Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and philanthropists have put that maxim into action by accelerating their spending. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $500 million to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Twitter TWTR CEO Jack Dorsey pledged $1 billion for coronavirus relief and later added racial justice organizations to his list of beneficiaries. MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon AMZN CEO Jeff Bezos, has handed out $1.7 billion to address the...

Jeff Bezos’s $1 billion effort to create free preschools for low-income children has provoked criticism that he’s trying to solve a problem he helped create — but it could also draw attention to early childhood education at a critical time for the sector. The first Bezos Academy is scheduled to open Oct. 19 in Des Moines, Wash., Bezos said recently in an Instagram FB, +1.80% post. The school will be the first in a national network of tuition-free private schools funded by the Amazon AMZN,...

An electric car, $10,000 in cash, a cruise vacation — they’re not prizes on a TV game show; they’re rewards people can win for filling out their 2020 U.S. census form. With just days left to complete this year’s census, some community groups and municipalities are running contests offering money and other prizes to drum up participation in the once-a-decade national head count, which determines big questions like where to draw congressional districts, and smaller ones like where to put a new...

Federal prosecutors have accused Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Donald Trump, and three others of misleading donors to the “We Build the Wall” campaign, but some who gave money to the cause say they’re not victims and would gladly donate again. Bannon, U.S. Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, and two others were arrested Thursday on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. Bannon pleaded...

Working mothers took two paths when COVID-19 shut down schools, both less than ideal Working mothers got hit with a one-two punch in the early days of the pandemic. Because child-care demands fell mostly on their shoulders, moms who were lucky enough to keep their jobs were not so lucky in the domestic sphere as shutdown orders kept children home from school, new research by the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Reserve suggests. In states with early shutdown orders, mothers took one of two...