecurity out of the Internet Archive’s limited budget of around $20 million to $30 million a year.” (Washington Post)
Among the small magazines supported by the Open Society Foundations is a conservative publication whose ethos seems to undermine the philanthropy’s own aims. Compact, which a former editor says also enjoys backing from right-wing tech investor Peter Thiel, has praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s authoritarian rule, which has included a sustained attacked on George Soros and his open society project. One of the magazine’s editors has said the Western idea of an open society is characterized by “censure and censorship.” The foundation executive who oversees funding for small publications said Compact uniquely combines “a progressive commitment to a strong state and a state that itself is undergirded by commitments toward fair distribution of wealth” and “a cultural conservatism.” (Vanity Fair)
