In top feel-good news this week:
Forty of the wealthiest families and individuals in America have made an impressive pledge to help address some of society’s most pressing problems–by donating at least 50% of their wealth to charitable organizations and philanthropic causes.
Wait, what?
Paul Martin speaks at Impact Investing
What happens when you put a former Liberal Prime Minister, a former Conservative Party Leader and a leading social impact investor in a room? Fireworks? Pouting and disagreement? Or one of the most electric and optimistic events I’ve been to this year.
On November 6, the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin and Social Capital Partners (SCP), Bill Young came to MaRS for an event called, “Impact Investing: Building Prosperity Outside the Mainstream,” moderated by John Tory and Ilse Treurnicht. The discussion focused on how market forces can be used effectively to solve social challenges in Canada.
The MaRS Transition team is taking to the park paths in the Diabetes Walk for Hope. We’re walking to help the Diabetes Hope Foundation encourage youth to pursue their academic dreams and other fulfilling activities. With your support, our team will help ensure future scientific and social innovators receive encouragement from the Diabetes Hope Foundation to handle the responsibility of living with diabetes and continue to reach for the stars.
For Transition, diabetes is a subject that is close to our hearts. The company has been pursuing disease modifying therapies for diabetes since 2002. This commitment to diabetes is as strong as ever as Transition and its development partner, Eli Lilly are performing phase 2 clinical development with its lead diabetes product, TT-223.
Gates Foundation
Major changes are coming to the organization that is fundamentally changing global health, by which I mean the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With the pending massive cash infusion from one Warren Buffet, the Foundation is altering its internal financial structure to cleanly separate its program work from investment of its assets. Additionally, the foundation has also set time limit on the money, requiring that the funds be spent within 50 years of the deaths of both Gates. The foundation expects to steeply increase its grant-making from the current level of $1.75 billion per year to $3.5 billion by 2009. Its giving is focused in the areas of global health, global development, education and technology in public libraries.
Read the full story here.
Learn more about the Gates Foundation here.
