The National Constitution Center honored Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the 34th annual Liberty Medal ceremony on November 7, 2022. The Liberty Medal honors men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe.
The philanthropic sector is an ecosystem: a web of interdependent actors, infinitely variable, striving constantly to build something greater than the sum of its parts.
Nonprofit leaders within the nonprofit sector play a huge role in the economy, providing essential services that boost economic activity and generate economic growth.
In an alternate universe, January 6, 2021, might have marked an inflection point in America’s decades-long story of democratic decline — a moment of collective epiphany and the beginning of a mass mobilization to rescue our nearly 250-year-old system of self-government.
The heirs of a Jewish family that fled Nazi persecution are demanding the repatriation of a Pablo Picasso painting they once owned now in possession of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which the family says is worth up to $200 million today.
After three straight years of gains, foundation investments performed dismally last year, leading to a 19 percent decline in the value of their endowments, according to one estimate.
For the Black community, philanthropy has a unique history rooted in solidarity, self-determination and mutual aid. Throughout our history, Black leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., voting rights and anti-hunger activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and businesswoman Madame C.J. Walker all made philanthropy a staple of their legacy, while continuing to focus on fighting for justice and equity to make life better for their community.
When poet and partisan Shmerke Kaczerginski wrote a lullaby about my grandmother and mother in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, he surely couldn’t know that some day, the descendant of these two women would make a documentary about the song. And that the song would be performed at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
Two of our country’s foremost cultural leaders, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander and Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, recently came together to share their knowledge as builders of scholarship and institutions that have opened a fuller understanding of history and culture in the US.
This lesson has been years in the making and explores how mainstream news coverage of marginalized groups has historically done significant harm, resulting in legacies of distrust that persist today.
