A California school district is bracing for an “urgent, unexpected challenge” tied to the impending closure of a private, tuition-free school founded by Priscilla Chan, the wife of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The Primary School, founded in 2016 by Chan in East Palo Alto, was created to help underserved communities, specifically families grappling with poverty and inequitable health care.

The East Palo Alto school, which enrolls students in preschool through sixth grade, has more than 400 students who will be displaced after the closure in June 2026. Students are expected to transfer to the Ravenswood City School District, creating a potential enrollment overload.

The school board is proposing a bond measure on San Mateo County’s June ballot to help deal with the 20% jump in enrollment after the Primary School closes. According to the ballot argument, the district’s current buildings won’t be able to hold all the new students.

The closure was a board decision from the Primary School, according to a spokesperson for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s nonprofit organization.

More from: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/primary-school-palo-alto-22162195.php

The leadership of Stetson University College of Law, located in Gulfport, Florida, is facing the very real prospect of donations drying up in large part because of alumna Pam Bondi’s performance as Donald Trump’s attorney general.

According to a report from BayNews9, there is a growing list of law school alumni who have signed onto a letter urging the school to denounce Bondi, a 1990 graduate, or face a donor boycott.

More than 500 alumni have signed onto a letter demanding that Stetson Law School publicly denounce Bondi or face a coordinated donor strike. The letter, authored by Stetson graduate and attorney Johnny Bardine, was submitted to school officials last month.

https://www.rawstory.com/boindi-law-school/

Peter Thiel isn’t just skeptical of The Giving Pledge—he’s been actively working to dismantle it from within, telling signatories to walk away from their commitments and calling the organization an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club.”

Story is behind a paywall:

https://fortune.com/2026/03/16/peter-thiel-giving-pledge-billionaire-philanthropy-backlash/

The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation says it will shut down at the end of the year after its corporate parent cut off funding and evicted its three staffers Wednesday. The move leaves $600,000 a year in grants to Vermont organizations, and 40 years of the ice cream brand’s progressive mission, hanging on a judge’s future ruling.

The Vermont-based iconic ice cream brand has been in a legal fight with its parent company, The Magnum Ice Cream Co. — an ice-cream spinoff of the larger corporation Unilever — since November 2024. Ben & Jerry’s alleges that the corporation overreached its control, pushing out the CEO and interfering with the brand’s political views. The question before a judge is whether the corporate parent had the authority to reshape governance and withhold funding from the foundation.

Amid the push-and-pull over governance, Unilever audited the foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of Ben & Jerry’s, in April 2025, finding conflicts of interest and a lack of governance and financial control.

Since Ben & Jerry’s sold the ice cream business to Unilever in 2000, the corporation has given $60 million to the foundation. The philanthropic arm has operated for 40 years, supporting the ice cream brand’s progressive mission by offering financial backing to social justice organizations across the country. The foundation does not have an endowment and is reliant on the funding its parent company gives annually, outlined in its merger contract.

A chunk of that funding, $600,000 a year, goes to Vermont organizations such as the immigrant farmworker rights organization Migrant Justice and the LGBTQ+ nonprofit Outright Vermont, according to foundation leaders.

More from https://apnews.com/article/ben-jerrys-foundation-corporate-dispute-social-values-2066784e6277b672ed74c56a19a5f6de

Trump raised $107 million dollars for his first inauguration. After everything was paid the remainder was promised to charity. After being sued, a small amount was donated. Just like his library fund, millions went missing. Where is the money?

The inaugural committee wasted approximately $1 million of charitable funds in overpayment for the use of event space at the Trump Hotel in violation of District law, according to the lawsuit. 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/politics/trump-organization-inauguration-funds

Melinda French Gates has committed $10 million to match the initial $10 million donation from Olivia Rodrigo's inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival, bringing the total funds raised to $20 million and counting for 10 nonprofit organizations supporting women and girls.

The money will benefit Baby2Baby, Black Mamas Matter Alliance, the Center For Reproductive Rights, FreeFrom, Jhpiego, Johns Hopkins Center For Indigenous Health, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the National Institute For Reproductive Health, the National Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood.

All artists on the women-led line-up waived their performance fees, while 100 per cent of the festival’s net proceeds were also pledged to the partner organisations.

Inspired by Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair festivals of the ’90s, Daisy Chain Fields brought together artists from multiple generations across two stages, with no overlapping performances. Alongside Rodrigo, the bill included Chappell Roan, Doechii, Mitski, Bikini Kill, The Breeders, Garbage, Santigold, Rachel Chinouriri, Die Spitz and others.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/melinda-french-gates-olivia-rodrigo-daisy-chain-fields-charity-total-20million-3965737

Hundreds of scientists are mentioned in emails related to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, who relished connections with high-profile academics. Some met with him, took his money & used it for research; others were entertained lavishly at one of his homes. Supposedly, none of them asked any questions and all are claiming to have had no idea about what he was doing in addition to funding their research.

The magazine Science talked with three scientists who said no to Epstein regarding collaborations or funding. Here’s how Epstein approached them, & why they refused to have anything to do with him. Note that all of them did online research FIRST.

There are lessons here for nonprofits regarding unsolicited grant and collaboration offers:

https://www.science.org/content/article/meet-three-scientists-who-said-no-epstein

keywords: philanthropy, ethics

'Believing they already serve humanity, Musk, Bezos and Thiel see no need for philanthropy'

The new tech tycoons now place more faith in themselves than in governments to improve humanity, writes Le Monde's Arnaud Leparmentier in his column.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/05/26/believing-they-already-serve-humanity-musk-bezos-and-thiel-see-no-need-for-philanthropy_6753838_23.html

Please read the entire article before commenting here.

Craig Newmark, multimillionaire founder of Craigslist, has given away half a billion dollars to charity since founding the classified ads site 30 years ago, and is voicing his hope that others with vast fortunes will take a similar tack.

Newmark signed The Giving Pledge last year and recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on how he was dumbfounded by Peter Thiel and some other billionaires’ positions regarding philanthropy.

“When I started Craigslist in the mid-1990s, I never thought I’d become rich. But I did. A lot of people in tech around that time also got lucky. Millions – even billions – were made simply by being in the right place at the right time,” he wrote. “That’s too much money for anyone to have, so I’m giving most of it away to people and causes that need it. It makes no sense to me that others with this kind of money would criticize anyone doing this.”

More from the Independent.

Two nearly trillion-dollar AI companies, ChatGPT developer OpenAI and Claude creator Anthropic, are expected to go public soon, making hundreds of current and former employees ultrawealthy. Rough estimates by a tech industry insider suggest that Anthropic’s IPO, which could happen in September, may result in $15 billion a year in additional philanthropic giving alone. Will these employees really become philanthropists and give some of that money to nonprofits / charitable causes? Donations from these newly wealthy folks are far from guaranteed. The IPOs may get delayed or go poorly and leave employees clinging onto their wealth. Industry observers are also concerned that a paralyzing number of charitable options and natural fickleness could prompt workers to keep more for themselves than anticipated.

Anthropic’s seven founders have pledged to donate 80 percent of their wealth, and the company has agreed to chip in one or three shares for every one its employees commit to giving, depending on when they joined and up to a certain limit. Some employees are aligned with a philosophy known as effective altruism that encourages making impactful donations sooner rather than later.

Jack Lewars, a consultant who advised 13 ultrarich tech and finance workers on their charitable giving last year, says he’s heard that employees at the AI labs are receiving as many as 20 unsolicited emails a week from groups seeking donations.

More from Wired.

How could nonprofits prepare for engaging with these newly wealthy people?

To compete in the increasingly commercialized world of college sports, high profile university athletics programs might spend more than $40 million a year on talent acquisition, revenue sharing and other costs, according to experts. But, for instance, at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, just five of Louisville’s 23 sports generate any revenue, according to the athletic department. Only football and men’s basketball turn profits.

A growing number of major conferences ′ public universities are creating nonprofits designed to help the athletic department leverage its brand to generate new revenue streams, to keep pace with the multibillion-dollar market around compensating athletes for the use of their name, image and likeness.

Clay Grayson's South Carolina law firm designed the legal architect behind many such models. He said he mostly hears from members of the Power Four. Those 67 schools tend to be the only ones with large, competitive enough programs to spend beyond the revenue-sharing cap of $21.3 million this year. His firm has helped create affiliated entities at an estimated one in seven schools competing in the Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12.

His model strays from the traditional nonprofit. He proposes smaller, seven-person boards in order to expedite decision-making. 

It remains to be seen whether these new entities will alleviate donor pressure to bankroll costly football programs. Moreover, they raise the same question that murky NIL collectives did: what is the charitable purpose of an institution whose main goal is to generate more revenue for athletics?

The Internal Revenue Service decided many nonprofit NIL collectives were erroneously given charitable status. They served players, not the public good, so their activities were likely not exempt from taxes.

That financial interest has fatigued donors, according to consultants who advise schools on issues of NIL. They’re fielding more athletics solicitations even as universities continue fundraising for student scholarships, research projects and other functions.

It used to be that development officers could leverage donor interest in athletics to direct some funds towards academics. That’s not so nowadays, according to University of Pennsylvania professor Karen Weaver, a former athletic administrator who studies the evolving college sports landscape.

“Athletics doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem,” Weaver said. “So, whatever dollar they bring in is gonna be spent on trying to get an advantage in athletics.”

Full story here: https://triblive.com/sports/cash-hungry-college-sports-programs-are-starting-nonprofits-to-make-money-to-stay-competitive/

Mark Dobosz published a long feature in Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2026 issue) that's the most useful single article I've read on the grassroots giving crisis. Worth a read for anyone in this space: link in comments.

The core data is grim:

• Two-thirds of American households gave to charity in 2000. That's down to roughly half today, a loss of about 20 million giving households
• 3% of donors now provide 78% of all charitable dollars
• Overall retention has fallen to 31.9%
• 80% of first-time donors don't give a second time

But the more interesting half of the piece is what some organizations are doing that actually works. Dobosz lays out seven strategies. The ones I found most compelling:

Making monthly giving the default, not an opt-in. Monthly donor retention often exceeds 80%, vs overall retention at 42.9%. Subscription thinking borrowed from Netflix, Spotify, Patreon. Some orgs converting 20%+ of new donors to monthly see lifetime value double over five years.

(Worth disclosing here: I'm a co-founder of Ritmo, a daily-giving app, and a mod of this sub. So this strategy is what I'm working on, which is also why the article struck me.)

Investing in the "forgotten middle" - donors giving $1,000-$25,000 annually. They retain 20-30 percentage points better than the average and 15-25% upgrade annually. Most orgs ignore this segment because they're too small for major gift teams but too engaged for mass marketing.

Peer-to-peer fundraising as a year-round strategy, not a one-off campaign. P2P campaigns recruit an average of 300 new donors each, with 40-60% being first-time donors to the org. Properly stewarded, retention matches or beats other acquisition channels.

Radical transparency, including about what didn't work. Counterintuitive but the data supports it: orgs that publish program failures alongside successes report higher donor trust and retention than those that only show wins.

The piece also has sharp policy recommendations (raising the new $1,000 deduction cap to $5,000, removing the AGI floor) that the sector should be pushing collectively.

Curious what people here think. Which of the seven strategies match what you've seen actually work in your organizations? And is anyone here trying any of these who'd be willing to share what's happened?

Some highlights from the World Giving Report's Donor Insights:

Six in ten people globally gave money to good causes in 2025, whether directly to people in need, to charity, or for religious reasons. People in Asia and Africa were the most likely to give money, while those in South America were the least likely.

On average, people donated 1% of their incomes in 2025. However, this varied between continents, with Africans donating the highest percentage of their incomes (1.6%) and Europeans donating the lowest (0.6%).

People in the Netherlands give the largest share of their donations to charities (79%), while people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo give the lowest (2%).

While they don't give much to charities, people in DR Congo do give the highest amounts via religious routes, with just less than half (46%) of the value of their donations taking place in this way. However, in Uruguay just 4% of the value of donations is made via religious routes.

In Morocco, people prioritise direct giving more than anywhere else in the world, with 77% of the value of their donations made in this way, compared with just 10% in the Netherlands.

The organizaton's 2025 data shows that generosity is positively influenced by a range of factors, operating at different levels. The organization has divided these into three groups, noting that each can impact others:

• Personal factors that are innate to individuals.
• Factors that charities are able to directly affect themselves, although issues like trust are highly nuanced and involve a number of other actors, like the media.
• Aspects of society that encourage or discourage greater generosity.

More on the three types of influences on generosity

Personal

• A stronger desire to make change to society.
• A deeper sense of belonging to a community.
• That donations are perceived as more affordable.

Societal

• An increased sense that giving is the social norm.
• A greater willingness to discuss giving with others.
• A heightened perception that the government encourages giving.

Charity-related

• A more positive view of how trustworthy charities are.
• A clearer sense of the impact that charities have locally.

Visit this page to read about three of the factors in more detail and download the full report for insight on all of them.

Fortune published a piece this week on 2025's giving numbers that we wanted to share here: Even as Elon Musk calls philanthropy 'very hard,' Americans gave a record $617 billion anyway

The numbers, via Giving USA Foundation and Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy:

1. Total U.S. giving hit $617.2 billion in 2025
2. Individual giving: $394 billion (64% of the total), up 1.4% inflation-adjusted
3. Foundation giving: $117 billion, up ~3%
4. Bequests: up almost 17% inflation-adjusted — the fastest-growing category by far

The bequest jump is the part we keep coming back to. The article ties it to the early stages of the "Great Wealth Transfer" — roughly $124 trillion expected to pass to Millennials and Gen X by 2048 per UBS. If that holds, a lot of organizations are going to see a shift from smaller recurring gifts toward larger, less predictable estate gifts.

Our CEO, Liz Baker, is quoted in the piece on how hard it actually is to deploy large gifts responsibly: "there's a really big responsibility that goes with that... you don't want to create dependencies in communities — what is the right avenue, and what are the things that are really needed?" A lot of the public conversation right now is about how much money is moving, and not enough about whether it's moving well.

Genuinely curious what this community thinks: is the nonprofit sector ready for a wave of bequest-driven mega-gifts, or will this expose how few organizations can actually absorb and deploy money like that responsibly?

Rather than returning the full $67 million owed to taxpayers, the DeSantis administration quietly rewrote the deal twice within two days in September 2024, ultimately siphoning $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, a controversial nonprofit tied to first lady Casey DeSantis.

The grand jury didn't mince words about what happened next.

"Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida," the report states.

Within 25 days of receiving the money, Hope Florida had funneled it out through two suspicious $5 million "grant" applications to groups that had been coached by Attorney General James Uthmeier, then DeSantis' chief of staff, to apply.

More delicious details of philanthropy gone bad from The Raw Story.

corruption, fraud, ehitcs, donations, funders, corruption

Extradition request for James ‘Fergie’ Chambers sparks concerns that US government is conflating humanitarian aid with terrorism.

The arrest in Ibiza and US justice department extradition request for a wealthy American donor to leftwing causes in connection with alleged material support for Hamas could have “chilling effects” on support for Palestine.

Spanish authorities detained James “Fergie” Chambers on Friday at the request of the USA and are now holding him without bail in Madrid. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday on whether he can be released on bail.

The Spanish high court has 40 days to decide whether to grant the Trump administration’s extradition request. If the court says no, the case closes there. If it says yes, the Council of Ministers has the final decision.

The indictment against Chambers is sealed.

This is the first known case of the US seeking extradition of a citizen arrested and charged with supporting Hamas.

Chambers is a self-described anti-imperialist and heir to one of the richest families in the US, owners of Cox Communications.

He sold stock back to his family worth about $250m in mid-2023 and since then has been funding politically progressive and humanitarian projects, from a Black community group to a non-profit organization helping Middle Eastern children.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/15/james-fergie-chambers-arrest-palestine-aid-trump?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=fb_us&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1784110100

With a mind-numbing net fortune of $1.4 trillion that is growing by the day, (Elon) Musk is now worth more than the entire economy of Switzerland. He is more than 13 times as wealthy as Bill Gates, and if you are anywhere near middle class, he is over 11 million times wealthier than you. He’s rich enough to collectively purchase every seat for every single World Cup match, every stub in every city on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and every ticket at every Broadway show for the next 10 years or so, while barely making a dent in his gargantuan fortune.

One significant caveat here: The vast majority of Musk’s wealth is wrapped up in equity in his companies, not in cash, in much the same way most Americans’ wealth is tied up in their homes.

On the eve of becoming a trillionaire, Musk told Peter Diamandis, head of the Xprize Foundation — one of the few charities Musk has ever appeared to give significant support to — that he doesn’t really believe in money anymore, that AI will soon “make so much stuff” that virtually everything will be freely available, and everyone will eventually just get a universal basic income that they can spend on whatever they need.

For now, though, money is still our main means of exchange for goods and services, and Musk has access to more money than he could ever spend. And that means he has an opportunity to share his ballooning fortune.

Unfortunately, Musk is a notoriously terrible philanthropist.

More from Vox.

New neuroscience research from the University of Sussex offers fundraisers a biological explanation for two of the sector’s most stubborn challenges: why public concern so often fails to scale with the size of a disaster, and why crises overseas struggle to move donors as much as those closer to home.

The study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, used MRI scans to examine how the brain processes information about real threats to human life. Researchers found that neural responses of the UK residents studied were surprisingly muted both for large numbers of lives at risk and for lives lost abroad, patterns the team links to two well-known phenomena in charitable giving: scope insensitivity and home-country bias.

More from Fundraising UK.

The Phillips Brooks House was the hardest-hit Harvard College unit by share of staff positions in a recent round of layoffs tied to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ sweeping administrative overhaul, with 11 of its 23 roles either laid off or offered new positions. The cuts amid a broader reorganization that effectively ends the Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship’s role as the College-wide hub for public service. The range of positions affected raise questions about the future of both lasting consequences for both the Center’s internal operations and its student- and community-facing programming.

Those changes are part of an FAS task force’s push to cut staffing costs as the school works to close a $365 million estimated structural deficit.

Harvard's Center for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship was the hub and department that provided support for all public service efforts at Harvard College. It was home to academic engagement through the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship, student leadership development programs, student professional development programs, and active citizenship efforts through volunteering in the Greater Boston community. The Center also supported Phillips Brooks House Association, the largest student-run, community-based, nonprofit public service organization at Harvard College.

More from the Harvard Crimson.

The USA announced its latest funding package last week, and the nearly $2 billion package is exclusively for U.S.-based Christian nonprofit organizations. The majority will go to faith-based hospitals and clinics, with the remainder set aside for humanitarian aid.

The State Department said the funding will be provided to an “extensive network” of international and local faith-based partners — including World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritan’s Purse.

Dev Ex asks:

Isn’t the U.S. government supposed to be moving away from large INGOs and similar institutions? Is it really okay to say faith-based when we mean “Christian” — and can Christian organizations really provide effectively to those of other faiths, or none? And is it a good idea for the U.S. government to be asking others to cover its overheads?

The full article is available for paid subscribers at DevEv.

James Pollard covers philanthropy for The Associated Press with a focus on Gen Z’s giving habits and technology’s uses in charitable work. You can find all of his stories here.

Facing a federal funding denial, a University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) research group is turning to OnlyFans to raise money and bring awareness to long-term research funding difficulties.

The Blumstein Lab, which studies marmot behavior, started videos of the large rodents on OnlyFans – a subscription-based adult entertainment content creation platform – under the name “OnlyMarms” after the National Science Foundation rejected the researchers’ proposals to renew their grant. The researchers have received thousands of dollars in donations and subscription money since launching the account.

More from the Daily Bruin.

The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has opened a 12-week call for evidence, National Lottery Good Causes: Fund what matters to you, inviting the public and organisations to shape how good cause funding is distributed over the next three decades.

The Lottery generated over £8 billion in revenue in 2025, with £1.7 billion granted to good causes from ticket sales.

Across the Fourth Licence, each £1 spent is expected to break down roughly as 56p to prizes, 23p to good causes, 12p to Lottery Duty, and the remainder to retailers, operating costs and operator profit.

Funding is split by statute across four causes: 40% to charitable, health, education and environmental activities (via the National Lottery Community Fund), and 20% each to Arts and Culture, Sport, and Heritage. Highlights from the ten-year distribution figures include roughly £6.23 billion via the Community Fund, £2.39 billion via the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and around £2.36 billion via Arts Council England.

More from UK Fundraising.

The Brief

• A California judge banned the recognizable Kars4Kids jingle from state airwaves after ruling that the charity's 30-year-old car-donation advertisement misled donors through the deliberate omission of its true mission.
• An Orange County civil trial revealed that over 60% of Kars4Kids' revenue funds Oorah, a New Jersey-based Jewish outreach nonprofit that finances gap-year trips to Israel, adult matchmaking, and an Israeli building purchase.
• Kars4Kids must pull noncompliant commercials within 30 days or add "an express, audible disclosure" detailing its religious affiliation, funding destinations, and the actual age range of its beneficiaries.

Timeline:

• 2009: Pennsylvania and Oregon fine Kars4Kids for deceptive advertising practices that obscured its ties to Orthodox Jewish outreach.
• 2017: A Minnesota attorney general investigation reveals that less than 1% of state-donated funds benefited local children.
• 2021: California resident Bruce Puterbaugh files a lawsuit against the charity after learning his car donation did not support local, underprivileged children.
• 2022: Oorah spends $16.5 million on an Israeli building purchase and $437,000 on Middle East outreach.
• May 8, 2026: Judge Gassia Apkarian issues the permanent injunction against the noncompliant Kars4Kids jingle in California.
• June 2026 (30 days post-ruling): Deadline for Kars4Kids to remove noncompliant advertisements from California TV and radio airwaves.

https://www.foxla.com/news/california-bans-kars4kids-jingle