Nonprofit

In March, the Japanese Prime Minister and the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) postponed the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics until next year due to the global pandemic. It was the first time in modern Olympics history that the games were pushed back. The IOC and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee created a task force to begin coordinating how to relaunch the event—from protecting athletes to securing venues.

GiveDirectly has long taken an unconventional yet simple approach to humanitarian aid in East Africa: Let people in poverty manage their own needs by giving them cash instead of food or essential goods. As the pandemic took its economic toll and it became more difficult to deliver aid in person, the nonprofit scaled up with technology. Local organizations identify beneficiaries within their existing networks, and then GiveDirectly uses data from national phone companies to provide cash transfers via mobiles.

Lesswalk took the outcasts from failed bike-share programs and turned them into a new mode of transport for kids in rural Myanmar. The nonprofit spent roughly US$400,000 to buy and refurbish 10,000 bikes, which were then turned over to local kids—many of whom usually spent hours walking to school. The new wheels changed that, cutting travel time by as much as 80 percent. The nonprofit aims to repeat the project, providing 100,000 bikes over the next five years.

Two tiny cheetah cubs represented a big step forward for a species whose population has dwindled to just 7,100 in the wild. Scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, USA transferred cheetah embryos produced by in vitro fertilization to a surrogate mother—who gave birth to two cubs in February. The hope is that with repeated success, frozen embryos can be delivered to Africa to help grow the cheetah population.

Plant-for-the-Planet CTO Sagar Aryal led a global team to develop an app to connect supporters with 50 large-scale reforestation projects around the world that they could fund. Launched in September 2019, the app includes interactive features that let contributors keep a running tally of progress and even view their forests on a map. Developers also added a leaderboard of top tree-planting people, companies and countries around the world to spark action around a larger U.N. campaign that has planted more than 13 billion new trees since 2006.

A first-of-its-kind program from Truth Initiative is urging young people to quit smoking e-cigarettes by speaking to them in their own language: text messaging. Users opt-in to the free and anonymous service, which then sends customized, interactive daily text support messages and tips for quitting. Within five weeks of the project’s launch last year, more than 27,000 people had enrolled.

A slew of nonprofits banded together to help address the digital divide preventing kids in Chicago, Illinois, USA from accessing virtual classes. The US$50 million project—launched in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools system—provides up to four years of free high-speed internet to 100,000 low-income students. Rolled out in June, Chicago Connected came just in time for students facing a new school year of limited access to school buildings or libraries because of the pandemic.

It started in March as an effort to prepare meals for the thousands of passengers and crew members quarantined aboard a cruise ship off the coast of California, USA. But it turned into a full-blown global emergency food relief program from chef José Andrés’ nonprofit World Central Kitchen. Andrés even put struggling restaurants back to work, purchasing over 5 million meals and distributing them directly to families in need. Within months of its launch, the program had served more than 19.2 million meals.

In the wake of the global pandemic and ongoing racial injustice in the U.S., the Robin Hood foundation launched an initiative to finance nonprofits led exclusively by people of color. The project is already generating big buzz from financial giants, like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan—and US$10 million in seed capital.

A US$1 million project from Project Vesta is testing the potential of olivine, a volcanic mineral that appears as green sand, to capture billions of carbon dioxide particles from the air through a process called coastal enhanced weathering. On Earth Day 2020, the group announced its first pilot site on a beach in the Caribbean and will be working with Dutch engineering firm Deltares to create an experimental protocol and formula to be used on future projects.