Editors’ Note: Aaron Horvath and Walter Powell introduce their chapter in the third edition of the Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook (Stanford University Press, 2020), edited by Powell and Patricia Bromley. The Handbook, first published in 1987 and then revised in 2006, has long served as an important resource for the sector. But this edition … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ryan Schlegel takes a look back at grantmaking during the Great Recession and reflects on what lessons it might hold for funders confronting the economic crisis unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic. For more on HistPhil‘s coverage of the Covid-19 crisis, see here. The first quarter of 2020 was one of the all-time worst … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Jon Dean introduces his forthcoming book, The Good Glow: Charity and the Symbolic Power of Doing Good (May 2020). Starting with the basic premise that people tend to think positively of other people whom they perceive to be altruistic and kind, Dean argues that such seemingly charitable people are imbued with a certain … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: An early critic of philanthrocapitalism and the Gates Foundation – arguing in No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (2015) that in the age of philanthrocapitalism “[g]iving more” had become “an avenue for getting more” – Linsey McGoey introduces her newest book, The Unknowers: How Strategic … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis argues that the Covid-19 crisis is a moment to challenge the 5% payout orthodoxy by appreciating its historical contingency. For HistPhil’s other posts on the crisis, see here. Over the last decade, as the public has confronted a steady stream of crises—economic, political, ecological—advocates have steadily called on foundations … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Caroline Shenaz Hossein responds to Lucy Bernholz’s recent blog post predicting shifting philanthropic trends– a “rebirth of mutual aid”– during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hossein argues that “any general trends towards mutual aid in the U.S. should be understood, not simply or principally as a return to earlier giving habits, but also as an … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ellen P. Aprill comments on how President Trump’s recent decision to donate his salary to the Department of Health and Human Services fits into her latest research project on the boundaries between private charitable donations and public funds. On March 3, President Trump’s Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham, announced on Twitter that, consistent with … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: The following is an interview between HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey and the Berggruen Institute’s Vice President of Programs, Nils Gilman, which took place over email this week. An intellectual historian by training and author of Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (2004), Gilman discusses how his orientation as a historian has shaped … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Eric John Abrahamson continues HistPhil‘s forum marking the 50th anniversary of the Tax Reform Act of 1969. In 1969, Texas Rep. Wright Patman and other members of Congress believed that a significant number of donors who created private foundations had little interest in philanthropy. Faced with high estate tax rates that would force … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil takes a brief break from our forum on the Tax Reform Act of 1969 for a post by Thomas Adam complicating the historical association between the growth of democracy and the surging of civil society. Alexis de Tocqueville’s dictum that Americans formed associations for addressing social problems while the French and English … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Karen Ferguson adds her perspective to HistPhil‘s forum on the Tax Reform Act (TRA) of 1969. The controversy surrounding the campaign to decentralize the New York City school system in 1968, and especially the pilot project in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood, helped fuel Congressional opposition to philanthropic activism that saw expression in the … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Ellen Aprill continues HistPhil‘s forum marking the 50th anniversary of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 with a post on the constitutionality of private foundation excise taxes. This post is adapted from an article that will be published in the spring issue of Pittsburgh Tax Review, based on papers presented to a symposium … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Lila Corwin Berman continues HistPhil’s (slightly dilatory) forum marking the 50th anniversary of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 with a contribution explaining how the Act paved the way for the spectacular rise of donor-advised funds. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Congress worried about the unchecked private power that philanthropic entities could hold … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 (TRA), the most significant package of legislative reforms directed at the philanthropic sector in recent memory. We missed the actual semi-centennial, but there’s no reason to think that philanthropic reform will be any less important a topic to consider in 2020 … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Building upon his article in the latest issue of the Journal of Latin American Studies, “La gran dama: Science Patronage, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Social Sciences in the 1940s,” Álvaro Morcillo Laiz considers U.S. foundations’ funding of education, the elaboration of statistics, and human rights activism in Latin America as producing public … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: HistPhil is happy to share with our readers a remarkable primary source document, an unpublished essay by Robert Payton, the founding director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, on the philanthropy scholar Peter Dobkin Hall, and on the personal and professional difficulties Hall encountered in developing a career as a critic … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Rachel Wimpee and Elizabeth Berkowitz, historians in the Research & Education division of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), introduce the RAC’s latest project, Re:source, a new digital storytelling platform focused on philanthropic history. We at HistPhil give Re:source a hearty welcome (its initial postings have been superb) and encourage our readers to check … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Gara LaMarche reflects on lessons learned from leadership positions at two of the nation’s largest foundations, Open Society Foundations and the recently sunset Atlantic Philanthropies. I’ve been helping foundations and rich individuals redistribute their wealth to non-profits and social movements for nearly twenty-five years, and almost all of that time there has been … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: David A. Hollinger calls for scholars, and especially scholars of philanthropy, to engage with the history of missionaries and mission work in the United States. He makes his case in part based on his experience working on one of his recent books, Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed … Continue reading
Editors’ Note: Garrett M. Broad reviews Janet M. Davis’s The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2016). Among those who identify as members of the animal rights community in the United States, religion is rarely a motivating factor for activism. Quite the contrary, animal rights activists are … Continue reading
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