The new coalition of donors, led by the MacArthur Foundation, says one out of every five Americans lives in a "news desert" with little to no reliable local news.
Since 2020, the Mellon Foundation has given over $40 million to arts and humanities projects addressing mass incarceration. In all, it says, it will donate $125 million to such efforts.
Donations often come with rigorous applications and reporting requirements. Billionaire MacKenzie Scott, who divorced Jeff Bezos in 2019 and vowed to give away most of her fortune, does it her way.
Sangeeta Siwan lost her job and wasn't able to pay rent or feed her family. Her neighbors helped her survive. A study of giving in India during the pandemic shows she wasn't alone.
The philanthropist donation goes to Girl Scouts of the USA and 29 of its local branches. The funds will help the organization recover from the impact of the pandemic, which drove down membership.
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott continues her charity drive with a $122.6 million donation to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the group's largest gift ever from an individual.
Scott said she is "attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change." She has given away more $8 billion of her fortune so far.
"This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling," Scott wrote, announcing gifts to organizations in all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Studies suggest U.S.-born and foreign-born black donors give about $12 billion to U.S. charities and $11 billion overseas. Altogether, the U.S. black...
