News/Stats/Studies

Microsoft Corp. announced the results of its 2011 employee giving campaign: U.S. Microsoft employees raised $100.5 million (inclusive of the company match) for more than 18,000 U.S.-based community organizations doing work in the U.S. and around the world last year. With this milestone, Microsoft employees have now raised more than $946 million for nonprofits and community organizations since the company’s giving program started in 1983.

Harvard Business School just released its first study of U.S. competitiveness, reporting that almost two-thirds of U.S. businesses will locate their new plants outside the U.S. None of this is surprising. But for me, one finding was truly shocking: only 22 percent of U.S. managers believe that doing good for their communities will help their businesses.

Has the economic pressure really had that extreme an impact? I remember just a few years ago that managers believed that doing good for their communities was critical to their business and their reputations.

Six young women in East Stroudsburg Area School District's U.N. Aspire group found themselves part of a real-life "Pay it Forward" after reading the award-winning book "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, a former Times foreign correspondent.

They will be featured in a documentary to air on PBS for their work fundraising on behalf of HEAL Africa, an organization providing medical care to people living in the Congo.

A high-ranking official resigned Tuesday from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity after a dispute over whether the group should give funding to Planned Parenthood, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Karen Handel, the charity’s vice president for public policy, told Komen officials that she supported the move to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. She said the discussion started before she arrived at the organization and was approved at the highest levels of the charity.

The majority (63 percent) of private equity fund managers — regardless of fund size — are receiving new commitments from Limited Partners (LPs), according to the third annual PErspective private equity study by BDO USA, one of the nation’s leading accounting and consulting organizations. That’s up from 56 percent of fund managers who indicated they were receiving new commitments from LPs in 2010 and only 40 percent who said so in 2009.

Alabama Gives Day, which ended at midnight Thursday, raised $743,985 for nonprofit agencies around the state. The event encouraged people to make online donations to an array of nonprofit agencies. More than 1,000 organizations signed up.

It certainly helped Care Assistance for the Aging and Homebound of Madison County, which assists about 3,800 elderly and homebound clients. The organization hoped to raise $5,000 and ended with $5,370. Some of the Huntsville nonprofits that raised funds included Crisis Services of North Alabama $4,020, Merrimack Academy of Performing Arts $2,540 and HudsonAlpha Institute $1,095.

What will a new generation of Facebook millionaires do with their wealth? It’s a good bet that many will splurge on a fancy new car, purchase a new home or perhaps even plan a trip to space. But it's also likely that they’ll be giving some of it away to charity.

Experts expect charitable causes and nonprofits to be among the side beneficiaries of the minting of 1,000 or more new millionaires from Facebook’s impending initial stock offering.

U.S. presidential campaigns and political action committees, or PACs, filed financial reports on Tuesday that showed how much they had raised and spent as of Dec. 31.

The filings to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) also offered a snapshot of who donated how much to the "Super PACs," which operate independently from campaigns and can raise unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations and unions.

The main house at the Kennedy family's famous waterfront compound on Cape Cod in Massachusetts has been donated for use as an education center aimed at teaching leadership and inspiring public service, the institute receiving the donation said on Monday.

The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate said the house where the Kennedy family retreated from the public glare for decades was donated at the request of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his widow, Victoria.

Chaordix, a crowdsourced market intelligence provider, has been selected to provide program expertise and collaboration technology to support community engagement in the Grand Challenges for Development program offered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Implemented with support from Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), the program is part of an ongoing effort by USAID and partners to catalyse a broad range of actors to make significant and measurable progress against specific development challenges that people face around the world.