Riptide, you have a very noble heart and those are great ideas!!

I would do the following:

Set up business schools in at risk neighborhoods and teach enterpernerual skills to the poor for free. I would also offer low interest loans and free professional advice to those folks to suceed.

Create an investment fund specializing in Micro-lending to help people in the third world make a better living for themselves.

Set up a fund to procure, set up, and pay for computers for the poor. This day and age knowledge is power.

Create a fund that allows the homeless to deposit thier SSI and Welfare checks, safely and that will pay them interest back. This will allow them to begin to accumulate actual money, which ultimatley will allow them to pay for a place to live.

Offer a large prize to any archtect, which can design a mass producable environmentally friendly, expandable , quality modular home which can be produced and sold for 50K or less. I would set up a company to build these homes and offer low interest loans to those interested in purchasing them.

Set up a fund that will allow low income folks to buy a civic hybrid or a prius, I would require if they have a pre-90s car that it be turned over to me and I will have it stripped and crushed. Therby reducing the carbon footprint.

Set up subsidized private schools for low income folks in areas where the public schools have failed. These schools would use innovative methods of teaching to help the most at risk kids perform better

Donate genrously to cancer research, aids research, and alzheimer's research.

Those are just a few things I could think of, Good Topic!!