Grants

The Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh has received a $3.54 million grant from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. Pitt is one of only five universities nationwide to receive the foundation’s Coulter Translational Partnership II Award; the five-year grant to the Swanson School’s Department of Bioengineering will fund research that employs engineering techniques to develop improvements in health care, with the ultimate goal of accelerating the introduction of new technologies into patient care.

Sean Penn's Haiti relief charity has been given a boost after receiving a $2.25 million grant from officials at the World Bank to help victims of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Penn's J/P Haitian Relief Organization will use the money to repair homes, assist more than 500 needy families, and build solar-powered water kiosks, according to the Associated Press.

One hundred nonprofit organizations from 44 states and the District of Columbia received grants under the Program for Investment in Microentrepreneurs Act (PRIME), the U.S. Small Business Administration announced.

Grants will be used to provide business-based training and technical assistance to low-income and very low-income entrepreneurs to help them start, operate or grow a small business. Grants will also be used to better equip community-based nonprofit organizations to provide training.

View the list of grantees here.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a new grant-making effort that expands its environmental giving beyond efforts to preserve land, seascapes, and species to tackle major threats to ecosystems, such as climate change, overfishing, and harmful agricultural practices.

The Chicago fund, one of America’s biggest philanthropies, plans to spend roughly the same amount on conservation issues — $176-million over the next decade — as it has been devoting to the cause in the past.

The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has announced grants totaling $18 million to four nonprofit organizations working to address residual effects of last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Awarded through the foundation's Future of the Gulf Fund, which was established with funding from BP, the grants will support environmental and worker-training programs in communities affected by last year's Deepwater Horizon spill. Grant recipients include Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, Audubon Nature Institute, Single Stop USA and Louisiana Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters.

The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $500,000, two-year grant to support Social Finance Inc.’s innovative work in developing the Social Impact Bond (SIB) market in the United States.

Social Finance is a Boston-based nonprofit founded in January 2011 to develop, finance, launch, and manage high-quality SIBs throughout the United States.

The Social Impact Bond is a financial instrument that aims to align the interests of private investors, entrepreneurial nonprofit service organizations, and governments in an effort to impact poor and vulnerable communities.

The Foundation for Health Coverage Education (FHCE) announced that it has been awarded two grants totaling $60,000 from the Health Coverage Foundation. The grants will aid in updating FHCE’s U.S. Uninsured Help Line 800-234-1317 and website, www.CoverageForAll.org, and strengthen continued media efforts to educate uninsured Americans about their health coverage options. They will also enhance a collaborative outreach effort with the American Lung Association to assist uninsured lung disease sufferers with navigating the complex health coverage system.

PBS Hawaii, the state's only public television station, has announced a $5 million grant from the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation to build a new home for its operations.

The grant, which pushes PBS Hawaii past the midway point in its $30 million capital campaign, will be used to renovate and expand an existing one-story building along the Nimitz Highway in Honolulu.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Northwest Health Foundation announced 11 new grants as part of Partners Investing in Nursing’s Future (PIN).

The grant recipients are Arkansas Community Foundation, Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln, Con Alma Health Foundation, Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation, Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence at the Jewish Communal Fund, Massachusetts Senior Care Foundation, Richmond Memorial Health Foundation, Rogosin Institute/Dreyfus Health Foundation, Faye McBeath Foundation, Tufts Health Plan Foundation and Wyoming Community Foundation.

The Quimby Family Foundation granted $1.3 million to 70 Maine nonprofit organizations that focus on conservation, education, sustainable agriculture, and the visual and performing arts. The foundation hosted a gift-giving celebration Friday at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport.

It's the seventh year that the foundation board, made up of members of the family of Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of Burt's Bees, presented awards that ranged from $2,600 to $50,000 to Maine organizations.