What is Your Philanthropic Response to Covid-19?
At Hoplin Jackson Charitable Advisors, we are healthy, safe, and dutifully practicing social distancing. Even still, and perhaps more than ever, we are busy Zooming/talking with clients and working on some large projects. While we spend less time at 30,000 ft., our business has not skipped a beat.
Our country is facing unprecedented needs resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, and there are not enough government dollars to address them all. Fortunately, America’s wealth creators are the world’s most philanthropic and our nonprofit sector the world’s most vibrant. If you have the inclination, we encourage you to get involved now…to think local—to work with community-based nonprofits that have a track record of success and have the capacity to scale quickly.
For example, If you’re interested in healthcare or medicine, you could consider investing in technology to improve testing or in supporting medical professionals on the front lines and their families. Take a look at a partnership between a virologist at George Mason University and Ceres Nanotechnology aiming to improve testing quality by five to ten times https://www.ceresnano.com/press-release-select.
If you’re interested in human services, give to nonprofits helping to deliver food and critical goods to those in need. Check out Team Rubicon’s work in Wisconsin, Louisiana, New York, Texas, California, and Georgia. https://teamrubiconusa.org/blog/covid-19-forward-watch-march-18/.
If you love youth, identify nonprofits which are producing effective online content to keep their young minds and hearts engaged while schools remain closed. Particularly for those who believe in the power of the free enterprise system, Young America’s Foundation has posted the best books, podcasts, and movies to dive into during quarantine. YAFTV has catalogued hours upon hours of intellectual capital, too: https://www.youtube.com/yaftv.
Finally, with the number of lay-offs and a drastically changed economy, the jobless will have a variety of needs in the weeks and months to come. Check out Giving Kitchen, a nonprofit with a track record of supporting food service workers with emergency assistance (financial and otherwise): https://thegivingkitchen.org/covid19.
Human suffering will persist, whether economically, medically, educationally or otherwise, but the philanthropic sector will play a vital role in its turnaround. One silver lining of a “down” period like this: it creates a rare window for families to come together to think about big picture topics … like building a long-term strategic plan for charitable giving. Hoplin Jackson is poised to help you identify nonprofits should you wish to be more involved.