Posted on January 29, 2010

Chase Community Giving Program Final Winners Announced

JPMorgan Chase and Facebook have announced the final list of small and local charities that will receive grants totaling more than $5 million through the Chase Community Giving competition.

Facebook users selected San Diego-based Invisible Children, which advocates for the rescue of children in central Africa who have been kidnapped from their homes and forced to serve as soldiers in Uganda, to receive the $1 million top prize. Five runners-up — the Isha Foundation in McMinnville, Tennessee, which provides healthcare and wellness programs to rural populations in America and India; Florida-based To Write Love on Her Arms, which assists Americans struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide; Friendship Circle in West Bloomfield, Michigan, which provides support to families with special needs children; North Carolina-based Bridge to Turkiye, which provides access to education to disadvantaged girls in Turkey; and the Santa Barbara-based Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, which is working to find a cure and raise awareness of spinal muscular atrophy, a leading cause of death in infants — will each receive $100,000.

In addition, a special advisory board of celebrities and Facebook and Chase executives selected seventeen charities to receive grants totaling $1 million. Six nonprofits — Action Without Borders/Idealist.org, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Seeds of Peace, Atlas Service Corps, and the Camp Kesem National and Teen Living programs — will each receive $100,000, while eleven other charities will receive $37,000 each.

Launched on November 16, the crowdsourced campaign allowed Facebook's 350 million users to nominate nonprofit organizations with operating budgets of no more than $10 million working in the areas of education, housing, the environment, health and human services, arts and culture, and animal welfare. On December 16, the one hundred organizations with the most votes received $25,000 each and moved on to round two, where they had the option to submit a "Million Dollar Proposal" to Facebook users detailing the difference they would make in their local communities with extra resources.

Based on the success of this first competition, Chase has committed to continuing the program. "We think this program resonated with individuals and entire communities because it allowed them to show their support for local needs in a way they never could before," said JPMorgan Chase Foundation president Kim Davis. "Chase Community Giving allowed Facebook users to express their passion for smaller charities and gave a national voice to charities that historically haven't received funding from corporate philanthropies. In many cases, these donations are the largest gift the winning charities have ever received."