I’m particularly impressed by the HELP model in part because of a nifty way to make the program sustainable: Winners commit to giving back 15 percent of their incomes for their first nine years in their jobs. That’s a hefty sum: HELP graduates earn an average of $15,000 a year, compared with per capita income in Haiti of a bit more than $800, and university tuition is very cheap by American standards.

“It’s a simple, anonymous act of generosity,” said Ms. Cozzolino, 37, an employee of a medical device company. “It’s a small treat that no one should miss.”
The suspended coffee is a Neapolitan tradition that boomed during World War II and has found a revival in recent years during hard economic times.
From Naples, by word of mouth and via the Internet, the gesture has spread throughout Italy and around the world, to coffee bars as far-flung as Sweden and Brazil. In some places in Italy, the generosity now extends to the suspended pizza or sandwich, or even books.

Despite an investment of $1 billion, none of the projects funded under the Gates Foundation’s “Grand Challenges” banner has yet made a significant contribution to saving lives and improving health in the developing world.

SAN FRANCISCO — The comedian Margaret Cho has been busking around her hometown, singing, plinking on her guitar and nearly stripping to raise money for the homeless. San Francisco has pop-up restaurants, art galleries and shops, but Ms. Cho’s may be the first pop-up charity.
Through social media, she has notified fans, who brought coats, pants, shirts, shoes, blankets and lots of socks as well as cash, which she gave away at each event. Her ninth and final performance was on Tuesday.

Church-affiliated schools are among the nation's most expensive for low-income students
At Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., officials sometimes bring in low-income applicants and their families for counseling. The point of the sessions is not to encourage the students to attend, but to suggest they consider going somewhere cheaper.

A woman who stole nearly $900,000 from a South Bronx housing and social service organization founded by her mother has pleaded guilty to grand larceny and criminal tax fraud.
Ms. Gonzalez, the executive director of Nos Quedamos from 2005 to 2011, was removed by the organization’s board amid questions of financial irregularities. The attorney general’s investigation found that she supplemented her annual salary of over $70,000 by writing checks to herself or to cash, making A.T.M. withdrawals and paying for personal expenses using the organization’s credit cards.

The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors' money. "We're very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that's donated goes to our services," Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year.
But the charity's own financial statements show that overhead expenses are significantly more than what McGovern and other Red Cross officials have claimed.
In recent years, the Red Cross' fundraising expenses alone have been as high as 26 cents of every donated dollar, nearly three times the nine cents in overhead claimed by McGovern. In the past five years, fundraising expenses have averaged 17 cents per donated dollar.

TT - Sau hàng loạt bê bối liên quan đến các nhà sư gây chấn động dư luận, chính quyền quân sự Thái Lan tìm cách đưa ra luật bảo vệ tính tôn nghiêm của Phật giáo.
Nhập nhằng sở hữu vì không có luật
Nghiên cứu của Viện Quản lý phát triển quốc gia Thái Lan (NIDA) cho biết trên toàn Thái Lan có gần 300.000 nhà sư trong khoảng 35.000 ngôi chùa và 5.000 tu viện với số đất sở hữu trị giá tới hơn 40 tỉ baht (1,22 tỉ USD).
Chùa chiền được luật Thái Lan quy định là nơi phi lợi nhuận nhưng các hòa thượng lại sở hữu hợp pháp các tài sản của chùa.

The president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Shirley Ann Jackson, was the nation’s highest-paid president of a private college in 2012, with total compensation of $7,143,312 — almost twice as much as the next most highly compensated president — according to The Chronicle of Higher Education’sannual pay survey.
Below Dr. Jackson on the list were John L. Lahey of Quinnipiac University ($3,759,076), Lee Bollinger of Columbia University ($3,389,917), Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania ($2,473,952) and Charles R. Middleton of Roosevelt University ($1,762,956).

James D. Watson’s 1962 Nobel Prize medal for sharing in the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, the foundation of the new science of genomics, sold for $4.1 million at auction on Thursday.
He said before the sale that he wanted to give much of the proceeds to educational institutions that had nurtured him, to “support and empower scientific discovery.”
After the sale, he said: “I’m very pleased. It’s more money than I expected to give to charity.”