r/Philanthropy

Hey all,

I'm a longtime software engineer that built my career in the nonprofit space. After a few years in other industries, I missed creating for that group. So I started doing some research.

I was shocked when I learned what the big name (and small name) tools charge to access IRS foundation and grant filings. So I decided to publish a forever-free funder search to democratize access to the data.

https://www.501see.app/

Free search of IRS foundation, grant, and organization data with robust filtering, saved searches, and some handy summary data for assessing foundation giving patterns. Oh, and it automatically filters to foundations that are open to applications.

There are paid plans for power user features and automations, but the core search of foundations, grants, and organizations is designed to remain free and unlimited. Small nonprofits or independent grant researchers shouldn't be priced out of access to the information that can help them with their work.

As with any platform, it's a work in progress, so I welcome feedback. I mostly want to get the free search into the hands of people who can take advantage of it.

Thanks!

Kareem is one of the all time good guys when it comes to athletes.

“"Looking back on what I have done with my life, instead of gazing at the sparkle of jewels or gold plating celebrating something I did a long time ago, I'd rather look into the delighted face of a child holding their first caterpillar and think about what I might be doing for their future.

"That's a history that has no price."

Source: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26085760/abdul-jabbar-puts-four-title-rings-auction

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are donating $26m to charities in advance of their rumored wedding at New York’s Madison Square Garden this weekend, a representative for the couple has confirmed to the Guardian.

The 20 named charities include organizations in meaningful locations to the couple such as Nashville (where Swift got her start in music), Kansas City (the home of Kelce’s Chiefs NFL team) and New York City, where Swift and Kelce’s wedding is reported to take place.

While the announcement doesn’t explicitly mention the wedding, the donations fit in with a practice that Swift has become known for; at the close of the Eras Tour, she gave six-figure bonuses and hand-written letters to her crew.

The release stated: “This week, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift donated $26 million to charities across the United States. They include the following: City Harvest, New York City; Food Bank For NYC; New York Cares; Los Angeles Regional Food Bank; Harvesters – The Community Food Network, Kansas City, MO.”

The list of causes also includes: “The Store, Nashville, TN; Helping Harvest, Reading, PA; Rhode Island Community Food Bank; Feeding America; ASPCA; Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library; Grammy In The Schools; Education Through Music, New York, NY; Answer The Call, New York, NY and Musical Mentors, New York, NY.”

More info from The Guardian.

MacKenzie Scott’s $26 billion giving sprint in seven years, including a record $7.2 billion last year, makes her the third-biggest philanthropist of all-time. She gave more in 2025 than Musk, Page, Ellison and her ex-husband Bezos have in their lifetimes combined.

In all, 186 organizations received a collective $7.2 billion in 2025 from Scott—enough to make her the world’s most generous philanthropist last year. It’s also the most donated in a single year since Forbes started tracking top givers in 2012.

No one has ever given away more money as fast as Scott. In less than seven years, Scott, who has disposed of more than 75% of the Amazon shares she received from Bezos, has donated $26.4 billion to more than 2,500 groups. Only Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, have donated more—but in both cases over a much longer time. Scott is also one of just four of the nation’s top 25 philanthropists who have given away 40% or more of their fortunes.

Four Over 40%

These are America’s four most generous billionaire philanthropists as measured by the percentage of their fortune that they have doled out to unaffiliated nonprofits.

George Soros

Lynn and Stacy Schusterman

MacKenzie Scott

John and Laura Arnold

Full article from Forbes.

We need to have much more serious conversations about AI and the nonprofit/philanthropic sector - commentary from Vu Le, Nonprofit AF.

It goes through all the various concerns: about water usage and other environmental concerns, about how data centers are put into marginalized communities, about the massive tax breaks given to data centers (thereby defunding schools, roads and more), about how AI is so white-people-driven and focused, how it's such a "yes, you're right!" tool, and more.

Never has something been so seductive and yet so destructive to our world in so many different ways, many of which we do not yet fully see and may not understand until it's too late. Let's not unwittingly enshittify our sector and community, prop up fascism and billionaires, and perpetuate the inequities and injustice our sector claims it exists to fight.

This was published in May 2026.

Comments on this welcomed here, but please share your comments also on Vu Le's blog.

Anthropic is investing $150 million to launch Claude Corps, a national fellowship program that will place young people in full-time jobs at various nonprofits around the country that want to use artificial intelligence more effectively in their work.

Named for the company’s popular AI chatbot, Claude Corps will teach 1,000 fellows how to use Claude well. Then, over the course of the next year or so, it will match them with as many as 400 nonprofits across America and pay them $85,000 to spend one year—full-time, in-person—to help those organizations use AI tools to improve their operations and advance their missions.

Anyone over 18 years of age who has less than two years of full-time work experience may apply, regardless of their educational background. 

I have a LOT of thoughts about this. All of them really bad. But Brett Egan of the DeVos Institute of Arts and Nonprofit Management says it better than I can - this is from his LinkedIn Page:

I’m sorry, Claude Corps.

Nonprofits need great AI. But slotting recent high school grads with Claude credits into nonprofits isn’t how to do it.

Nonprofit organizations are sophisticated. AI use in nonprofits is sensitive and must be strategic.

Senior nonprofit administrators are meant to trust serious issues of values, governance and sector and discipline-specific strategy to early career fellows with fewer than two years’ work experience?

(This is Claude Corps’ maximum experience threshold for eligibility — 2 years in the workforce, but no work experience is required).

The implicit assumption - that nonprofits will benefit from inexperienced kids + Claude - is right in line with the erroneous, dismissive, often paternalistic way in which much of the corporate sector has viewed nonprofit governance for decades.

Anthropic is well meaning no doubt. And so too will be the fellows. And directing some of the AI dividend to nonprofits is great. And thank heavens Dario Amodei is speaking out on the dangers of AI.

But unless there is a lot more prep and structure than has been communicated thus far, this not this way to help nonprofits.

In fact there is an equal chance this will cause more harm than good.

We are not a “move fast and break things” experiment. We are a “move smart and make beautiful things” profession.

Ethical, strategic, mature, effective AI is the only solution for nonprofits can afford. And that is what they deserve.

Your thoughts about this philanthropic effort by Anthropic?

In 2020, Jeff Bezos made what remains the largest individual philanthropic commitment to climate and nature ever: $10 billion, to be fully disbursed by 2030 through the Bezos Earth Fund.

But five years in, the fund has deployed roughly $2.4 billion of that commitment, leaving about $7 billion to go out the door before the 2020s end. Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who married Bezos last summer, is now the person setting the pace at the Bezos Earth Fund as vice chair, a position she’s held since the fund’s early days, when she was just his girlfriend.

Even with $10 billion committed to climate change, the scale of the Bezoses’ giving seems modest relative to the fortune behind it.

Bezos’s net worth is currently estimated at $266 billion, making him the fourth-richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But Forbes estimates the couple’s lifetime charitable contributions at about $4.7 billion, less than 2% of Bezos’s net worth.

Meanwhile, Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has been on a major giving spree during the past five years, having donated an eye-popping $26 billion to thousands of organizations. Her current net worth is estimated at $35.4 billion. That means she’s donated well over half of her net worth to charity, although her net worth continues to grow despite her massive donations, thanks to the power of Amazon shares that keep growing her fortune.

Another way to look at it is that, in 2025 alone, Scott donated $7.2 billion, which exceeds Bezos’s entire lifetime of charitable giving. Scott also signed the Giving Pledge, the commitment launched by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett in 2010 that encourages billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

Bezos has not signed it.

https://fortune.com/article/how-much-has-jeff-bezos-donated-lauren-sanchez-bezos-earth-fund/

I gave r/volunteerism and a shoutout as the guest on the latest Third Sector podcast, talking about how nonprofits & charities can leverage Reddit & why they absolutely need to be doing so. The podcast is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc., & here: https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/third-sector-podcast-charities-reddit/digital/article/1962206