News

Current and former Rockefeller Brothers Fund grantees, Ma Jun of The ADM Capital Foundation Limited and Yu Xiaogang of Yunnan Participatory Watershed Management Research and Promotion Center, have been granted the 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award for their human development work in Asia.

RBF grantee Center for Public Integrity was recently awarded a prestigious Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism.

Edwin Rekosh, human rights lawyer and founder and executive director of the Public Interest Law Institute (PILI), an RBF grantee, is this year's recipient of the International Human Rights Award from the American Bar Association Section of Litigation.

The Connect U.S. Fund, a project of RBF grantee Tides Foundation, has been featured in The Chronicle of Philanthropy for fostering engagement among foundations that advocate a progressive, internationally cooperative American foreign policy agenda.

Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), in collaboration with Cave Canem Foundation, has selected by lottery Cave Canem fellow Christopher Stackhouse to receive a residency at the historic Marcel Breuer House at the Pocantico Center.

Recently profiled as a CNN Hero, Alfa Demmellash of Rising Tide Capital was recognized by President Obama at a White House event highlighting effective nonprofit programs.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund spotlights four of the 12 grantees—Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, Center for Book Arts, Ifetayo, and Morphoses—that received Charles E. Culpeper Arts & Culture Grants in 2008.

"There is no question about the power of the immigrant vote," says Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.  In New York, where more than 4 million foreign-born workers produce nearly a quarter of the state's economic output, Ms. Hong's organization has sought to implement a "community-based electoral machine."

When Deborah Simpson decided to run for a seat in Maine's House of Representatives in 2000, she was an unlikely candidate for elected office: as a waitress and single mother, she lacked connections to deep-pocketed donors. She had, however, heard about the state's new Clean Elections Act and figured she could campaign by talking about issues instead of asking people to write her checks.  Read more

While the 2008 U.S. presidential election was hailed largely because it put an African American in the White House for the first time, another celebrated success was the explosion in civic participation: thousands of new voters registered for the first time, volunteered, and turned up at the polls to cast their ballots.