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the one authorized by the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
and spearheaded by the Department of
Education. Armed with $5 billion set
aside for education reform through the
so-called Race to the Top Fund, DoE
pushed states to meet a series of conditions
designed to boost their chances of
receiving funding. At the same time, one
of the nation’s most ardent supporters
of education reform, Bill Gates, made a
number of appearances to promote his
foundation’s latest education initiative,
the development of uniform achievement
standards and teacher effectiveness
metrics, telling lawmakers at the annual
summit of the National Conference
of State Legislatures in July, “We don’t
know the answers because we’re not
even asking the right questions.”
Indeed, while Gates and his foundation
took some heat for being too
involved with and supportive of the
administration’s reform efforts, Gates
defended the partnership, telling the AP,
“It’s no secret the U.S. education system
is failing. We’re doing all kinds of experiments
that are different. The Race to the
Top is going to do many different ones.
There’s no group-think.”
Related stories from
Philanthropy
News Digest:
A group of AmeriCorps volunteers prepare for work.
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/
> “President Obama Signs Edward
M. Kennedy Serve America Act”
(4/23/09)
> “National Community Service
Initiative Launched, Leveraged by
Organizations Across the Country”
(6/24/09)
> “Obama Pledges Support for
Social Innovation, Encourages
Public–Private Partnerships”
(7/2/09)
> “Fund to Provide $650 Million in
Stimulus Money to Innovative
Education Programs” (8/25/09)
> “Gates Foundation Investing
Millions to Sway Federal
Education Dollars” (10/27/09)
> “Congress Allocates $50 Million
for Social Innovation Fund, Cuts
Funding for Other Nonprofit
Programs” (12/20/09)
GO
Noteworthy
Gifts
For a few weeks at the beginning
of the year, one could have
said the days of the nine-figure
charitable gift were history —
and not have been considered
crazy. With Washington scrambling
to avoid a meltdown of the
financial system and dozens
of investors and foundations
rocked by the fallout from Bernie
Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi
scheme, the boom years, on
Wall Street and in philanthropy,
seemed to be at an end. But
thanks in part to the trillions
of dollars of liquidity injected
into the system by the Federal
Reserve and Treasury, financial
armageddon was averted and
by year’s end the tempo of
mega-gift announcements
had picked up.
midst the doom and gloom of
January and February, one act of
generosity stood out: the 10-year,
$100 million gift from technology
entrepreneur Terry Ragon and his wife,
Susan, to Mass General to create an institute
in partnership with MIT and Harvard
that will work to accelerate research on an
AIDS vaccine. That announcement was
soon followed by a handful of other eightand
nine-figure gift announcements, many
in support of medical research or healthrelated
causes.
In March, the University of California,
San Francisco received a $125 million
matching gift from Charles F. Feeney and
Atlantic Philanthropies for construction
of a state-of-the-art continues on page 12
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