Some good news and some bad news heading into Rosh Hashannah:
- Stewart and Lydia Resnick gave $45 million to the the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a string of renovations, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
- Joseph Zilber gave $50 million to rebuild an inner city neighborhood in Milwaukee.
- The WSJ questions whether the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust should have given it’s first Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award – a $200,000 prize to encourage American playwrights – to Tony Kushner.
- Washington Mutual went down this weekend. What will happen to the charities that received the $48 million WaMu gave away last year, asks the Seattle Times.
- The Miami Herald has a story about the Harold Greenspoon Foundation’s PJ Library initiative, which seeks to give free Jewish children’s books to young Jewish families.
- The Wall Street Journal asks whether CVS is using its charity golf tournament to circumvent its own rules about receiving gifts from vendors. (Sorry, had to fudge on the link here because the story is subscription only on the WSJ’s site, but the whole story is on the blog I linked.)
- Casino News Media has a list of the gaming industry’s donors to the McCain campaign. Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands comes in number four on the list at $32,500.
- The financial crisis may hurt a capital campaign that Harvard planned on launching in 2011, reports the Crimson.
- The Jewish federation in New Orleans and Chabad at Tulane University are working to help Tulane retain Jewish students, according to Tulane’s student newspaper, the NewWave.
- Atlanta lost a dedicated Jewish philanthropist, Dr. Sam Schatten, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
- Oklahoma had six of its own on the latest Forbes list. One of them was Tulsa resident Lynn Shusterman, who Forbes says is worth $2.5 billion, according to the Edmond Sun.
On the lighter side:
- Proof that there is a foundation for every cause: the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is dedicated to recording the mating calls of bull elks, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
- Proof that I am Jewish: It freaks me out that Germany is seeking 10 million organ donors.
