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Every year I publish a “holiday gift guide” column that offers ideas for readers looking to contribute to great charities before year-end, and now there’s an exciting twist: One reader has committed $1 million for a $100,000 award to my top charity for each of the next ten years. I announce this at the end of my column today.

The gift guide column originated many years ago after a Times colleague told me that she and many others struggled at the end of the year to figure out the best charities to donate to. “You should write a column with some suggestions,” she urged. I thought it was an interesting idea but — cough, cough — very un-Timesian, so I sat on it. Over time, however, it became clear that readers yearned for such practical advice, and increasingly I saw a mismatch: readers who wanted to help and didn’t know how, and heroic individuals and organizations who desperately needed resources but were unknown. So I began writing the gift guide to play matchmaker, naming a half-dozen little-known organizations working to make the world a better place.

Then early this fall I had lunch with David Cohen, a former partner at Farallon Capital, and he proposed the annual prize as a way to increase the impact of these giving columns. David, a South African who was a few years behind me at Oxford University, recently established his Ezrah Charitable Trust to focus on the “neediest of the needy.” Shortly after, several others pitched in: Tess and Josh Lewis contributed $25,000 toward the 2019 awards and this was matched by Focusing Philanthropy, an organization that encourages smart donations to high-impact organizations. These donors did not seek to be named, but I thought it important to be transparent and disclose the sources of the foundational funding.

The choice of winner and runners-up is completely up to me, and the money will not go through The New York Times. For 2019, the top winner will get $100,000 and the others about $10,000 each — plus whatever readers contribute to them directly. I’m also considering ways to build on the annual prizes with initiatives to help the winning organizations beyond the prize money.

So my job now is to identify fabulous organizations. I’m not soliciting applications, for I mostly name groups that I’ve visited in the field; I’m not able to evaluate proposals. I hope to publish my column with the winner organizations in early December. So stay tuned!

And meanwhile, you can look at my 2018 gift guide column here, or check out earlier ones from 2017 and 2016.

The Syria Stain on Our Honor

My Sunday column begins with a contrast: President Obama’s 2014 work with the Kurds to avert a genocide against the Yazidi people in Syria, versus Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds to unleash war, mayhem and possibly ethnic cleansing. I’ve reported on that border and feel sick about what is unfolding, and it seems to me not only an unraveling of recent years of Middle East policy but a corrosion of 75 years of the post-war American-led international order. Please read.

The Crony Capitalism Is Ours

When I was a reporter based in Asia, American officials would regularly come and denounce the local “crony capitalism,” including the way government officials rewarded themselves. Now I feel we owe those countries an apology: President Trump’s decision to hold the G7 meeting at one of his own properties achieves a scale of crony capitalism that even Indonesia could never attain. The idea that he will force foreign governments and American officials to stay at his property and pay his company to do business is unfathomably corrupt.

The Worst Place To Be Female?

South Sudan has long been one of the world’s worst places to be female. A girl is more likely to die in childbirth there than to graduate from high school, and sexual violence is widespread. I’ve interviewed so many women and girls in recent years with bloodcurdling stories of murder, rape and torture at the hands of the Army or various militias. In the marshes in the center of the country, I found women who fled with their babies into the water whenever soldiers approached, and then stood neck deep for hours at a time, because they said it was better to risk the crocodiles than the troops. Now a new report from Refugees International says that sexual violence is continuing apace, despite a peace deal, and calls for urgent action to address it. I hope governments around the world put pressure on South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, to rectify these outrages.

I hope governments around the world put pressure on South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, to rectify these outrages.

And here’s my column about what Trump has unleashed in Syria.

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Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The Times since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can sign up for his free, twice-weekly email newsletter and follow him on Instagram. His next book will be published in January. @NickKristof • Facebook

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