Grants

CHICAGO, Ill. – May 24, 2010 – The Walmart Foundation today announced a $1.2 million dollar donation to the National Energy Education Development Project (NEED) to install solar panels on 20 schools in five cities across the country. The five cities taking part in the program are Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Seattle.

“The Walmart Solar School program will help educate the next generation on the opportunities and benefits of using more renewable energy,” said Margaret McKenna, president of the Walmart Foundation. “This program aligns perfectly with Walmart’s sustainability commitment to involve our communities and customers in our environmental and social efforts.”

Michelle Obama on Thursday announced that five foundations — the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Skoll Foundation, the Open Society Institute and the Benificus Foundation — would provide a total of $45 million to match the money the government plans to grant to nonprofit groups through its Social Innovation Fund, which will help expand social programs that have proven successful. More than 20 other foundations and organizations will provide an additional $5 million so that the fund will have $100 million, half in federal money, to award beginning in July.

Washington, D.C. — NeighborWorks America today announced that it received $1 million from The Rockefeller Foundation in support of infrastructure development and upgraded technical support for nonprofit housing counseling organizations. The grant will help to strengthen and supplement nonprofit housing counseling capacity and increase their efficiency and ability to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

MENLO PARK, Calif. – From increasing childhood literacy in India to helping improve the air quality in California's Central Valley, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has announced over $84 million in new grants to 199 organizations.

Organizations receiving grants ranged across the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the world in the Foundation's six primary areas of grantmaking: global development, education, performing arts, philanthropy, the environment, and population. The Foundation also made select grants for special projects. Among the highlights of the grants awarded this spring are:

At a time when many news organizations are cutting back, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is continuing its efforts to bolster in-depth journalism in public media. The corporation said on Tuesday that it was giving “Frontline” a $6 million, two-year grant that would allow it to expand its investigative programming to a year-round schedule on PBS stations.

The money, plus an additional $1.6 million that is still being raised, will pay for seven to eight new programs each year, so the 28-year-old show will no longer have to take a summer hiatus. The expansion was announced in Austin, Tex., at PBS’s annual meeting.

May 3, 2010, Chronicle of Philanthropy — The Department of Education officially started the Promise Neighborhoods program, inviting applications for $10 million in grants to plan comprehensive antipoverty projects in urban neighborhoods, rural areas, or tribal communities.

The department said it would award up to 20 one-year grants of between $400,000 and $500,000 for projects modeled after Harlem Children's Zone, a charity program that offers educational and social services to help poor children from birth to college in a nearly 100-block area in New York.

The application deadline is June 25, and grants will be awarded by September.

April 30, 2010, Chronicle of Philanthropy — Twelve foundations announced today they plan to spend $506-million this year on grants designed to bolster a new $650-million federal grant program to expand innovative school-improvement projects.

"We see this as a real moment of opportunity for the country," said Michelle Cahill, a vice president at Carnegie Corporation of New York, which is coordinating the effort along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The grant makers said in a statement they have also created an online registry to make it easier for groups to apply for, and share information about, the new federal program, known as the Investing in Innovation, or "i3," program.

April 22, 2010, News Journal (Delaware) — AstraZeneca has pledged $25 million to be parceled out in grants to U.S.-based nonprofits that exhibit innovative ways to improve heart health, the pharmaceutical giant said Tuesday.

The company donated the money in December to the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation, a nonprofit it created, to fund the multiyear Connections for Cardiovascular Health program.

Grants will be at least $150,000, and applications for this year's awards are due by July 31. Grant winners will be notified in November. The foundation expects to hand out at least $1 million this year to nonprofits with creative ways to address unmet needs in heart health, said Dr. James W. Blasetto, chairman of the AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation.

The $25 million pledge is the largest corporate contribution in AstraZeneca's history, the company said.