The Dirtbag Billionaire and the Purpose Trust

Posted on December 16, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Dana Brakman Reiser reviews David Gelles’s Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away (Simon & Schuster, 2025). In debates and conversations about corporate social responsibility and social enterprise, few players enjoy the reverence accorded to Patagonia and its founder, Yvon Chouinard. Journalist David Gelles’ new … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy / Philanthropy in the News

From Chocolate to ChatGPT: What Hershey’s Century-Old Philanthropy Reveals About OpenAI’s New $130 Billion Foundation

Posted on November 13, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Peter Kurie discusses the parallels between two American nonprofits that control major for-profit corporations: the OpenAI Foundation, on paper now the wealthiest charitable organization in the U.S., and the Hershey Trust, the subject of his 2018 book, In Chocolate We Trust. (This post has been revised to reflect greater clarity on the organizational … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy

NGO Attacks Gone Wild and the Stirrings of MAGA Voluntarism

Posted on September 25, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis reflects on two Congressional hearings held this summer scrutinizing federal funding of nonprofits and on the ways they helped to delineate right-wing antagonism to the nonprofit sector. I knew it wouldn’t exactly be a University of Chicago faculty seminar. The cheeky title of the hearing on the federal funding … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Nonprofit legal history / Philanthropy and Education

Revisiting Henry Hansmann: Higher Ed Endowments, Financial Buffers, and Three Threats to Institutional Autonomy

Posted on May 20, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Allison Tait revisits Henry Hansmann’s 1990 law review article, Why Do Universities Have Endowments?, at a moment when university endowments face unprecedented threats, elevating Hansmann’s question about their fundamental purpose. Endowments, currently under attack and facing proposals that increase the tax on them in some higher education institutions from 1.4% to 21%, have … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy and the State / Shrinking Space for Global Civil Society

The Slow Violence of Financial Counter-terrorism: A Quarter of Century of Muslim-led charities under the “Financial War on Terror”

Posted on May 9, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Samantha May discusses the “undocumented and unseen violence” that can be brought on by the regulation of Muslim charities as part of the “Financial War on Terror,” based on her 2021 book, Islamic Charity: How Charity Became Seen as a Threat to National Security (Bloombsury 2021). The year 2026 will mark a quarter of … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Oral History/Testimonies

A Republican Journey: From de Tocqueville to Coercive Voluntarism

Posted on April 21, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Reflecting on the novel challenge the Trump administration now poses to civil society, David Morse reflects on the distance traveled from a White House gathering in 2003, one which defined the embrace of voluntarism by Trump’s last Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. Donald Trump’s war on the independence of the independent sector, combined … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / New Works in the Field / Philanthropy and the State

Soskis on The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government

Posted on March 10, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis reviews Tyler O’Neil’s The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government (Bombardier Books, 2025). I first heard about Tyler O’Neil’s The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government because of a small online controversy over its cover. It shows the tentacles of a giant … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / History of Philanthropy and Conservatism

Rothbard vs. Cornuelle: Understanding the New Right’s Antipathy toward Civil Society

Posted on February 17, 2025 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: John Miles Branch explores the feud between two prominent mid-century libertarian thinkers, Murray Rothbard and Richard Cornuelle, as a way of understanding the contemporary right’s growing antipathy toward nonprofits writ large. On February 6, the White House published a memo entitled “Advancing United States Interests When Funding Nongovernmental Organizations” that directs agency heads … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy and Democracy / Philanthropy in the News

Progressive Philanthropy and “The Groups” Critique

Posted on December 19, 2024 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Benjamin Soskis examines the place of philanthropy within the recently surging critique of “The Groups,” the term applied collectively to progressive advocacy organizations, which some have blamed for the Democrats’ November defeat. In weeks after November 5th, amidst the maelstrom of election post-mortems, an interview that journalist Ezra Klein conducted with … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy and the State

The Enduring Political Strength of Nonprofits: A Response to Kuttner

Posted on August 27, 2024 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Jeffrey Berry responds to a recent article by Robert Kuttner in the American Prospect, “The Left’s Fragile Foundations,” by arguing that, in many ways, those foundations are more secure than contemporary alarms would suggest. We live in such a polarized and partisan era, that it is easy to overlook the distinctive political role … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy and Education

What Can We Learn from Women Philanthropists as Precedents for Alumni Education Donors and their Push for Power Today

Posted on April 1, 2024 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Notes: Looking for historical precedents to today’s “aggressive” alumni donors, John Thelin and Richard Trollinger wrote recently on HistPhil that “the aggressive alumnus as major donor and activist is a product of our own times.” Challenging this thesis, Joan Marie Johnson reminds us that “prominent white women philanthropists” in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century United … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy

Why Popularist Attacks on Progressive Philanthropy Miss the Mark

Posted on January 24, 2022 by HistPhil • 2 Comments

Editors’ Note: Over the last year, a number of center-left and centrist journalists and political operatives have advanced a critique of progressive philanthropy from a “popularist” perspective, arguing that progressive philanthropy has promoted causes without significant support from the American public that have proved injurious to the electoral prospects of the Democratic party. This critique … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy

Lead Zeppelin? A Chance for a Revival of Germany’s Third Sector

Posted on August 31, 2021 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Thomas Adam highlights an important recent court case in Germany that has the potential to transform the nation’s philanthropic sector. Over the course of the nineteenth century, German civil society experienced a remarkable expansion in the absolute numbers of, and in the assets given to, foundations and endowments. Wealthy Germans created endowments that … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Nonprofit legal history

The Stakes of Americans For Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta

Posted on July 13, 2021 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Legal scholars Sarah C. Haan and Faith Stevelman assess the significance and consequences of the recent Supreme Court ruling on nonprofit disclosure, Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. On July 1st, in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (AFPF), a splintered Supreme Court majority invalidated California’s right, as a perquisite to in-state fundraising, … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / New Works in the Field / Philanthropy in the News

Philanthropy in the Empire of Pain

Posted on April 23, 2021 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Benjamin Soskis reviews Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. For a few weeks each summer for the last decade or so, one of my daughters has attended camp at the Smithsonian Institution. That meant that many July mornings and afternoons, when I was dropping off or … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy in the News

The Biden Partnerships Plan is Faith-Based Initiative 5.0

Posted on March 9, 2021 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Stanley Carlson-Thies provides historical background for President Biden’s recent (re-)establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. President Biden by Executive Order 14015 (Feb. 14, 2021) created a White House office to promote government partnerships with civil society organizations, both religious and secular, to maximize the effectiveness of services for … Continue reading →

Current Events and Philanthropy / New Works in the Field / Philanthropy / Philanthropy and Democracy / Philanthropy and Education / Philanthropy and Historical Research / Philanthropy and Inequality / Philanthropy and the State

Updating HistPhil’s Reading List: The Long History of Knowledge Production on US Philanthropy

Posted on June 12, 2020 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

Editors’ Note: Today (June 7, 2023), HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey has updated this list of readings on US philanthropy that she originally published three years ago in June 2020 and last updated in April 2021. In June 2020, I first uploaded onto HistPhil a list of reading resources on US philanthropy, in response to Black … Continue reading →

COVID-19 Pandemic / Current Events and Philanthropy / New Works in the Field

Power, Ignorance and the New Philanthropic Enlightenment

Posted on March 30, 2020 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

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 →

COVID-19 Pandemic / Current Events and Philanthropy

Mutual aid and physical distancing are not new for Black and racialized minorities in the Americas

Posted on March 24, 2020 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

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 →

Current Events and Philanthropy / Philanthropy in the News

Trump Donated His Salary to HHS. Is that Kosher?

Posted on March 6, 2020 by HistPhil • Leave a comment

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 →