Nicholas Kristof’s 2025
Holiday Impact Prize
Supporting little-known organizations
working to make the world a better place.
Since 2009, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has written an annual “holiday gift guide” column to bridge a philanthropic gap: readers who want to help but don’t know how, and nonprofits that are not on most donors’ radar but deliver high impact and can do much more if they have the resources. The column has helped raise the profiles of organizations that work on the very issues he covers in his journalism—health, education, human rights and women’s rights, both domestically and abroad.
For the seventh year in a row, Kristof will award a Holiday Impact Prize to the nonprofits he showcases. The prize includes an initial cash award plus donations from readers who have helped raise more than $59 million since 2019, and more than $17 million last year alone.
This year, for the first time in the prize’s history, Bloomberg Philanthropies will generously match all reader donations to help the featured organizations further scale their impact. In addition, a $1,000,000 contribution from King Philanthropies has increased the prize pool to $1,150,000.
Kristof’s 2025 column highlights the three winners who will divide the prize money equally. All funds raised by January 31, 2026 will help these remarkable organizations accomplish the impacts outlined below.
For more information, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.
Donation Opportunities
There are three opportunities to become a
2025 Holiday Impact Prize donor.
Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition
Delivering lifesaving aid where others cannot
Since conflict erupted in Sudan in April 2023, nearly 12 million people have been displaced. Half the population is food insecure, and 1 in 3 children suffer from acute malnutrition. Traditional aid organizations struggle to reach the hardest-hit areas due to ongoing conflict and logistical barriers.
Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition (MASC) supports a network of 26,000+ Sudanese volunteers, known as Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), to deliver lifesaving aid according to the needs of their own communities. ERRs organize communal kitchens, arrange evacuations, provide shelter and education, and distribute medicines—and are often the only lifeline in places cut off by conflict. This grassroots network has helped over 3 million people, despite receiving a fraction of direct humanitarian funding.
For the average cost of $11, you can help trusted community volunteers deliver essential services to a person enduring war.
Helen Keller Intl
Combatting and eliminating preventable infectious diseases
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect more than one billion people worldwide. Often called “diseases of poverty,” they can cause blindness, disability, and disfigurement. Though preventable and treatable, NTDs persist in the lowest-income communities, where access to medicine is limited.
Helen Keller Intl partners with governments and communities across Africa to deliver lifesaving medicine through mass drug administration campaigns with a network of 170,000+ trained community health workers. Because of their work, 110 million people across six countries are no longer at risk of blindness or disability from neglected tropical diseases. Helen Keller’s work goes beyond prevention by providing corrective surgeries and treatment to restore health and livelihoods.
But today, funding cuts threaten this progress. Without resources to maintain regular treatment, millions of doses of donated medicine are at a standstill – leaving millions of children and families to face renewed risks. For $75, you can help Helen Keller provide medication for 100 people in communities affected by these debilitating diseases and reopen doors to education and economic opportunity.
Vision To Learn
Helping every child see clearly
About one in four children in school naturally need glasses to see the board or pages of a textbook clearly, but in low-income communities across the U.S., up to 95% of students who need glasses don’t have them.
Vision To Learn uses mobile clinics – staffed with licensed eye care professionals – to provide free eye exams and glasses to students in need directly at their schools. By removing the logistical and financial barriers to receiving eye care, they ensure all students can fully participate in class, read, and learn without interruption.
Since 2012, Vision To Learn has reached almost 4 million students and distributed more than 600,000 pairs of glasses nationwide. Research shows that students who receive glasses via the program gain 2-6 months of additional learning, with those in the bottom quartile of their class showing the biggest improvement.
$150 provides a child with glasses and the support they need to succeed in school and beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions
Click on any of the Holiday Impact Prize FAQs in the list below to view the answer.
Focusing Philanthropy is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that believes donations should be made with the same level of strategic intent, information, and confidence as other investments. The organization targets serious human challenges that individual donors can successfully address, chooses tactics that are demonstrably effective, identifies confidence-inspiring implementing partners, conducts ongoing monitoring, and assures substantive reporting. These services are provided free to both donors and partners in an effort to scale interventions that work. Donations are fully tax deductible, and Focusing Philanthropy covers all administrative costs and replenishes credit card transaction fees so that 100% of funds contributed go to implementing partners.