Welcome to the Medical Benevolence Foundation

For over 40 years, The Medical Benevolence Foundation (MBF) has worked to provide hope and healing to those most in need. Working with our international church partners, MBF supports healing ministries in more than 100 hospitals and clinics throughout the world. Our work includes:

Funding
MBF Provides crucial funds needed to give medical care to the needy. We also help fund medical mission workers and build, maintain, and operate hospitals in some of the world's most impoverished nations and communities. Through your gifts, MBF contributes to the fight against diseases of poverty, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and malnutrition.

Medical Supplies
MBF works with U.S. partners to fill cargo containers with surplus donations of medical supplies and equipment, which are then sent to a wide variety of grateful facilities around the world. MBF works hard to insure these supplies arrive in safe hands and are put to good use to help those in need.

Mission Service Personnel
Through an international short-term Mission Service Program, MBF is able to recruit healthcare professionals and others to support healing ministries in developing nations. We also support PC(USA) long term medical missionaries.

Community Development
MBF goes even further than immediate healing needs by working toward lasting changes that effect whole communities. This includes community health programs, helping to train indigenous healthcare workers and personnel, education programs on disease prevention and nutrition, and more.

Awareness
Domestically MBF works to inform donors of the great needs around the world and how, together, we can all be a part of this exciting work. MBF reports back the mission impact of your gifts, on lives saved and transformed, and progress made through these ministries in many places.

Giving Back Fund Releases 2009's Top Celebrity Givers

Look To The Stars is proud to announce that our partners at the Giving Back Fund have announced their third annual Giving Back 30, a list of celebrities who have made the largest donations to charity according to public records.

Readers may have been surprised to learn that Paul Newman replaced Oprah Winfrey as the most generous celebrity of 2008. Oprah had occupied the number one spot by a wide margin for the first two years of the list.

Before his death, Newman made a donation of nearly $21 million to his self-named Newman’s Own Foundation. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were second with a $13.5 million donation to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which distributed $6.4 million to charity, including a $2 million grant to The Global Health Committee for an Ethiopian clinic project, a $1 million grant to the Make it Right Foundation founded by Pitt, and $500,000 to the Armed Services YMCA USA.

“Our hope is that celebrities will begin to become more comfortable sharing information about their charitable giving - perhaps not disclosing everything they give, but sharing enough to enable them to serve as role-models to their peers and fans,” said Marc Pollick, President and Founder of The Giving Back Fund.

Also on the list: Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Mel Gibson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurie and Larry David and Drew Barrymore. Several authors made the list this year, along with representatives from the NBA, NFL and NASCAR. To see the complete list visit The Giving Back Fund’s web site at www.givingback.org.

HOW IT WAS COMPILED

To compile the most accurate rankings, The Giving Back Fund culled media reports of charitable giving by sports and entertainment professionals; reviewed PF-990 tax-forms; contacted more than 250 publicists, attorneys, agents, agencies, and managers for information about their clients; polled more than 150 charities known for their celebrity associations; and contacted all of the major sports leagues.

The Giving Back Fund did not include grants made by foundations in the list so as to avoid counting the same funds twice - once when the donor gave money to a foundation and again when the donor decided on a beneficiary for that money. The Giving Back Fund did not calculate giving as a percentage of the celebrities’ income because there are no public records documenting income. Re-directed income from sponsorship and merchandising deals to charity made by a celebrity was also not reported as it is not available to the public.


Donations to private foundations are disclosed in public documents. However, donations to public charities are not publicly disclosed and therefore may not be reported in the Giving Back 30.