Philanthropy – Delaware News Center

Eva Moskowitz launches Success Academy Education Institute

Eva Moskowitz the CEO and founder of the New York City charter school network, Success Academy, launched a new program this month. The program called Education Institute, or ‘Ed Institute’ for short, is being offered to educators all around the country completely free of charge.

What is Education Institute? It is a way for Success Academy to offer its curriculum, the methods it uses to teach and the educational resources to any educator in the country that wants them.

After all, with such exceptional academic results themselves over the last few years, Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy want to be sure other students have the opportunity to succeed as well.

Education Institute is not just a data base of dry and dull lesson material either. It also includes videos, comprehensive reading lists and lesson plans so educators in other school districts can emulate the work Success Academy is doing.

Eva Moskowitz also promoted Education Institute so that educators are aware it exists. She spoke to news media, and sent out the Academy’s entire reading lessons to more than 15,000 school officials across the nation in an attempt to get their attention.

Success Academy and Eva Moskowitz are not stopping there, however. The charter network also owns a New York City condo that they are going to use to train educators from other schools in how Success Academy operates and why its students are as successful as they are.

Executives from the Academy spent more than two years developing Ed Institute and its digital platform. They hope that it is able to help tens of thousands of school teachers across America offer a higher quality education to their students than they are currently getting.

Meanwhile, Eva Moskowitz was also in Washington, D.C. this month where she accepted the Broad Prize on behalf of Success Academy.

The prize is awarded annually to the charter network that is getting the best academic achievements, and is just another indication of how the nation’s educators may want to take advantage of Ed Institute and everything it has to offer.

Tweets by MoskowitzEva

https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/eva-s-moskowitz

George Soros and His Commitment to Generosity

As an investor, George Soros has a deep understanding of markets as well as human patterns of behavior. He knows how markets move and understands the political, social and cultural factors that underlie those movements. Considering that he has spent over half of his 85 years on the planet intuiting markets and human behavior, his awareness of, and his concern for, political and social movements is hardly a surprise. Combine that with his background of growing up in Nazi-occupied Hungary and it is clear that Soros is committed to backing democratic organizations that are concerned with human rights and immigration.

According to the Washington Times, Soros has contributed funding to a wide range of organizations. Some of these organizations are formal while others are self-described grass-roots organizations. During the Ferguson protest, the Times note that many activists and protesters were funded by Soros.

A close look at the Washington Times’ piece reveals that in many instances the funding was indirect. Soros contributes portions of his substantial wealth to organizations that distribute monies to smaller organizations. Some of the smaller organizations receive diluted portions of Soros financing that are combined with other donations or fundraising dollars. This is important to acknowledge because, in practice, philanthropists have little say in where their donations ultimately go. If the philanthropist does not like the outcome of their donations then they cease giving. Which is, according to Politico, exactly what Soros did after Kerry’s loss to Bush in 2004.

While activists from across the nation descended on Ferguson and while the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum, George Soros continued giving to organizations that promote police accountability and give voice to those who are underrepresented. Ferguson was a touchstone event, one that magnified issues Soros was already attuned to and issues he hoped his generosity could help resolve. To say that Soros funded the Ferguson protests is a bit of a stretch. Soros was already deeply committed to the issues at the heart of the protests. Organizations who had long enjoyed his support, whether directly or indirectly, mobilized around the event. His contributions and the events in Ferguson were a perfect storm of factors but neither was entirely dependent on the other. Visit this site to know more at opensocietyfoundations.org.

The final assessment reveals Soros’ ability to judge human behavior and key in on world events. Whether through investing wisely in markets or investing brilliantly in the people who push forward his beliefs in equality, George Soros is capable of staying one step ahead of cultural movements and shifts. He has done so for many years, even in his later ones. Read his profile at Business Insider.

George Soros, Trying To Help People towards a Better Future

George Soros is a name that has been echoing across countries as a man who has pioneered various political movements across the world. A hedge fund investor by profession, George has made quite an impact on the world of politics through this great involvement with political parties to try and shape the course of governments and justice in countries. When George was a young boy, he grew up in a part of Hungary that was under the rule of the Nazi’s which caused quite a problem for George’s family considering they were all practicing Jews at the time. It wasn’t long before George began to realize the repercussions of the political turmoil that was happening around him and all the political unrest that his country was facing. This was one of the main defining factors that led George on the path to helping people all over the world fight for justice.

Through his life, George has always tried his best to mitigate corrupt parties and prevent them from coming into power. George was also a large investor for the Democratic Party in 2004 when he was against President Bush and the Republican party’s ways. He invested almost $26M into the party for its presidential campaign and all the organizations they support. However, when those efforts turned out to be unfruitful, George decided to back away from the American Political scene and focus on his organizations and foundations which he built to help people.

In 2016, George Soros started an organization towards the aid of refugees and individuals coming from war-torn countries. The organization invested into these refugees business, especially the ones who were seeking exile in other European countries. The group benefited many refugee lives and helped them rebuild their careers and help their families out in this time of need.

George has been mentioned on the Forbes top lists for numerous years now; with the most recent one being him featured on the richest hedge fund investors lists. When George’s family has moved out of Hungary, to go to London, George enrolled in the London School of Economics, where he lay his foundations for what he would need when he would set up his company. When George came to New York, he began working on Wall Street where he invested in his first hedge fund which set him on the road to success.

In spite of deciding to stay away from the American Political Scene, George decided to re-enter and re-invest into the Democratic Party due to his allegiance to Hillary Clinton and his tremendous faith in her to lead the country in a preferable direction. Last year, George donated over $25M towards the Democratic Party and the numerous organizations they support. Read this story at Politico.com about George Soros.

Visit his profile on twitter.com

Betsy DeVos: Changing American Education, One School At A Time

Betsy DeVos has been making headlines and been receiving a lot of light lately. The Michigan native was recently announced as the Secretary Of Education Of the United States after one of the closest and most grueling nominations ever. She won a history-making tiebreaker – one that has never been seen before at the election of a Secretary of Education.

Betsy has been an adamant advocator of various school movements, aiming to change the current education system in America. Before her election, she was at the forefront of the school charter movement. The movement was to get the government to use public and taxpayers money to fund public schools so that American children will get access to a better quality of education as compared to what they currently get in public schools.

She also was at the forefront of a movement that aimed to grade schools all over America the same way they do with children’s report cards. Betsy was of the opinion that such a grading system would give parents to be more informed about the schools they are putting their kids into and to help them make better decisions regarding quality education for their children.

Betsy believes that proper education is one of the most important things which America should focus on. Through her position at the office, she plans to revolutionize the school system and bring about changes that will affect the younger generations to lead to a better, smarter America ultimately.

Along with her husband, Betsy and her husband formed the DeVos Family Foundation. The primary purpose of the foundation was to aid children and talented students and to provide them with the right resources to be able to develop themselves to better contribute to society. Betsy is known for regularly handing out scholarships to students who show exemplary talent in their public schools. The award is given with the aim of aiding them so that they can get a better education at private schools to develop their talents better.

The DeVos Family Foundation doesn’t just provide scholarships to school students, but to college students as well. The Foundation awards students who are passing out of their MBA programs from prominent Michigan Universities so that they can go out into society with a better grip on their lives and contribute to their communities, as compared to other students, who mostly pass out of college and have to face a significant amount of debt.

Also, the DeVos Family Foundation also helps their local communities with arts and culture programs to boost the creativity and talents of kids who are talented in those particular fields. Betsy DeVos is an avid supporter of the arts and previously served as a member of the board of directors at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts during the tenure of President Bush.

Follow Betsy on Twitter.

Dick DeVos Tells The Total Amount He’s Donated To Charities

Dick and Betsy DeVos have decided to make known something that much of the general public has wondered about for years; the amount of donations they have made in philanthropy. Dick and Betsy have run a major investment firm, The Windquest Group which has helped local businesses thrive and become a catalyst for alternative energy and technology funding. They’ve spent a lot of the money they’ve made from this business to support local schools, hospitals, museums, libraries and churches. They’ve long chosen to keep quiet on the actual amounts they have given to their community, but they recently disclosed a total amount that is near $139 million in lifetime giving. It’s been well-known that the DeVos family is generous, something that Richard DeVos Sr. Dick’s father started when he became successful in business, and Dick’s brothers Douglas and Daniel and sister Cheri have all started their own foundations.

Dick began his business career at his family’s company after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Northwood University. The company is Amway Corporation, a multilevel marketing company that has distribution centers all across the globe, and Dick helped start many of them during his time as company vice president and later CEO. He ran Amway from 1993 to 2002 before stepping down and turning his business aspirations to The Windquest Group. He also served as president and CEO of the Orlando Magic from 1991 to 1993.

Dick and Betsy’s philanthropy has been channeled through their foundation which they started in 1992. Much of it has involved political activism including targeting education reform as a top priority. Dick and Betsy sent their children to private schools, but they saw that there were many lower income families that struggled to afford those schools. So the DeVos’s started scholarship programs first, and at one time even attempted to lobby private school voucher laws into effect but to no avail. They later started several charter school expansion projects and even founded a charter school of their own, the West Michigan Aviation Academy.

Dick also has worked to make Grand Rapids an attractive place for business and entertainment venues through Grand Action, a committee of civic leaders that led a downtown renovation project throughout the 1990s. He and Betsy also were some of the largest contributors to the Kennedy Center’s Institute for Arts Management, which was subsequently renamed in the DeVos’s honor. The DeVos’s have supported conservative groups such as Action Institute, Heritage Foundation and Hudson Institute and have served in the state’s Republican party. Dick once ran for governor in 2006 but came up short on election day. He also helped a coalition of conservatives pass a right-to-work law in 2012.

Business Leader and Philanthropist, Dick DeVos

Those of us who live and work in lower Michigan are well aware of the business and charitable accomplishments of the entire DeVos family. Dick DeVos, the son of Amway cofounder Richard DeVos, established the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation with his wife in 1990. In addition to serving key leadership positions at the Michigan-based international corporation, including president, and board member, Dick has been president and CEO of the Orlando Magic of the National Basketball Association. He’s currently president of the Windquest Group, a privately held investment management firm, and has been a board member of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the Thunderbird School of International Management, among many other pursuits. But it’s his civic involvement and charitable accomplishments, particularly in his home state, that really stoke his inner fire.

Dick and Betsy’s passions include education, community, the arts, justice for the oppressed and leadership development. These interests are reflected in the organizations they’re proud to financially and morally support. Dick started the Education Freedom Fund to award more than 4,000 scholarships to underprivileged Michigan students, founded the West Michigan Aviation Academy and served on the state’s Board of Education. He’s chaired or co-chaired various Grand Rapids initiatives that have led to the revitalization of the downtown, construction of a $212 million convention center and a new cardiac hospital and the creation of a downtown market. The Dick & Betsy Family Foundation donates millions of dollars annually. Recipients through the years have included the Grand Rapids Symphony, Northwood University in Midland, Potter’s House, a Christian school serving urban students, ArtPrize Grand Rapids and the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, among countless other worthwhile services and organizations. Dick DeVos ran for governor of Michigan as a Republican in 2006.

Visit the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation website for more information about the foundation, its goals and how your favorite nonprofit might become a partner organization. You can also learn more about this noted Michigan philanthropist at DickDeVos.com. Addition biographical information can be found at Wikipedia and on Dick’s LinkedIn page.

David Osio Expands Real Estate Empire

David Osio is one of the leading real estate investors in the world. He has done a great job of building his empire over the years. Anyone who wants to learn how to invest in real estate can do so through his example. There are a lot of people who look to him for inspiration in this area. Succeeding with real estate investing is a lot harder than many people expect. However, over time this is a great way to build wealth. Investing in real estate is all about looking to the future. Few people have the discipline to sacrifice in the present for the future. In fact, most people simply want to spend all of the money they have now instead of investing in their financial future. This is one of the biggest reasons why so many people are unable to build wealth.

Real Estate Investing

Many variables exist when it comes to real estate investing. David Osio strongly believes in a conservative real estate investing approach. This approach means that he is not willing to stretch himself financially by going millions of dollars into debt. This is very different than a lot of people. Over time, many people try to borrow as much money as possible before deciding to stop. This leaves them with a lot of leverage and risk. Borrowing money to invest in real estate can be a good idea when the economy is booming. However, many people incorrectly do this right before a market crash. This can lead to a worldwide issue like we had in 2007.

David Osio

During the course of his life, David has been able to build an incredible amount of wealth. This is a great testament to his business skill and knowledge. If you are someone who wants to build a lot of wealth in the future, it is important to look at the future. A lot of people spend all of their time distracted by things that are around them. If you are someone who wants to take the next step with your finances, he is a great example to follow. Through the years, he has stayed consistent with his goals and this has led to a lot of great results. He is someone who is willing to put in the extra work to succeed. Although it will not be easy, you can have success building wealth as well.

Dick DeVos Giving Back to the Society

Dick DeVos, firstborn son of Richard DeVos Snr. is one of the leading entrepreneurs in Michigan. He was once listed by Forbes magazine as the 67th richest males in the United States. DeVos has worked for various companies, including Amway, co-founded by his father. He however left Amyway in the year 1989, to start a business of his own, Windquest Management. He later was reappointed to Amway Corporation and ended-up succeeding his father in various capacities in the firm. He has seen the company transition to what is now known as Alticor Corporation.

Have amassed wild success through the various company- owned business, DeVos only sees it fit to give back to the society. Dick is one of the biggest philanthropists, known in the USA. In the spirit of giving back and sharing the wealth that they have been blessed with, Dick and his wife Betsy DeVos started The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation.

With The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, Dick and his wife are able to contribute to the education status of the country. Together, they help increase opportunities for education to students coming from the less fortunate backgrounds. In this regard, they collaborate with Thunderbird School of Global Management to support students entering the school for a Master of Arts Degree, Master of Science and Master of Business Administration. They also award scholarships for students entering Northwood University for Business Administration Bachelor’s Degree.

The company is also community focused. They plan charities and donate to projects that have an aim of increasing the sustainability of various communities. This is by making it easy for people to access quality and affordable health services. In addition, they also provide support to increase the quality of life for different individuals.

The company is also a steward for leadership. Having tried his hand on politics, DeVos definitely knows what is required for successful leadership. With the foundation, he trains and supports potential leaders with the aim of equipping them to be great future leaders.

His biggest and most notable donation was that of a $ 22.5 million to the DeVos Institute of Arts, which is currently known as the Kennedy Center Institute of Arts Management.