The March of Dimes is a not-for-profit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The foundation is headquartered in White Plains, NY and has 51 chapters across the U.S., including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, which provide public health education, advocacy for mothers and babies, and community service grants and outreach programs.

In 2009, gross contributions to the March of Dimes totaled $214.6 million. Of this amount, 75.4 percent was allocated to program services. Contributions to the March of Dimes are voluntary and include corporate and personal gifts, endowments and bequests. The mission of the March of Dimes is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. With its original goal of eliminating polio accomplished, the March of Dimes faced a choice: to either disband or dedicate its resources to a new mission. Basil O’Connor, president of the March of Dimes at the time, directed his staff to identify strengths and weaknesses of the organization and reformulate its mission. In 1958, the NFIP shortened its name to the National Foundation (NF) and launched its “Expanded Program” against birth defects, arthritis, and virus diseases, seeking to become a “flexible force” in the field of public health.

The March of Dimes provides mothers, pregnant women and women of childbearing age with educational resources on baby health, pregnancy, preconception and new motherhood, as well as supplying information and support to families affected by prematurity, birth defects, or other infant health problems. It really is a great charity and while I was working at an internet company that specialized in the hcg diet we did a fundraiser with the march of dimes that went really well because everyone knows who they are.

The March of Dimes was founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) on January 3, 1938, as a response to epidemics of poliomyelitis (polio) sweeping the country. Roosevelt was himself paralyzed as a result of polio. From those earliest days, the foundation was an alliance between scientists working in their laboratories and volunteers, who raised money to support research, education and help polio victims and their families. Basil O’Connor, an attorney and a close associate of President Roosevelt, helped establish the foundation. He became its president in 1938, a position he held for more than three decades. His first task was to create a network of local chapters that could raise money and deliver aid—more than 3,100 county chapters were established during his tenure.

The Salk polio vaccine trial of 1954, initiated and funded by the March of Dimes, showed statistical evidence that Salk’s killed virus vaccine was up to 90percent effective in preventing polio. Almost 624,000 American children were injected with either vaccine or placebo, and more than a million others served as observed control subjects.

In the United States, six coins are currently in circulation. Each coin has a different denomination, or value. The six coins are the one-cent coin, the five-cent coin, the ten-cent coin, the 25-cent coin, the 50-cent coin (half dollar) and 100-cent (dollar) coin. Americans usually refer to their coins by names rather than by values. A one-cent coin is called a penny; it is a copper-colored coin. A five-cent coin is called a nickel, a ten-cent coin is a dime, and a 25-cent coin is a quarter. Nickels, dimes, and quarters are silver colored. Americans use these four coins regularly in their transactions, as customers making purchases and as shopkeepers giving change.

The lack of available coins in the American colonies eventually prompted colonies to start producing their own money. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first colony to make its own coins. The most famous of these were the pine-tree shilling and the oak-tree shilling, both of which featured images of trees. All of the coins the Massachusetts Bay Colony produced was dated 1652, regardless of when they were made. It is believed that this was done because British law stated that only the monarch could issue coins, and there was no monarch in England in 1652.

The U.S. Mint has been in continuous operation since 1792. It makes all U.S. coins, those used regularly in commerce (circulating), those intended primarily for investors and collectors (un-circulating), and those created to honor important people or events (commemorative). Initially the Mint was part of the U.S. Department of State. Then, in 1873, the Mint became part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It remains there, directly under the auspices of the Treasurer of the United States. Back in 1792, Congress authorized the Mint to produce ten coins: eagles ($10.00), half eagles ($5.00), quarter eagles ($2.50), dollars ($1.00), half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes, half dimes, cents, and half cents. Eagles were made of gold, and the cent and half cent were copper. Silver was used for all the other coins. It is believed that U.S. President George Washington actually gave the Mint some of his own silver to use in making early coins.

The dime is the ten-cent coin, which features Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the longest serving U.S. president. His image appeared on the coin in 1946, approximately a year after his death, in part to honor his efforts to aid victims of polio, a disease Roosevelt himself had contracted. The back of the dime features a design made up of a torch, an olive branch, and an oak branch. These elements symbolize, respectively, liberty, peace, and victory.

From 1796 to 1837, dimes were composed of 89.24 percent silver and 10.76 percent copper, the value of which required the coins to be very small to prevent their intrinsic value being worth more than face value. The composition was altered slightly in 1837 with the introduction of the Seated Liberty dime; the silver content was increased to 90 percent, while the copper content was reduced to 10 percent. To maintain the intrinsic value of the new dime, its diameter was reduced from 18.8 millimeters (0.740 inch) to its current figure of 17.9 millimeters (0.705 inch).

The (United States) nickel is a five-cent coin, representing a unit of currency equaling five hundredths of one United States dollar. A later-produced Canadian nickel five-cent coin was also called by the same name. The nickel’s design since 1938 has featured a portrait of Thomas Jefferson on the obverse. From 1938 to 2003, Monticello was featured on the reverse. For 2004 and 2005, nickels featured new designs to commemorate the bicentennials of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition; these new designs were called the Westward Journey nickel series. In 2006, Monticello returned to the reverse, while a new image of Jefferson facing forward was featured on the obverse.

Nickels have always had a value of one cent per gram. They were designed as 5 grams in the metric units when they were introduced in 1866, shortly before the Metric Act of 1866 declared the metric system to be legal for use in the United States. All nickels from that date to the present except for the famous “war nickels” are made of the same metal, an alloy of 75% copper and 25% nickel. “War nickels” were made of 35% silver, 56% copper, and 9% manganese because nickel was needed for the war effort. These coins are distinguished by the extra large mintmark over the dome of Monticello. They have been worth up to 90¢ for their silver content. In August 2009, the value of the metal in the standard nickel was about 5 cents, due to the rising costs of copper and nickel.

A quarter dollar, commonly shortened to quarter, is a coin worth ¼ of a United States dollar, or 25 cents. The quarter has been produced since 1796. The current clad version is two layers of cupronickel (75% Copper, 25% Nickel) on a core of pure copper giving a total composition of 8.33% Ni with the remainder Cu, weighs 5.670 grams, and diameter 0.955 inches width 1.75 millimeters (0.069 in) with a receded edge. Owing to the introduction of the clad quarter in 1965.

Inflation’s effects on an economy are various and can be simultaneously positive and negative. Negative effects of inflation include a decrease in the real value of money and other monetary items over time, uncertainty over future inflation may discourage investment and savings, and high inflation may lead to shortages of goods if consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future. Positive effects include ensuring central banks can adjust nominal interest rates, and encouraging investment in non-monetary capital projects. Economists generally agree that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by an excessive growth of the money supply.

Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied. Low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities, as well as to growth in the money supply. However, the consensus view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth.

Today, most mainstream economists favor a low, steady rate of inflation. Low inflation may reduce the severity of economic recessions by enabling the labor market to adjust more quickly in a downturn, and reduce the risk that a liquidity trap prevents monetary policy from stabilizing the economy. The task of keeping the rate of inflation low and stable is usually given to monetary authorities. Generally, these monetary authorities are the central banks that control the size of the money supply through the setting of interest rates, through open market operations, and through the setting of banking reserve requirements.

High levels of inflation hamper any country’s economic performance thus making it mandatory to indentify the causing factors. Following are some of the reasons that cause Inflation:

1.  Excess printing of money.

2.  Rise in production and labor costs.

3.  High lending levels & Currency devaluation.

4.  High level of taxes

The general cause of inflation that has been agreed among most economists is when there is an increase in the money supply or a decrease in the quality of goods being supplied. Money supply plays a larger role in inflationary pressure, the more money injected in the economy the more will be the inflation. If the money supply is not adequately controlled by the Federal Reserve then it may actually grow at the rate faster than that of the potential output in the economy, or real GDP.

The colloquialism “buck” is often used to refer to dollars of various nations, including the U.S. dollar. This term, dating to the 18th century, may have originated with the colonial fur trade. “Greenback” is another nickname originally applied specifically to the 19th century Demand Note dollars created by Abraham Lincoln to finance the costs of the Civil War for the North. The original note was printed in black and green on the back side. It is still used to refer to the U.S. dollar. Other well-known names of the dollar as a whole in denominations include “greenmail”, “green” and “dead presidents”.

The symbol $, usually written before the numerical amount, is used for the U.S. dollar (as well as for many other currencies). The sign’s ultimate origins are not certain, though it is possible that it comes from the Pillars of Hercules on the Spanish Coat of arms on the Spanish dollars that were minted in the New World mints in Mexico City, Potosí, Bolivia, and in Lima, Peru. These Pillars of Hercules on the silver Spanish dollar coins take the form of two vertical bars and a swinging cloth band in the shape of an “S”.

Another explanation is that this symbol for peso was the result of a late 18th-century evolution of the scribal abbreviation. A fictional possibility suggested is that the dollar sign is the capital letters U and S typed one on top of the other. This theory, popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States.

The first dollar coins issued by the United States Mint (founded 1792) were similar in size and composition to the Spanish dollar. The Spanish, U.S. silver dollars, and Mexican silver pesos circulated side by side in the United States, and the Spanish dollar and Mexican peso remained legal tender until 1857. The coinage of various English colonies also circulated. The lion dollar was popular in the Dutch New Netherland Colony (New York), but the lion dollar also circulated throughout the English colonies during the 17th century and early 18th century. Examples circulating in the colonies were usually worn so that the design was not fully distinguishable, thus they were sometimes referred to as “dog dollars”.

Thus, United States Dollar is the most popular currency and is used as trading purposes.