Why do so many givers ask that stuff be named after them: buildings, rooms, endowed professorships? Judeo-Christian tradition cautions against self-promotion. With charity, the medieval Jewish sage Maimonides wrote, it is best that the giver and receiver not know each other’s identities — in this way, the poor person’s dignity is preserved. (Better than charity, he wrote, is to give a poor person a job.) In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches that “when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets” but rather “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.”

Do Mr. Schwarzman, Henry R. Kravis or David H. Koch — to pick three of the country’s most generous, and least anonymous, donors — consider these religious admonitions? They did not respond to this columnist’s calls or e-mails. But plenty of others were willing to speak to the matter.

“The goal of all religion is to help you outwit your ego, shoot the sucker between the eyes, get it out of the way,” said Lawrence Kushner, an author and Reform rabbi who for 28 years served Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, Mass. So his congregation did not permit any honors for donors — no plaques, no special thank-yous at the end of the sermon. Nothing.

“It cost us about $10,000, $20,000 a month in money we could have otherwise got,” Rabbi Kushner estimated. But there was a big upside, “the awesome experience to look out over the congregation and see this guy who had just given $100,000 sitting next to the guy who I was giving money to from my discretionary fund,” with neither aware of the other’s finances. “The idea was, it’s not about you. If you want it to be about you, there are some wonderful congregations where, for enough money, it can be all about you.”

Read more here.

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Similar to most western nations, the United States is expected to see a significant increase in its older adult population in the coming decades. With that fact of life comes a bevy of needed services. One of those is compassionate end-of-life care.

In Hospice of Wake County, North Carolina’s capital city of Raleigh is blessed to have a top-notch “hospice home” and community services building. Nestled in the middle of an idyllic sheep farm in west Raleigh, Hospice offers comfort, peace, and hope to individuals and families facing life-ending illnesses.

The need is significant. The older adult population in Wake County is expected to double by 2025, outpacing growth in the general population. In recent years, that growing need has led to major growth at Hospice of Wake County, and the John William Pope Foundation has been privileged to play an instrumental role.

“Individuals often come to us after having exhausted all of their resources due to their illness or a medical crisis or a difficult family situation,” said John Thoma, Hospice of Wake County’s CEO. “We help to lift their burden, and we’re able to do so partly through gifts from generous foundations, including the Pope Foundation.”

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Raising a flag on a hill — that’s the word picture Cathy Heath uses to describe her decade-long fight to reform North Carolina’s annexation laws.

Involuntary, or “forced,” annexation has long been a political hot potato in North Carolina. Cathy’s quest for reform began in 2001 when the Town of Cary threatened to annex her subdivision in northwest Wake County forcibly.

The change would have meant higher taxes for Cathy and her neighbors. They didn’t want town services or the tax bill accompanying them.

Cathy began researching the annexation issue and found that it was a significant problem in North Carolina and across the country. She became co-director of the Stop N.C. Annexation coalition, a grassroots effort to end forced annexation.

“There were many communities across North Carolina upset about this issue,” she said. “They needed to start talking to one another. I saw there were enough people interested in this issue to make a difference.”

Read more Achiever Spotlights here.

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Not well, according to Jeffrey J. Selingo in this article in Forbes. He writes that they don’t make bachelor’s degrees like the used to. But training at a community college can prove valuable, especially given the low cost:

Think a community-college degree is worth less than a credential from a four-year college? In Tennessee, the average first-year salaries of graduates with a two-year degree are $1,000 higher than those with a bachelor’s degree. Technical degree holders from the state’s community colleges often earn more their first year out than those who studied the same field at a four-year university.

Take graduates in health professions from Dyersburg State Community College. They not only finish two years earlier than their counterparts at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, but they also earn $5,300 more, on average, in their first year after graduation.

In Virginia, graduates with technical degrees from community colleges make $20,000 more in the first year after college than do graduates in several fields who get bachelor’s degrees. Yet high-school seniors are regularly told that community colleges are for students who can’t hack it on a four-year campus.

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The intersection of politics, economics, and morality has never been more important than it is today. Yet many times, these three subject areas are treated as distinct, unrelated categories. The goal of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University is to rejoin the three disciplines — and show how much they impact our daily lives.

In the past, philosophy was closely related to economics, because thinkers’ view of economics was borne out of their moral convictions. But today, the disciplines increasingly diverge. That is where the UNC-Chapel Hill PPE program steps up.

“Our distinctive feature is bringing together these three academic disciplines in a comprehensive and cohesive way, with a particular emphasis on the moral significance of each,” said Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Director of the PPE program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

As the only joint UNC-Duke program at the undergraduate level, PPE has distinguished itself as a valuable addition to the repertoire of learning at both schools.

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The study (PDF download) uses a variety of metrics — including the ease of creating philanthropic organizations and tax policies that either encourage or discourage individual generosity — to determine the level of restrictions in each country.

The Hudson Institute’s index of philanthropic freedom puts the Netherlands, the United States, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and Mexico at the top. Turkey, Russia, Egypt, and China round out the bottom.

The study concludes:

Many of the high scoring nations are also high income countries, reflecting the long history of philanthropy and civil society in these countries. Additionally, some emerging economies scored high also, reflecting an improving environment that is conducive to philanthropy in those nations. For example, South Africa, India, and Mexico have implemented policies that promote a healthy civil society and provide tax deductions for donors.

Because this study assesses the barriers to civil society organizations and cross-border flows, countries that have restrictive regulations in these two categories scored lower, despite having relatively large tax incentives for donors. For example, countries such as Egypt and Russia provide tax deductions for donors, but the limitations on registration and operations of [charitable organizations] are restrictive. Furthermore, the barriers to the flow of cross-border foreign funds in both countries are tightly regulated and highly restrictive.

The Hudson Institute plans to survey all countries in the future to provide a more complete picture.

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“We can live without learning French or being great in chemistry,” posits James Basker. “But how can you be an American citizen without knowing American history?”

Basker, who is the president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, is hardly new to the field of civic education. He has been in his position for 16 years, overseeing the institute’s initiatives to increase knowledge of American history. But he believes there is a new opportunity now with the recent adoption of the Common Core standards by 46 states. Mind you, the standards themselves say nothing about history.

In fact, Basker and others worry that if schools are only tested on literacy and math, then the teaching of history will recede even further. But Gilder Lehrman is adapting to the new standards. It has developed Teaching Literacy through History, for instance, a program that aims to help schools fulfill the standards by using the institute’s extensive collection of original historical documents to develop students’ critical thinking and analytical skills.

To learn more about the Pope Foundation’s support for similar education efforts, click here.

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In my latest column for Business North Carolina magazine, I argue that policymakers who seek to make North Carolina’s economy more competitive can’t afford to ignore the seemingly unrelated issue of family stability.

“Economic and social policy often follow separate tracks,” I write. “But when it comes to the health of the family, the tracks converge. While people can continue to disagree about the religious or moral foundations of family life, there is simply no room for debate about the larger consequences of family stability. Higher rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births raise the cost of government and, thus, act as a drag on economic growth.”

Strong families are the building blocks of strong communities, and thus strong economies. Their economic role as producers of valuable goods and services in the household, and as investors in the human capital of future generations, may not sound romantic or “fun.” But it is fundamental to how human societies really function, or fail to function.

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On the evening of April 10, several students sat tucked away in an Episcopal church just north of the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Their heads were bowed; their thoughts – ethereal.

The students were taking part in a weeklong “UNC 24/7 Prayer” at the university, an annual observance designed to lift up lives, families, careers – and the campus community – to the Lord.

About 250 students signed up for one-hour prayer slots that launched April 4 at 9:30 p.m. and ran day and night through April 11.

Although there was no official “theme” for the week, one Bible verse repeated in both email invitations and on handouts for students inside the church read:  “I will set my eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.” (NIV – Jeremiah 24:6-7).

In stark contrast to the thoughts and prayers of students who took part in the observance on the evening of April 10, another campus event unfolded nearby that was entirely temporal in nature.

The university’s Student Union played host to a workshop called “Orgasm? Yes, Please!” The event was advertised to students with the tagline: “Learn how to have AMAZING sex and enter to win a sex toy!” A variety of condoms, lubricants and sex toys were doled out during the workshop thanks to the generosity of two adult sex shops near the campus: Adam & Eve and Cherry Pie, organizers stated.

At least one student who took part in the prayer week event the evening of April 10 asked God to touch the hearts and minds of the students who were nearby learning about how to pleasure themselves and put on condoms properly.

That both activities took place at the same time was coincidental, but it does illustrate the vast chasm between the priorities of students at UNC Chapel Hill, something that is likely mirrored at universities across the nation.

This topic has drawn the attention of the Pope Center for Higher Education, which highlighted a Sex Workers Art Show at Duke University in 2008.

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In listing societal institutions that are a force against big government, strong marriages, strong families, and strong churches immediately come to mind. But is philanthropy — the generous, voluntary donations to worthy causes — also an indispensible support of freedom?

The Philanthropy Roundtable — a nonprofit based out of Washington, D.C., that seeks to foster excellence in the world of grant making — is proof that the answer is “Yes.”

“Philanthropy is a huge bulwark of a free and independent civil society,” said Adam Meyerson, who has served as the Philanthropy Roundtable’s president since 2001. “It helps to prevent individuals from becoming too reliant on government. It’s particularly important at this time in history, when the future of independent civil society is at stake.”

Bringing donors together to foster liberty and create private opportunities to meet needs in the community — those were the primary reasons that lead to the creation of the Philanthropy Roundtable in the 1970s. In 1991, the organization became an independent organization with its own board of directors.

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