Charities A To Z

Have a good idea to help your community? Enter Encore Career's LaunchPad competition and you could get $5000 and lots of other resources to help you get your idea going. The application is only about 500 words, but it is due tomorrow, December 22nd, so get moving! This can be a project that has already been launched, or one that is just a twinkle in your eye. Five winners will be selected.

There is no end to the list of celebrity charities… sometimes they are heartfelt, other times they are publicity stunts, and occasionally they go terribly awry. Take Wyclef Jean's fiasco: his Haiti charity, Yéle Haiti, received a massive outpouring of support after the earthquake, but actually had no ability to deliver disaster relief.

Encore Careers, a website devoted to helping people launch second careers that combine "purpose, passion, and a paycheck", announced the results of the fifth annual Purpose Prize. The Purpose Prize gave $750,000 in the form of five $100,000 awards and five $50,000 awards to the top ten volunteers and activists over age 60.

Volunteerism is often considered the domain of the young: the high school student looking to buffer his college resume, the 22 year-old without children, the middleschooler cleaning up trash on Earth Day… But the truth of the matter is that most organizations would prefer a more mature volunteer. Why? Because we provide a better Return on Investment.