This type of wayfinding brochure for the FreerSackler Gallery (now known as the National Museum of Asian Art) was the model for a protest leaflet entitled "Lose Your Way" created by P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) to protest Sackler family philanthropy.
In the 2010s, the nation’s opioid crisis sparked controversy over the prominent Sackler family’s cultural philanthropy. The Sacklers owned Purdue Pharma, the company that developed opioids and developed the marketing techniques that led to the painkillers’ wide distribution. With the wealth they accumulated from the sale of opioids, members of the family have been major benefactors to some of the leading cultural and educational institutions in the United States, including the Smithsonian Institution, as well as foreign institutions. Activists, led by photographer Nan Goldin, who had been addicted to opioids, have argued that museums and universities have allowed the Sacklers to burnish their reputations with their giving. In 2018 and 2019, P.A.I.N. activists held protests at various museums urging them to cut their ties with the Sacklers. P.A.I.N. held a protest at the FreerSackler in April 2018.
This label was on a pallet of diapers at the Greater DC Diaper Bank’s Dulles Airport distribution point for diapers and other products during the federal government shutdown of 2019. Established in 2010, the GDCDB provides diapers to social service organizations helping families in need in the greater Washington, DC, region. Typically, it does not serve families directly. In early 2019, the Diaper Bank worked in collaboration with World Central Kitchen and other organizations to assist people who were without pay due to the government shutdown. The GDCDB had distribution points at the World Central Kitchen site in Penn Quarter, Washington, DC, and at Dulles Airport where people could get diapers, incontinence products, and more.
This poster came from a 2013 “Giving Tuesday” coordinated fundraising campaign in Baltimore. The campaign, “B’more Gives More,” was run by a fundraising platform called GiveCorps led by Jamie McDonald. “B’more Gives More” involved hundreds of nonprofits and businesses in Baltimore and raised over $5 million. The campaign’s success became a model for other communities.
Giving Tuesday began in 2012 as a collaboration between the 92nd Street Y (a New York City nonprofit) and the United Nations Foundation. The organizations launched an effort to make the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday shopping season a day of philanthropic donations. Over the next few years, many nonprofits in the United States and around the world embraced Giving Tuesday as a special day for fundraising. In 2019, leaders of the fundraising phenomena established a separate nonprofit named Giving Tuesday. The organization conducts research on giving and promotes collaboration among nonprofits, to encourage people to contribute money or time to nonprofits institutions and social causes.
After GiveCorps was acquired by another online charitable fundraising platform, McDonald launched a philanthropic consultancy and subsequently joined the nonprofit Giving Tuesday as chief strategy officer.
This nest box was used in bluebird conservation efforts by Cathy Hindman, a volunteer with the Virginia Bluebird Society and the group’s president at the time the box was collected in 2017. The North American Eastern bluebird population had declined markedly in the 1900s as a result of urbanization and other developments that disrupted the birds’ habitats. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (1962) raised widespread concerns about the loss of bird populations and helped inspire Americans to begin forming bluebird conservation societies in the 1970s. Volunteers with the organizations put up and maintain the nest boxes on their property, in parks, and elsewhere. Eastern bluebirds are cavity-dwelling birds. The boxes provide hospitable habitats for them and volunteers’ efforts contributed to a revival in the population.
A blog post about this nest box can be found at this link: s.si.edu/Bluebirds
The cap was worn by Eileen Solomon on a medical philanthropy mission in Liberia. Solomon has been Senior Director of Special Events at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City since 2001. She first went to Liberia in 2008 as coordinator of a medical team providing care for people there. A conversation at a Clinton Global Initiative event had led a Mount Sinai trustee to underwrite the initial mission. Solomon heard about the plans and joined the trip.
Solomon explained: “In my role at Mount Sinai, I manage a team who does the fundraising, cultivation, stewardship events for seven hospitals, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and special projects for the Dean and President. My skill set is transferable so coordinating 30 professionals and medical students and liaison with the Liberian government, creating food menus for 14 days, ground and air transportation, security and the other details suited me well. . . . As the only non-medical participant, I was embraced by the team, worked in the OR [operating room], became the photographer to document the surgeries, helped clean the OR’s, did anything that was needed to be engaged with the team.
“We were at Phebe Hospital in Bong County, about four hours outside of Monrovia, where they also have a fistula program for the women who had surgery. They live there with their children and learn skills to become members of their villages once they are ready to re-enter. As you may be aware, there is a great deal of stigma towards the women and they struggle. Not all husbands and families welcome them back home. In the compound, they learn sewing, baking, hair styling, tie-dye, cooking, skills that could make them independent. One of our surgeons provided local fabric and suggested that they make the OR caps and sell them as a way to earn money. Purchasing them was easy and wearing them was a joy and added a great deal of color to the OR. The women were very proud of their skills. They also went on to make simple all-purpose bags, good for carrying anything. I use mine when I go to the market.”
At the time, as a result of the civil war, Solomon explained, there were 35 doctors in the country. Liberian officials denied that there were any incidence of female cancers, and a woman needed permission from a male in the family to get treatment.
The 2008 trip was the beginning of an ongoing relationship between Mount Sinai and Liberian medical community, staff and patients. The Sinai team has been training local doctors in obstetrics and gynecological care and has developed a relationship with the Liberian College of Physicians and Surgeons. In addition, going on international medical missions has become part of many students’ educations. Solomon, like other members of the team, developed personal relationships with colleagues in Liberia, and she lost friends there to Ebola in 2014. As of 2018, she had gone to Liberia 18 times, usually for 2 weeks at a time using her vacation time for the trips.
Solomon grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, in a family of modest means. Volunteering was an important part of her family life and for her it included giving time at the synagogue, as a candy striper, and as a Girl Scout. Her career, she believes, is an outgrowth of her childhood volunteering. In addition to her Liberia experience, she gives time to Kravis Children’s Hospital at The Mount Sinai in New York on Sundays. In 2018, she has travelled to Vietnam with a group that provides peer-to-peer training for women who are survivors of breast cancer so they can support other women with the disease.
This 3-D printed claw was used during the Covid-19 pandemic at Mary’s Center, a federally-qualified community health center based in Washington, DC, as part of an effort to prevent the spread of the virus.
The Covid-19 pandemic emerged in the US in the winter/spring of 2020. Initially, there was uncertainty about whether the virus spread when people touched surface. (Researchers soon learned it was unlikely to be transmitted that way.) Many people regularly wiped down surfaces, such as the cans groceries came in, and avoided contact such as shaking hands or touching common surfaces. To help patients feel more comfortable, the staff at Mary’s Center gave out claws such as this one to allow people to open doors or press keypads without touching them. These claws were 3D printed and donated by the University of Maryland to the center.
Mary’s Center, a community health center in Washington, DC, was founded in 1988 by nurse Maria Gomez, who had immigrated from Colombia to the United States as a teenager in the 1960s. Gomez founded the center to serve pregnant Latina immigrants. In many cases, the women had become pregnant as a result of sexual assault during their migration journeys. Over time, the center has expanded to serve children, families, and a diverse patient population by providing health care, education, and social services. Initially housed in a basement in Adams Morgan, the center, as of 2022, has multiple locations in Washington, DC, and Maryland and serves around 65,000 patients a year. It has become a nationally recognized health center for underserved communities.
Lawrence (Larry) Romo, National Commander of the American GI Forum, a Latino veterans civil rights organization, wore this cap at a wreath-laying ceremony in honor of Mexican American World War II Private Felix Longoria at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day (November 11), 2018. Longoria, who was Mexican American, had been killed in the Philippines during World War II. When his family sought to bury his remains at a cemetery in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, the director of a local funeral home refused to allow the family to use its chapel on discriminatory grounds.
The American GI Forum was established in 1948 by Dr. Hector P. Garcia, a veteran World War II Army veteran and civil rights activist. In 1949, the organization gained prominence when it drew attention to what became known as the Longoria Affair, and in response to Garcia’s advocacy in the case, Senator Lyndon Johnson arranged for Longoria to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Before becoming National Commander of the American GI Forum in 2018, Romo, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, served as director of the Selective Service in the Obama Administration.
This button was likely used during Bowl of Rice party events in California in 1938. Between 1938 and 1941, Chinese Americans led fundraising efforts, known as Bowl of Rice parties, to raise money to aid Chinese civilians suffering in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Leaders organized Bowl of Rice party events in San Francisco’s and New York’s Chinatowns, along with in over two thousand communities across the country. The drives featured parades, concerts, pageants, and other activities.
To learn more about the history of Bowl of Rice parties, please see this blog post:
In November 2013, students, mentors and staff of New Urban Arts produced this collaborative three-layer print incorporating images created by various members of the NUA community. Between 50 and 100 copies were produced and sold to benefit the organization’s core after school program, Youth Mentorship in the Arts. Sales of the print raised somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000.
New Urban Arts was established in 1997 in Providence, Rhode Island, to provide free arts programs to high school and emerging artists. It emphasizes youth leadership and collaborative approaches to shaping the direction of the organization, with the print reflecting those values. Nationally recognized, the group has been hailed as a model for out-of-school programs working with underserved youth.
This collection box for the Jewish National Fund is typical of collection boxes, known in Yiddish as pushke, that were common in American Jewish homes in the mid-1900s. Members of Jewish families dropped coins into the box to support the Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901, which has worked to buy land and plant trees to build a Jewish state. The boxes were sent periodically to organizations, such as synagogues, that forwarded the funds onto the Jewish National Fund. In addition to helping fundraise for the JNF, the boxes helped inculcate philanthropic values. They reminded Jews that giving tzedakah was an everyday obligation and encouraged a sense of belonging to the Jewish community. (Tzedakah is Hebrew for “righteous behavior.” By the early 2000s, many understood the word to refer to charitable giving). The sticker on the side of the box is likely from the organization that distributed boxes.
This box belonged to Sylvia Zarrow Saragovitz (1917-1998). Her parents, Bernard Zarrow (oringally Barnet Zarachovitz) and Yetta Liscowitz Zarrow, had immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe around the turn of the twentieth century. As an adult, Sylvia and her husband, Harry Saragovitz, and their three daughters, lived in Washington, DC. Sylvia had aspired to be a nurse, but would have been required to live at the hospital so instead, became a homemaker. When her children grew up, she worked as a salesperson in various stores. Sylvia was active in the Jewish community and her family belonged to various synagogues in Washington. She raised funds for the State of Israel through Israel bonds and belonged to the US labor Zionist group known as Pioneer Women, meeting Golda Meir at one of the club meetings. Her philanthropic activity also included volunteering at the National Museum of Natural History.
This medicine dropper is an example of the sorts of things by members of the local community for migrants being served by the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Humanitarian Respite Center was founded in 2014 by Sister Norma (Sr. Norma) Pimentel, executive director of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the charitable arm of the Diocese of Brownsville. Out of a belief in supporting the dignity of vulnerable people, Sr. Norma established the center at a time when a surge of Central American migrants caused a humanitarian crisis and great political controversy in the United States. The center shelters and cares for migrants for a day after their release by the Border Patrol before they travel to the homes of sponsors, typically family or friends, as part of their immigration process. Among the center’s supporters are members of the predominantly Mexican-American local community who donate clothing, toys, and other necessary supplies to help the newcomers. Between 2014 and 2021, the center assisted over 100,000 refugees.
The American GI Forum is a Latino veterans civil rights organization. It was established in 1948 by Dr. Hector P. Garcia, a veteran World War II Army veteran and civil rights activist, to fight discrimination faced by Mexican American veterans. In 1949, the organization gained prominence when it drew attention to what became known as the Longoria Affair. Private Felix Longoria, who was Mexican American, had been killed in the Philippines during World War II. When his family sought to bury his remains at a cemetery in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, the director of a local funeral home refused to allow the family to use its chapel for discriminatory reasons. Thanks to Garcia’s advocacy in the case, Senator Lyndon Johnson arranged for Longoria to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The American GI Forum became a leading organization working on behalf of Latino veterans and Latino civil rights in the latter 1900s and continues to work on these issues in the 2000s.
Tote bags such as this one were given to donors to the Boston-area public television station WGBH, known as Channel 2. In the 2010s, Downton Abbey was a popular television drama written by Julian Fellowes about the lives of an aristocratic British family and their servants in the early 1900s. The drama was co-produced by Masterpiece, a television drama series produced by WBGH, a Public Broadcasting Station (PBS).
Familiar with the university fundraising operations’ use of thank you gifts (known as premiums), WGBH began offering thank you gifts to supporters in the 1970s. The signatures of several personalities on the station’s shows, including Julia Child, have been printed on the apron.
This is a heart shaped compact. It is gold with pink designs. When open, there is a mirror on the top half and a place on the bottom half to set the makeup.
This makeup compact is an example of the products sold by the Estée Lauder cosmetic company to help raise funds for breast cancer research. In 1992, the company used the power of its global brand to launch a campaign to bring attention to breast cancer. The company’s use of the pink ribbon helped to popularize pink ribbons as a symbol of concern about breast cancer. Through their purchases of these specially branded products, consumers help to support the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
This t-shirt was worn by Corinne Cannon, founder and executive director of the Greater DC Diaper Bank (GDCDB). Established in 2010, GDCDB provides diapers to social service organizations helping families in need in the greater Washington, DC, region. Through events such as diaper drives, the organization raises awareness about the impact of poverty on children and families. The GDCDB is part of the National Diaper Bank Network, an organization supporting the work of diaper banks across the United States.
Typically, GDCDB does not serve families directly. In early 2019, it worked in collaboration with World Central Kitchen and other organizations to assist people who were without pay due to the government shutdown. The GDCDB had distribution points at the World Central Kitchen site in Penn Quarter, Washington, DC, and at Dulles Airport where people could get diapers, incontinence products, and more.
Cannon wore this shirt while doing routine Diaper Bank work and at distribution sites during the philanthropic response to the government shutdown.