Nonprofit Facts

Tony Hawk kept getting emails from kids who had been ticketed or even arrested just for skateboarding in the street. So he started funding places where they could skate legally instead. His foundation, now called The Skatepark Project, has helped build nearly 700 free skateparks in all 50 states. That free skatepark in your town? He probably helped pay for it.

A former Marine pilot in Peru, Indiana, bought a Vietnam-era Army Huey on eBay. The listing said it was not flyable. It was trailered 1,300 miles home from Maine, volunteers rebuilt it, and in 2007 it flew again. The nonprofit he and his brother started now flies three Hueys and has given more than 23,000 rides. The crew says a veteran is reunited with a Huey at every event.

Flea grew up playing trumpet in Los Angeles. He has said his public school's music department kept him out of trouble as a kid. By 2001, Los Angeles had gutted school arts funding, so Flea opened a free music school in Silver Lake. 25 years later, it is still running. It grants scholarships for free lessons and instruments to families who cannot pay. He never forgot what music did for him.

In April 2020, Matt Pierson, a fifth-generation Montana rancher, phoned neighbors and asked them to donate cows they planned to sell. Within six days, 700 pounds of hamburger reached food banks. When butchers ran out of room, his nonprofit built a federally inspected plant of its own. More than 250,000 pounds have gone out since, and the donated meat still goes free to Montana food banks and schools.

More than 420 severely injured veterans have been handed the keys to mortgage-free houses built around their injuries. It started when a Massachusetts construction supervisor saw a news story about a soldier who lost both legs in Iraq, found no group building homes for men like him, and started one in 2004. New houses are still being handed over.