Tiny Spark

Chuck Collins inherited a half million dollar trust fund from his parents but decided to give it all away, allowing him to "unflinchingly look at the growing income and wealth inequalities that hav…

Silicon Valley is celebrated as a bastion of innovation. But it now suffers from one of the greatest income gaps in the country. Nonprofits are struggling to meet the demands caused by rising inequal…

A new kind of cruise gives travelers the chance to experience the culture of the Dominican Republic while volunteering in activities like planting trees, building water filters and teaching English. …

Midnight Basketball was a popular program to get young men from high crime areas off the streets and into gyms. But did the program live up to its promise?  Author and sociologist Douglas Hartmann de…

This month the charity GiveDirectly will start giving thousands of Kenyans about a month’s salary, every month, for a decade or more --- with no strings attached. GiveDirectly co-founder Paul Niehaus…

One year after the Flint water crisis, we look at how philanthropy responded, how it can better serve its communities, and what it needs to know about Flint in the decades ahead. Isaiah Oliver of the…

In the early 2000s, prominent philanthropists saw a big problem in America: a broken school system. They set out to fix it by funding in a charter school movement on a massive  scale. Megan Tompkins-…

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is proposing free tuition at in-state public colleges and universities. But many of these schools already serve a number of wealthy students, and many …

Global health volunteering is a growing, multibillion dollar industry. But is it effective? “It seems like an awful lot of resources to invest in something for which there’s practically no evidence o…

An African-American leader of one of the nation’s largest foundations speaks about racial tensions, philanthropy’s diversity problem, and why these times require philanthropists to be courageous. We …

Is philanthropy doing enough to address racism and inequity in the U.S.? We speak to Heinz Endowments President Grant Oliphant. He’s among the few philanthropic leaders who has spoken up about the sh…

Criticism of wealthy donors who give to their alma maters instead of the poor; concerns about Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s effort to get billionaires to donate more than half their wealth to chari…

NPR investigative correspondent Laura Sullivan discusses why aid organizations are not completely transparent about how they spend donor dollars. “I think that the numbers aren’t pretty, and I think …

The first ever World Humanitarian Summit is underway, but one of the world’s most respected humanitarian organizations will not be there. Doctors Without Borders decided to pull out.  The organizatio…

Rahama Wright was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali when she saw firsthand the challenges women faced, trying to take care of themselves and their children. So in her early twenties, she fou…

Charline Burton and her baby hid in a bathroom for two hours as terrorists struck a beach resort in Ivory Coast. We speak to the Belgian national about her near-death experience, how she managed to k…

We speak to Pablo Eisenberg, a long-time observer and outspoken critic of American philanthropy. “The same people get the benefits, the same people serve on boards, and the foundations have the same …

In the wake of this week’s terrorist bombings in Brussels and heated anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. presidential race, we read with interest Beenish Ahmed’s NPR essay, Learning — And Unlearning — T…

When it comes to promises made by social movements, human rights scholar Rebecca Hamilton has heard it all. “Share this Facebook link and you can save the life of a child in Uganda. Wear this bracele…