Philanthropic pledges announced this year to help nurses and the nursing profession include:

A $125 million donation in February from Leonard Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, to the University of Pennsylvania to create a tuition-free program that eventually will train 40 nurses a year. The gift is designed to extend for decades.

United Health Foundation, which said in June it would devote $100 million to finance the training of 10,000 nursing and other clinical students who are people of color or have low incomes

In June, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation added $3.8 million to its Future of Nursing campaign, a 10-year effort run with AARP and the AARP Foundation that has made nearly $70 million in grants. The latest grant installment will focus on improving access to care and attracting people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to the nursing work force.

The American Nurses Foundation announced in May its $19 million commitment, which the nonprofit hopes can help make nurses lives easier and improve their ability to provide top-notch health care. Projects include programming robots to take care of some of the routine aspects of nursing and providing extra training to nurses before they are thrown into the pell-mell of the hospital floor or busy clinic.

That extra instruction could have helped nurses like Muroo Hamed, who worked grueling hours in difficult circumstances through the early stages of the pandemic. Fresh out of nursing school and on the COVID-19 ward at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Illinois, Hamed was struck with fear. The building was on lockdown, frustrated patients were isolated from their loved ones, and Hamed and her exhausted colleagues re-used their protective masks for days, worried that supplies would run out.

Afraid of infecting her family, Hamed slept in her parents basement between shifts for the first nine months of the pandemic. What kept her from quitting, she says, were the patients. Sitting beside patients who were barely hanging on, she realized that she was the last person who would hold their hand before they died. Providing the medical and emotional support they needed was a lot different than the exercises and simulations she had completed in school.

Its a real patient, a real human being with real emotions and feelings, she says. If I make a mistake, it can harm the patient, versus just getting a bad grade on a test.

Hamed stuck with it and now monitors patients who have recently been in the intensive care unit. But many of her peers decided they had had enough.

More than 100,000 nurses, or 1.8% of the nationwide work force, left the field in 2021, according to an April study published in the journal Health Affairs.

The flight from the profession wasnt a case of older nurses retiring, The bulk of nurses leaving were under age 35, and more are headed for the exit, according to a study from consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which found that 22% of frontline nurses planned to leave their positions in the next year an increase from the 16% who said that in 2019.

To curb the loss of nurses, foundations have adopted a number of strategies. Some grants have gone to scholarships so nurses can graduate from school debt-free. Some provide specialized training so nurses can provide better care or land in decision-making positions at health providers. And other grants have provided mental health counseling and paid for time off and retreats so nurses dont feel burned out.

While people have always thought highly of nurses, that appreciation has not always translated into the kind of support from philanthropy as other aspects of health care, including doctor training, medical research, and drug development. Philanthropy needs to step up with more grants or nurses will continue to flee the profession, and public health will suffer, nursing leaders say.

The recent flurry of nursing grants join other longer-standing foundation commitments to the profession. The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation makes about $4 million in nursing grants each year, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2019 committed $38 million to a leadership-development program at the University of California at Daviss nursing school.

In September 2021, the Duke Endowment put about $400,000 toward a program to reduce nurse burnout, which provided a wellness retreat and life coaching.

The mental health services provided by such grants could help, says Kate Judge, executive director of the American Nurses Foundation. But the burnout many nurses feel after two-plus years of COVID-19 wont be cured by extra time off, she says, or by counseling.

You cant just help nurses become more resilient or help with their mental health, she says. You have to fix the system that persistently and constantly led them to be so exhausted.

One of the fixes, according to Judge, is to ensure nurses like Hamed arrive on the job with a fair degree of certainty that they are in a specialty they like and that they have the skills to thrive. To help with that, one of the foundations grants in its new nursing program went to Chamberlain University to develop specialized training for nurses who treat surgical patients.

Karen Cox, Chamberlains president, hopes to start similar courses in post-acute care and home care. Over all about a third of nurses cycle out of their first post within a year, she says. Many still want to be nurses, but they may have found that they werent suited to that assignment. For hospital and clinic departments, the annual churn represents a lot of wasted staff time trying to get newly minted nurses up to speed.

The new training will help nursing students grasp what long-serving pros understand through years of practice, Cox says, like instinctively knowing which instruments are needed during a procedure, how to work with a team, and where to stand in surgery.

When youre in that room and somebodys got their chest open, its pretty high stakes, she says.

Even if philanthropy helps nursing schools better prepare people for the job and graduate with less tuition-related debt, many working nurses feel like they dont have a say in how hospitals and clinics are run and how people receive health care, even though they are usually in closest contact with patients, says Donald Schwarz, who recently retired as senior vice president of programs at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Through its Future of Nursing campaign, Robert Wood Johnson, working with AARP and the AARP Foundation, has tried to improve the amount of state-level data collected on the supply and demand of nurses, has helped build coalitions in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and has successfully pushed for 10,000 nurses to sit on boards of health-care providers, businesses, and community organizations throughout the country.

While Schwarz credits the campaign with helping change laws in more than a dozen states that placed barriers for nurses and nurse practitioners to provide care, and for ensuring nurses received supplemental protective gear during the height of the pandemic, he says the campaign has not yet built a lasting grassroots constituency of bedside nurses throughout the United States.

Today, as the pandemic continues, there is a remarkable sense of powerlessness, among nurses, he says.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Alex Daniels is a senior reporter at the Chronicle. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The AP and the Chronicle receive support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP and the Chronicle are solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The request comes a week after South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, banned state employees and contractors from accessing TikTok on state-owned devices, citing its ties to China. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, also a Republican, on Monday banned TikTok from all state government devices.

The issue has gained increasing traction in conservative circles.

A researcher with the conservative Heritage Foundation last month called on government officials to ban TikTok from operating entirely in the United States. And last week, FBI Director Chris Wray said China could use the app to collect data on its users that could be used for traditional espionage operations as part of his growing warnings about the popular video sharing app.

Wisconsinites expect their governor to be aware of the dangerous national security threats TikTok poses and to protect them from this avenue for CCP intelligence operations, said the letter signed by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Reps. Mike Gallagher, Tom Tiffany, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil and Scott Fitzgerald.

Gallagher last month joined with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, in writing an opinion piece calling for governments to ban TikTok.

Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback said the administration takes cybersecurity threats very seriously and regularly consults with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and counterintelligence specialists when making decisions about state government devices.

We will continue to defer to the judgment and advice of law enforcement, cybersecurity, and counterintelligence experts regarding this and other evolving cybersecurity issues, Cudaback said.

Earlier, on Twitter, Cudaback faulted Republicans for not speaking directly with the governor about their request.

My favorite part about Wisconsin Republicans we want to work together narrative is when they send a formal, three-page letter that couldve been a phone call just so they leak to press and get stories like this, she said in reference to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story, which first reported on the letter. In the spirit of bipartisanship, of course!

Evers does not maintain a personal or official TikTok account. His campaign used one, but per state law that was not maintained using any government device.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. It has been targeted by Republicans who say the Chinese government could access user data, such as browsing history and location. U.S. armed forces also have prohibited the app on military devices.

TikTok, which has exploded in popularity with a nearly addictive scroll of videos, has also struggled to detect ads that contain blatant misinformation about U.S. elections, according to a recent report from nonprofit Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy team at New York University.

TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas, based in Los Angeles, has said the company protects all data of American users and that Chinese government officials have no access to it.

Former President Donald Trump issued blanket-style orders against Chinese tech companies, but the White House under President Joe Biden has replaced them with a narrower approach. U.S. officials and the company are now in talks over a possible agreement that would resolve American security concerns.

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Associated Press writer James Pollard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

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The department dropped its demand of $1.1 million against Favre, acknowledging he has already repaid that money for an unfulfilled pledge of public speeches. But it made a new demand of up to $5 million against Favre and a university sports foundation, saying money from an anti-poverty program was improperly used to pay for a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The volleyball facility was a pet project of Favre, and he pledged to lead fundraising efforts for it. Previous filings in the civil lawsuit show text message exchanges between Favre and others about directing money to the volleyball facility from a nonprofit organization that had Human Services contracts. But until Monday, the Human Services lawsuit had not sought to recoup money for the facility.

Favre is a University of Southern Mississippi alumnus, and his daughter started playing volleyball at the Hattiesburg school in 2017. The volleyball facility, also called a wellness center, was completed in late 2019.

In a court filing Monday, the Department of Human Services acknowledged Favre has already repaid $1.1 million he received from the Mississippi Community Education Center. The nonprofit organization had contracts with the department to spend money through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families anti-poverty program.

The organization paid Favre for public speaking to help raise money for the volleyball facility, but the state auditor said Favre failed to make the speeches. The Department of Human Services court filing Monday said Favre possibly recorded a single twenty-second radio advertisement for that $1.1 million.

In 2020, Favre received a demand from the Office of State Auditor requiring the $1.1 million be repaid with interest, the new Human Services court filing said. Recognizing that he had no right to payment for services never performed with funds designed for needy families, Favre repaid the $1.1 million to the State.

Auditor Shad White said last week that Favre still owed more than $200,000 in interest on the $1.1 million.

The Human Services court filing Monday said Favre has not repaid $5 million in TANF money that he orchestrated for the Mississippi Community Education Center to pay to the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation to satisfy his guarantee to fund construction of a university volleyball facility.

The leaders of the Mississippi Community Education Center are Nancy New and her son Zachary New. They have both been on the board of directors for the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, as has Favre.

John Davis, who was Department of Human Services director from 2016 to 2019, agreed to enter into a sham lease with Nancy New and Zachary New to use welfare money to pay for construction of the volleyball facility, the new court filing says.

Favres attorney Eric Herschmann said in a statement Monday that the departments new $5 million demand against Favre is groundless. Herschmann said the department left out key facts, including that the Mississippi attorney generals office signed off on the transfer of money from the Department of Human Services to the University of Southern Mississippi all with the full knowledge and consent of then-Gov. Phil Bryant and other state officials.

That a private citizen, like non-lawyer Brett Favre, could have any liability under these circumstances is baseless, Herschmann said.

Davis pleaded guilty in September to federal and state charges tied to the welfare misspending in what the state auditor has called Mississippis largest public corruption case in decades. Nancy New and Zachary New pleaded guilty in April to state charges of misspending welfare money. All three await sentencing and have agreed to testify against others.

In a Nov. 28 court filing, Favres attorney asked a judge to dismiss Favre from the Human Services lawsuit that seeks to recover millions of dollars in misspent welfare money. The judge has not acted on that request.

Favre grew up in Mississippi and played football at the University of Southern Mississippi before a long career with the Green Bay Packers that included a win in Super Bowl XXXI. He was traded to the New York Jets in 2008 and played there one year before playing his final two seasons for the Minnesota Vikings.

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The lawsuit filed in October remains active even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture moves forward with another effort to help farmers in financial distress in addition to paying farmers who the agency discriminated against.

John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association and one of four plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said that the new programs dont match the USDAs earlier offer to pay off 120% of the debt of farmers who are socially disadvantaged.

According to the lawsuit, this definition applies to more than 6,500 farmers who have traditionally suffered racial or ethnic prejudice, and are saddled with federal loan obligations. The lawsuit says this includes Native Americans or Alaska Natives; Asian Americans; Black Americans or African Americans; Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders; and Hispanic Americans or Latino Americans.

My dad always said, if you give somebody your word then you should own up to it, Boyd said. They gave us their word. We signed a contract and sent it back in and then they repealed the whole measure. I see it as a broken promise.

The proposed payments and lawsuits follow a long history of the USDA refusing to process loans from farmers of color, and in some cases foreclosing more quickly than usual when such farmers who obtained loans ran into problems.

The federal government settled a lawsuit in 1999 filed by Black farmers and paid more than $2.4 billion, but court filings later acknowledged there were persistent problems in the USDA farm loan programs.

In 1910, Black farmers owned more than 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares) of land, but today they have less than 4.7 million acres (1.9 million hectares).

Boyd was just 18 years old when he assumed an existing USDA loan upon buying his first farm in the early 1980s. He says walking into his local USDA office was like a return to the Jim Crow era.

The lawsuit filed by Ben Crump, a Florida-based civil rights attorney known for representing family members of George Floyd and other Black people killed by police, stems from congressional approval of $5 billion in debt relief for thousands of farmers of color. The money was included in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package in 2021.

White farmers in several states then filed lawsuits arguing that the law violated their rights, which prompted judges to halt the program in June 2021.

Faced with the likelihood of a lengthy court battle that would delay payments to farmers, Congress amended the law and offered financial help to a broader group of farmers. The new law allocated $3.1 billion to help farmers struggling with USDA-backed loans and $2.2 billion to pay farmers who the agency discriminated against.

In a statement, the USDA said that litigation likely would have continued for years if they hadnt changed the law.

Congress provided $3.1 billion that will allow USDA to be able to work with distressed borrowers to provide help with their farm debts in new and more effective ways to help borrowers as much as possible stay on the land, stay in agriculture, and maintain eligibility for future assistance, the statement said. Additionally, for those farmers that have suffered discrimination by the USDA farm loan programs, Congress allocated $2.2 billion to provide additional financial assistance.

The USDA completed a comment period on the discrimination component last month and is now drafting proposed rules for the program.

Boyd, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on his 1,500-acre (607-hectare) farm in Baskerville, Virginia, said the federal government sent letters to minority farmers asking them to sign up for the payments, and it should have moved faster to provide the financial help. By changing the rules after farmers sent back their signed documents, the government violated a contract, Boyd said.

We see it as a whole lot of empty promises and broken promises, Boyd said.

He said the guarantee of future federal debt relief caused some farmers to invest in their farms, only to be left in worse financial condition after the law changed and payments were delayed.

The lawsuit is pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and Boyd said he hopes it will put pressure on the government to act.

Jermaine Walker, who grows corn, wheat and other crops near Pinewood, South Carolina, said the promised federal payments would enable him to save his farm from a bank foreclosure. Walker ran into trouble after he invested $1.5 million in a chicken operation and then had a dispute with a poultry company that canceled his contract.

Walker said he had other options to resolve the farms financial problem but then local bank officials assured he would be OK because of the upcoming federal debt relief payments. One year later, the original plan has been replaced and the new plan is still in the works. Walker said hes frustrated with the government.

I, Jermaine Walker, want them to do what they told me they were going to do, he said about the federal governments promise to pay his farms debts. I want my neighbor, Black or white, to succeed, but now my family farm is on the brink.

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