Last week, we profiled the latest investments in Philadelphia by the GreenLight Fund and also said our farewells to the University of Pennsylvania’s Class of 2013.

Our founding executive director, Kat Rosqueta, is quoted in The Wall Street Journal’s The New Science of Giving. The article features the work of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and touches on topics such as “Moneyball” and “high input” giving, as well as the “cockiness” required for practicing high impact philanthropy.

Investments in Africa

At the recent Milken Institute Global Conference, the final session focused on African investment with messages of partnerships and taking care of employees as part of a smart investment that leads to economic and community development. The video is provided below.

Coors-Led Fund Joins Carlyle in African Private Equity Deals: This article in Bloomberg highlights an alternative perspective that philanthropy isn’t needed in africa as it doesn’t work for economic development.

Introducing the Baseline Profitability Index: Daniel Altman’s first publishing of the Baseline Profitability Index (BPI)—which includes six African countries in the top 20—just before this year’s World Economic Forum in Africa.

Where Private School Is Not a Privilege: In Fixes, Tina Rosenberg wrote about the BRAC educational model, which originated in Bangladesh but has also been employed in parts of Africa. This is the first of a two-part series, which will also profile Bridge International Academies, another (but very different) educational model being implemented in Africa that also has shown positive results.

Stop the Plunder of Africa: In a cautionary piece regarding types of investment, this Op-Ed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan argues that the exploitation of natural resources in Africa has not, in fact, contributed to broad-based growth and development.

Community Health & International Agriculture

How A Florida Medical School Cares For Communities In Need: NPR shows how Florida International University medical school’s NeighborhoodHELP program delivers impact by meeting clients where they are, with solutions such as mobile clinics and food pantries. Other similar types of high impact approaches can be found here and here.

Bill Gates: Agricultural Productivity Is Key to Reducing World Poverty: Bill Gates believes that investments in agriculture are a model for success. We agree. See our “Sustainable Agriculture” solution from our guidance in Haiti: How Can I Help?.

Generous U at Penn

University of Pennsylvania AMF Chapter Wins Generous U Grant!: The Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy at Brandeis University awarded $1,000 to a national, student-run Penn support group for those dealing with loss.

More Giving, More Pledging

Spanx Mogul Sara Blakely Becomes First Female Billionaire To Join Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge: The youngest female billionaire in the world, whose current giving is geared towards women and girls, has recently joined eight others in the Giving Pledge.

Matt Joyce is the executive director of GreenLight Philadelphia.

The Center: Describe your process of identifying the issues and organizations that GreenLight ultimately decided to focus on – particularly starting in a new city.

MJ: We began by putting together an outstanding selection advisory council (SAC) last spring to help provide key insights on issues and opportunities to focus on in Philadelphia and guide our selection process. The SAC has representation from private, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors and gives us a diverse set of perspectives on the city. With the SAC’s help, we looked at research and data on Philadelphia and talked to dozens of leaders to understand where people believed there was room for new ideas and innovation. Ultimately, we landed on older youth – and particularly college persistence and connections to the workforce. These are both areas where the right programs can leverage some of the great resources that already exist within our colleges and employers in the city and help make sure talented young people have the support to complete their education and transition into meaningful jobs.

Images provided by Year Up (left) and Single Stop USA (right).

The Center: Can you tell us about Single Stop and its model?

MJ: Single Stop is designed to leverage existing resources to help students persist in community college. Thirty-two percent of Philadelphia high school students that enter college enroll at the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP). It’s a critical resource for the city, and its capacity to support students in persisting through college is key to fostering an educated, talented workforce in Philadelphia.

There are many challenges facing community college students that make it difficult to persist through school, but according to a study by MDRC, a primary driver is finances. In a random assignment study, MDRC found that students who were provided an average additional income of $1,133 per year (up to $2,000) re-enrolled the next semester at rates 30% higher than their peers.

Single Stop has built an innovative model, partnering with community colleges to help students obtain the financial resources necessary to persist through college. The program supplements student income by connecting them with tax credits, benefits, and supports for which the students are already eligible. Single Stop has found that by combining technology, enrollment support, tax preparation, and counseling, it has been able to help students access an average of nearly $2,000 per year to help ease the financial burden of post-secondary education; in doing so, it has helped increase persistence rates at 15 colleges across seven states. We believe that Single Stop can match— and even improve upon— that success in Philadelphia. They have built an outstanding partnership with CCP, which will help them quickly integrate and grow, and the model fit squarely within the Mayor’s goal to double to number of Philadelphia residents with a college degree.

Image provided by Single Stop.

The Center: Can you also talk about Year Up’s model?

MJ: Year Up has been a national leader in preparing disconnected young adults for career-trajectory work for over a decade. The organization’s model is a one-year intensive training program, including six months of curriculum and a six-month internship that is designed to give low-income young people the marketable skills and opportunities necessary to move into the middle class. The demand for this work is clearly present in Philadelphia, and we believe that Year Up can be uniquely successful here for several reasons:

• Year Up has national partnerships with hundreds of employers across the country. Many of these partners have a major presence or headquarters in Philadelphia – including businesses like Comcast and Bank of America.
• Year Up plans for aggressive growth in Philadelphia. This growth is possible because of a unique revenue model that relies minimally on philanthropic income after the initial growth period. At maturity, Year Up’s income comes primarily from the employers, who pay the program to host trained interns. In addition, Year Up partners with two-year colleges to provide the hard skills training, which defrays its costs and ensures that students leave the program with stackable credit toward an associate’s degree.
• Year Up has produced some of the strongest evaluation results in its field. The organization recently completed a randomized control trial, revealing that its students earned 30% more than comparable students outside the program. Year Up’s work in Philadelphia presents an additional opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of this work on a larger scale.

Image provided by Year Up.

Josh Kopelman is the Managing Partner at First Round Capital and the Co-Chair of GreenLight Philadelphia’s selection advisory council.

The Center: Why did you decide to get involved with GreenLight?

JK: GreenLight resonates closely with my commitment to improving the culture of innovation in Philadelphia. First Round Capital has maintained its headquarters in Greater Philadelphia since our founding – and recently moved into the city itself. While we are based in Philly, we consider and support companies from across the country and internationally. This broad focus allows us to invest in what we believe to be the best new ventures that meet key market demands. The GreenLight Fund believes the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors should not operate any differently.

The organizations we selected in this cycle share several common traits – strong use of data and evaluation, business models that combine resources from a variety of sectors to support growth and sustainability, the capacity to attract national funding and talent to Philadelphia, and track records of successfully implementing their programs in multiple cities. The presence of these organizations has the potential to move the entire sector toward better measurement of performance and more ambitious goals for growth.

Anna Guarneri is with the William Penn Foundation and a member of the selection advisory council.

The Center: Tell us about William Penn’s involvement with GreenLight.  How does this model connect with the Foundation’s work?

AG: William Penn made a founding investment in GreenLight Philadelphia in 2011. We were initially interested in GreenLight’s ability to build local capacity to implement evidence-based models from around the country.  It’s been exciting to watch them advance that agenda through investments in Single Stop and Year Up, two great organizations that will support low-income students on their path to success.  We have also been excited by GreenLight’s ability to bring new financial resources to the table in Philadelphia – through their national corporate relationships and the federal Social Innovation Fund and locally through their growing base of entrepreneurial donors.  We believe that it is important to build support beyond traditional philanthropy and the public sector to address the critical needs of our young people, and to engage organizations with successful track records in addressing those needs.

Farah Jimenez is the President and CEO of People’s Emergency Center and a member of the SAC.

The Center: From the perspective of a nonprofit leader and innovator in Philadelphia, how do you view GreenLight’s model?

FJ: It’s one thing to build an organization that can serve a community.  It’s quite another to build an organization that can serve a nation.  GreenLight invests in nonprofits that not only demonstrate localized impact, but also evidence an ability to scale their programs so as to help solve problems in other communities – communities like Philadelphia.  I was really impressed by all the applicants we evaluated as part of the selection process.  And I couldn’t be more delighted to welcome Year Up and Single Stop to Philadelphia.  Both groups are filling real needs, delivering social innovation, and building upon – rather than duplicating – efforts already being made by great local nonprofits.  As a resident, I look forward to the impact they will deliver to Philadelphia.  And, as a nonprofit CEO, I look forward to learning from these high-performing national nonprofits.

For donors and others who are interested in the GreenLight approach and want to learn more or get involved:

GreenLight has three locations in the United States: Boston, San Francisco Bay Area, and Philadelphia. There are opportunities to join its selection advisory council as well as local boards of its portfolio organizations. To learn more about getting involved in Philadelphia, contact Matt Joyce (mjoyce@greenlightfund.org). To learn more about getting involved nationally, contact Sarah Lassonde (slassonde@greenlightfund.org).

Image source: University of Pennsylvania

Monday, May 13, 2013 marks the University of Pennsylvania’s 257th Commencement. Each year our team  at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy goes through the transition of saying farewell to another graduating class of remarkable students, while we welcome another incoming class of talent.

Given our university home, and that we have three faculty members on our team, we hold a unique position to drive social change. Through undergraduate and graduate coursework, advising student practicums and independent projects, and research assistant roles and internships, we strengthen the field overall by preparing the next generation of philanthropic and nonprofit leaders. Now in our seventh year, we continue to strengthen our mission of maximizing the social impact of philanthropy by teaching and graduating impact.

Many of our Center alumni—or “CHIP’s Off the Block”—have gone off to places such as Google, McKinsey & Company, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Arabella Advisors, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Broad Foundation, Planned Parenthood, JHPIEGO, medical and law school and other PhD programs, as well as even started their own enterprises. Included below are the voices of social change as they describe the lessons they’ve learned while working and learning at Penn.

An Emerging Nonprofit Leader

Balanced Scorecards have become the most important management tool that my organization has gained. They have provided us with the ability to assess our performance effectively and create realistic goals for our future while also helping us create a unilateral, cohesive goal for our organization.- Catherine Peralta, Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership candidate, Penn School of Social Policy & Practice

“CHIP’s” Off The Block

Working at the Center has helped me recognize the importance of working for an impact-conscious company. Even if I don’t go into the nonprofit world, I want to be a part of an organization that cares about making a difference for others. – Mallory Suede, Penn School of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2013

At the Center, I really learned to be part of a team. I’d done group projects before—dozens of them—but none where the project required sustained effort over a full year, or where the people involved were so committed to seeing it through. I was lucky to gain frequent feedback on my project (mostly from people at the Center, but also from partners and Penn faculty), and I learned how to incorporate that feedback, as well as derive clear direction from often diverse opinions. That ability to synthesize input and information will, I am sure, serve me well in the future.- Eesha Sardesai, Penn School of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2013

A year after graduating, I am now in China as a Fulbright Scholar studying programs for autistic and intellectually disabled adolescents and adults. Researching global health and development at the Center taught me what questions to ask when assessing different models of providing these services, especially in regards to sustainability, scalability, and maximizing social impact. These are frameworks I use everyday in my research and I will always be grateful for all that I learned from my motivated and inspiring mentors and teammates at the Center.- Meghan Hussey, Fulbright Scholar, Penn School of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2012

Working at the Center taught me to always have impact and potential innovations on my mind. Now that I’m in medical school, I am involved with our free student-run clinic for uninsured individuals and am doing research on a visiting doctors program for homebound patients. I constantly think about how the impact of such community health initiatives can be assessed, with the end goal of improving access to and quality of care for underserved populations. The Center instilled in me the drive to keep evaluating and improving programs.- Masha Jones, Penn School of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2011. (See Masha’s blog on The Impact of Food Access.)

The most salient practical lesson I learned during my time with the Center is how to think about the relationships and inherent tensions between funders, providers, and recipients, and how to think about what impact means for each of these groups. This lesson helps me in my current work on the evaluation of educational aid programs because I am more familiar with the interrelationships among these three stakeholder groups. I can now navigate these nuances, facilitate information sharing, and ensure that the specific needs and concerns of the three groups are adequately represented in the evaluation.- Katherine Summers, PhD Candidate, Florida State University, formerly of Penn Graduate School of Education, co-author of Haiti: How Can I Help?

The Center taught me the fundamentals of high quality research, which have held me in good stead in my current economic consulting job, and will continue to do so as I start business school this year. I learned to synthesize and distill key points from large amounts of qualitative information, as well as focus on the numbers, while being mindful of the caveats and biases. I also learned to leave no avenue unexplored when searching for information. Additionally, I learned to present my research in a manner relevant to my audience.- Sagar Shah, Wharton Class of 2010

Image source: Food for the Hungry Care Group Video

This Mother’s Day, we’re celebrating the role that mothers play, not only in their households but also as cornerstones of their communities and drivers of change.

For example, in the Care Group approach, mothers are empowered to be community health leaders in their villages. Elected by their peers, these “Leader Mothers” are trained to promote important healthy behaviors by visiting and teaching other mothers in their neighborhood. Health messages target critical—though often neglected—health behaviors such as breast feeding, hand washing, oral rehydration therapy for diarrheal illness, and other forms of preventive care such as sleeping under bed nets to prevent malaria. Care Groups are currently being implemented by 24 non-profit organizations in 21 countries in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Stay tuned for our full case study to be released next month on our website as part of a donor toolkit.

Community and village health workers play important roles in the United States and abroad. They provide health education and other essential—even life saving—treatments and health services to their friends, family, and neighbors. There are numerous examples of how community health workers (many of whom are also moms) work with mothers in programs run by BRAC, Nurse-Family Partnership, and JHPIEGO.

Photo by Darcy Kiefel. Image provided by Fonkoze.

The Impact of Investing in Mothers

Investment in programs for mothers not only improves the welfare of moms but also advances the livelihood of their families and communities. Here are a few examples of such investments:

• Lowered maternal mortality and improved child survival: Programs that provide prenatal care and safe deliveries to pregnant women result in fewer annual maternal deaths due to pregnancy complications, as well as fewer infant deaths.
  • See more details in our case study on the Comprehensive Rural Health Project at Jamkhed.
• Increase in food and housing security and child schooling opportunities: Programs that provide women and mothers with productive physical assets, skills, confidence and social networks, shelter, a stipend, and access to healthcare “graduate” them into more income-earning activities that enable them to sustain themselves and their families.
  • See more details in our case study on Fonkoze’s Graduation Model.

Celebrate the Impact of Mothers on Mother’s Day!

Image provided by World Relief.

The Promise and Power of Networks: Highlights from the Second Annual 100Kin10 Summit: Find out how networks of individuals and organizations are working together to recruit and retain 100,000 teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Charity can’t fill holes in aid to poor: The Philadelphia Inquirer focuses on hunger and poverty—specifically access to SNAP (food stamp) benefits—and cites a number of individuals and organizations (including ours) working on these issues.

And the 2013 Lipman Family Prize Winner is…READ Global! Two weeks ago, the Barry & Marie Lipman Award and Prize of $100,000 was awarded to READ Global for their economic growth and education work in rural areas of Bhutan, India, and Nepal. Read more here, watch a short video, and visit the Lipman Prize website for details on this program.

What’s Going On?

For donors and businesses interested in going beyond grants to fund social impact, the dates for applying to the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) or the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) programs are approaching.

• Returning donors to either program can renew applications beginning May 15, 2013.
• New donors can apply as early as July 1, 2013.
• To begin the application process, you can register and create a username and password to apply at: https://www.esa.dced.state.pa.us/Login.aspx.

Penn Alumna and vice president of Encore.org, Marci Alboher, is speaking at the Penn Bookstore this Sat 5/11 from 3-4:30pm for Penn Alumni Weekend about her new book, The Encore Career Handbook: How to Make a Living and a Difference in the Second Half of Life. Learn more about Encore Careers from our recent blog on social entrepreneurship after the age of 60.

This week kicks off “Education Week” on the TED website along with a TED Talks Education special on PBS tomorrow (Tue 5/7, 10pm ET) with host John Legend, and other speakers such as Bill Gates, Penn’s Angela Lee Duckworth, and Harlem Children’s Zone’s Geoffrey Canada.

Investments and Intrigue

China commits billions in aid to Africa as part of charm offensive: Regardless of China’s rationale for involvement, the fact that it has committed $75 billion over the last decade in aid and development to Africa has implications for donors. But until recently, due to very limited release of detail from the Chinese government, the programmatic implications were hazy. However, the launch of a new public database—Aid Data—provides donors with an improved opportunity to think about leverage regarding health, education, and cultural projects. On the journey to sustainable Impact Investing, laying the foundations of trust and engagement at a local level is part of the “critical path”.

High Stakes Donor Collaborations: This Stanford Social Innovation Review spring philanthropy piece profiles “high stakes collaboratives” (i.e., efforts where there is a multi-year vision around which donors pool talent, resources, and decision-making). The article contains a helpful “Advice from the Front Lines” section which distills a few practical insights that donors should consider when a “go it alone” strategy is less likely to yield the desired impact.

“What’s the impact of one pink dress?” asks Jacob Lief, Penn alum and co-founder and President of the Ubuntu Education Fund, in a Devex article from last November. Lief questions the real meaning behind terms like “impact investment” and “cost-effectiveness” and argues for the importance of investing in long-term outcomes while avoiding the trap of meaningless heuristics.

Kate Hovde, Senior Analyst

Two weeks ago, I represented the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the second annual Partner Summit for 100Kin10. Formed in 2011, 100Kin10 is an affiliated network of over 150 diverse organizations all focused on improving the odds that current and future generations of American school children will benefit from excellent instruction in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

Needs

The need for better STEM education is clear. A recent study by Georgetown professor Anthony P. Carnavale and colleagues at the Center on Education and the Workforce found growing demand both for traditional STEM occupations as well as for STEM competencies across the labor force.

Source: Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce

But because not enough young people are inspired to pursue advanced study in the STEM fields, the nation is increasingly relying on foreign talent to fill the gaps. Meanwhile, many young people are taught by teachers whose own knowledge and preparation in STEM is inadequate due to factors such as:

• uneven quality of preparation
• high rates of professional turnover
• uneven distribution of talent

Program Partners

So what to do? There are many great programs that address these problems from several different angles—in fact, our Center has profiled a number of them in both Pathways to Student Success and High Impact Philanthropy to Improve Teaching Quality. What is exciting about the 100Kin10 Network is that it is bringing many of these programs together to learn from one another.

During the course of the day-long summit I attended sessions led by TNTP, New Visions for Public Schools, The Achievement Network, and the U.S. Department of Education (and there were many others running concurrently that I would have liked to attend). I found each session deeply substantive, refreshingly honest about difficulties, and filled with intelligent questions and commentary from representatives from peer organizations.

In both sessions and conversations, I got the sense of smart and dedicated people finding ideas and connections that could help in their own work and thinking, whether on the effective use of formative assessment, strategies for successful adoption of new Common Core Standards in Math and Science, or ways to make STEM subjects more fun and relevant (the 100Kin10 Summit venue and partner, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, was an inspiration in this regard).

Donor Involvement

Philanthropy has been instrumental both in supporting 100Kin10 as a network and in augmenting the work of partner organizations to push towards the goal of recruiting and retaining 100,000 excellent STEM teachers over the next 10 years. The roster of donors is as diverse as the implementation partners, ranging from foundations traditionally committed to education issues, such as The Carnegie Corporation, to new-technology leaders like Google, to corporations, such as Chevron, to individual donors and family foundations.

For the Center’s audience, 100Kin10’s recent announcement of a New York regional fund, supported by three family foundations with regional ties, is a relevant development for those who may be interested in getting involved but have a regional focus. For additional information, feel free to contact us at the Center or 100Kin10 directly.

Center Will Offer New Tools for Measuring the Impact of Media Beyond Numbers: University of California’s Lear Center will be expanding its role in gathering information and developing new metrics to measure the impact of different media.  For donors and non-profits interested in using social media for impact, the additional focus on innovative ways of measurement is a welcome development.

Lessons Learned in Public Health

Lessons from Smallpox Guide Polio Endgame: In this Scientific American blog public health leaders Larry Brilliant, president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, and William Foege, a senior fellow in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, discuss how lessons learned in the smallpox eradication program are being applied to the current polio worldwide eradication efforts.  With only 223 wild polio cases last year in 5 countries, there is a golden opportunity to focus efforts and bring the global community together to make polio eradication achievable.

Improving Education Outcomes

Leap Year: Assessing and Supporting Effective First-Year Teachers: For donors (and others) concerned about improving teaching quality, TNTP has just released a fascinating new report, called Leap Year: Assessing and Supporting Effective First-Year Teachers.   Among the report’s recommendations: certification should be tied to teacher performance; teachers can and should be assessed using multiple measures (including classroom observations and student surveys); and that schools (and teacher training/induction programs) need to help teachers master a few core skills initially, in order to foster rapid improvements in effectiveness.

Fund grants $2.33M to two education programs: The GreenLight Fund in Philadelphia has selected its two recipients of Social Innovation Fund awards, bringing Year Up and Single Stop USA to the city. The 2.3 million in funding over five years will help the nonprofits expand their operations and support rigorous evaluation to improve and grow their impact.

Thursday, April 25th is World Malaria Day. We can celebrate the progress that has been made—such as 1.1 million lives saved over the past decade¹—and also “Invest in the future: Defeat malaria.” Given the available proven tools and cost-effective strategies to prevent and treat the disease, malaria continues to be one of the best public health investments for donors.

Who is most at risk for malaria sickness and death?

While more than two billion people live in malaria-affected areas, the largest and most vulnerable groups are pregnant women and young children in sub-Saharan Africa. In this region, malaria is responsible for 18% of all deaths of children under five years of age.²

Image by Bonnie Gillespie via VOICES for a Malaria-Free Future

Where is the risk for malaria transmission?³

Image source: Malaria Atlas Project (MAP)

• Grey = risk-free.
• Red = at risk of “stable” malaria transmission. Stable malaria risk: a minimum average of one clinical case per 10,000 population per year.
• Pink = at risk of “unstable” malaria transmission. Unstable malaria risk: documented cases occur but at less than the stable rate (as defined above). 

What can you do to help?

Image by Bonnie Gillespie via VOICES for a Malaria-Free Future

Learn about what works and invest in high impact programs to reduce the number of people who suffer from malaria.

1. Support a community case management (CCM) program in which community health workers bring life-saving treatments to families.
2. Support programs that mobilize and educate communities with locally-tailored health messaging through the creation of health volunteer networks.
3. Support the delivery of bednets and mass vaccination campaigns to remote villages and hard-to-reach areas.
4. Support programs that increase community access to drug treatments through national scale programs.
5. Support programs that work with a country’s Ministry of Health on its national, regional, and local malaria control strategy.
6. Support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, an existing global platform for system-wide change.
7. Support information systems that track resistance to medications or insecticides to contain the spread of resistance.

Want to learn more?

Image by Bonnie Gillespie, VOICES for a Malaria-Free Future

Innovation: Click here if you are interested in innovative funding opportunities, such as the research and development of new drugs, vaccine strategies, insecticides, and mosquito control.

Other malaria organizations: The following list, while not exhaustive, can help you identify other players working to fight malaria:

• Roll Back Malaria: One of the partners of the World Malaria Day initiative, their website lists the organizations that are involved with this global partnership.
• Core Group: A partnership consisting of 48 U.S.-based international organizations focusing on maternal & child health
• President’s Malaria Initiative: This website links to a list of several organizations that are engaged in the worldwide malaria arena.
• GBCHealth: Lists opportunities for businesses and the private sector to contribute to the global strategy
• Global Giving: This website allows you to search by interest and quickly gain a small snapshot of the work that several selected organizations are doing.

What’s New: Even though much of the focus on fighting malaria is concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is also working in Latin America. Read more on the ONE blog.

Events on World Malaria Day: Thursday, April 25, 2013: Here are more ways to get involved in the global fight to end malaria.

• Join a Google Hangout on “The Cost of Fake Malaria Drugs” with Guardian and Washington Post correspondent Kathleen McLaughlin, Cobus Van Staden of The China in Africa Podcast, and Dr. Patrick Lukulay, program director for the Promoting the Quality of Medicines initiative at the US Pharmacopeial Convention.
• Help the UN Foundation’s Nothing But Nets program reach their goal of sending 20,000 insecticide-treated bednets for the Cover Africa campaign.
• Watch the HBO Film “Mary and Martha” starring Hilary Swank at 12:30pm ET and 9pm ET. Additionally, for each view of the “Mary and Martha” YouTube trailer, Malaria No More will donate a full treatment to a child with malaria.

All in the Family…Office: Learn about our current activities as we work with family offices and other wealth management firms.

A Heads-up and Throwback of Events

• Our friends at the Wealth and Giving Forum are hosting an event, “Seeking Impact”, in October 2013 with Ron Cordes of the Cordes Foundation as keynote. More details forthcoming.
• Kat Rosqueta will be speaking with Monica Issar in a moderated discussion on Endowments, Foundations, and High Impact Philanthropy on Thursday, May 16th. ”Protecting and Growing the Legacy” is a private event hosted by JP Morgan in Philadelphia. For more information, please contact Gabrielle Spivak at 212.464.0582 or gabrielle.a.spivak@jpmorgan.com.
• Catalytic Women, another partner of ours, has a wide range of speaking events and webinars related to impact and angel investing, as well as social entrepreneurship. Please visit their events webpage for more information.
• As our eyes and ears continue to focus on the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings last December, highlights from the School of Social Policy & Practice forum on gun violence “Finding Common Ground: Moving Forward” can be found on Philly.com and NBC (Penn hears call for more courage on gun laws ; Husband of Gabby Giffords Speaks on Gun Control).

Child Deaths: Reports from the U.S. and Abroad

WHO, UNICEF Launch Global Initiative Aimed At Preventing Childhood Deaths From Pneumonia, Diarrhea: The Integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhea is yet another initiative to end preventable childhood deaths. In addition, our current child survival series and Community Case Management examples contain tips for donors on how to invest in programs that deliver treatments for pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria at the community level.

U.S. Infant Mortality Rate Fell Steadily From ’05 to ’11: According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,  infant death rates in the United States fell 12% between 2005-2011. Improvements were seen particularly in southern states and among black families but huge racial gaps in outcomes remain.

• In 2008, the United States ranked 27th in infant mortality among the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
• Programs such as home visitation for first-time, high-risk pregnant women can be effective in addressing many of the risk factors for poor outcomes.

A Pilot Study on Philanthropy

The Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity has released Philanthropic Freedom: A Pilot Study, which measures and compares giving across 13 countries.

Microfinance

Beyond Profit: A Talk With Muhammad Yunus: This Fixes article in the New York Times highlights Muhammad Yunus’ microfinance work and his ideas on the future of the field.

Happy Earth Day!

Source: National Center for Family Philanthropy

Examples of how we share our guidance with Family Offices and Foundations

The following list is a sample of our current and upcoming activities:

• Family Office Channel‘s G9 Successful Legacy Family Briefing features Kat Rosqueta’s insights from “Lessons Learned Answering the Million Dollar Question”. Other briefings from Holly Isdale, Dennis Jaffe, Andrew Young, Barbara Hauser, William Drake, Stephen Dawson, MJ Rankin, Christian Stewart, Patricia Angus, and Charles Lowenhaupt.
• Global conference call on how to “Make Your Philanthropy High Impact” with Kat Rosqueta for members of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO)/World Presidents’ Organization (WPO): Thursday, 20 June 2013, 10 a.m. New York (3 p.m. London; 10 p.m. Hong Kong). Contact us at 215.573.7266 or impact@sp2.upenn.edu or login to YPO’s member section for more information.
• Opal Wealth Management Group Family Office & Private Wealth Management Forum: “Not Your Grandfather’s Philanthropy” panel with Kat Rosqueta: Tuesday, July 23, 2013, 11:25am.
• Campden Family Business (FB) features our work in its March 2013 issue: A Targeted Approach and Top 10 Tips for Impact Giving.