Next Tuesday, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy will host their first Philamplify debate on “Reform Strategies in Education.” Philamplify is the novel evaluative tool that NCRP designed, using some of the principles of crowd-sourcing, in which the NCRP performs a deep investigation into a single foundation, but also opens up the process to the perspectives of grantees and community members.

This first Philamplify debate was inspired by their report on the Walton Family Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of education reform. (For more information on the event, check out this post). These Philamplify reports are themselves rich historical documents, well attuned to changing strategies and priorities in the foundations examined.

HistPhil will also be watching this live debate closely (and hopefully attending), paying particular attention to how the history of education and philanthropy is utilized by each side. Claims as to what philanthropy has–or has not–achieved in the field can prove a powerful weapon in these sorts of exchanges.

-Benjamin Soskis, co-editor of HistPhil