Editors’ Note: Catherine Milton, the first executive director of the Commission on National and Community Service (which laid the foundation for AmeriCorps), recounts the creation of the agency, the subject of her new book, Creating AmeriCorps: Bipartisanship in Action (2023). In 1991, I was sitting in my office at Stanford University, when I received a … Continue reading
Category Archives: New Works in the Field
Magnificence: from Lorenzo de’ Medici to J.P. Morgan – and beyond?
Editors’ Note: Guido Alfani explores the concept of the ideal of “magnificence” and situates it in relation to “munificence” and “philanthropy,” based on a discussion in his new book, As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West (Princeton University Press, 2023). Why was Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492) called “the Magnificent”? Because … Continue reading
The Uneven Landscape of Civic Opportunity in the United States: What We Discovered While Mapping the Modern Agora
Editors’ Note: Jae Yeon Kim introduces the research he has conducted, along with other colleagues at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, on the uneven associational landscape of civic opportunity in the United States. I was born and raised in South Korea and came to the United States about a decade ago to … Continue reading
How did GoFundMe become “the Giving Layer of the Internet”?
Editors’ Note: Matt Wade recounts the growth of GoFundMe as the world’s largest giving platform, as analyzed in his recent article in the Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing. Despite their enormous success in introducing millions of people to the extraordinary potential of peer-to-peer fundraising, GoFundMe has lately been having a difficult time. There is accumulating … Continue reading
Civil society by the numbers? Nonprofits, accountability, and the creative politics of quantitative discipline
Editors’ Note: Aaron Horvath introduces the argument behind his recent article in American Journal of Sociology, “Organizational Supererogation and the Transformation of Nonprofit Accountability.” In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the nonprofit sector experienced a crisis of accountability. News of fraud, overpaid executives, and other misdeeds fueled popular anxieties over whether nonprofits were misusing … Continue reading
The Rise of Philanthropy LLCs and the Erosion of the Bargain of 1969
Editors’ Note: Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven Dean discuss the significance of the rise of philanthropy limited liability companies, and place it within historical context, based on material from their new book, For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving (Oxford 2023). The history of U.S. … Continue reading
Antislavery in What We Owe the Future: The Contingency of Moral Change
Editors’ Note: Matthew Wyman-McCarthy examines the role of British abolitionism as a case study and model for the longtermism movement in William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future (Basic Books, 2022). Throughout the eighteenth century, most Britons who bothered to reflect on the transatlantic slave trade at all would have considered it an unalterable fact … Continue reading
The Development of Charity in Early Jewish Thought
Editors’ Note: Gregg Gardner introduces his new book, Wealth, Poverty, and Charity in Jewish Antiquity (University of California Press, 2022), The ancient rabbis of the first centuries tell a story about a king, named “Munbaz.” Munbaz is loosely based on a historical figure – Monobazus II, the scion of a royal dynasty from Mesopotamia that … Continue reading
Stemming the Financial Rivalry that has Eroded Esteem for Higher Education
Editors’ Note: Bruce Kimball and Sarah Iler discuss the deleterious consequences of the financial rivalry among higher education institutions, as detailed in their new book Wealth, Cost, and Price in American Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). A version of this post appeared in Inside Higher Education. Over the last four decades, public esteem … Continue reading
Where Have All the Funders Gone? How Big Philanthropy Left the Humanities Behind
Editors’ Note: Leonard Cassuto and Robert Weisbuch discuss the decline of U.S. philanthropic foundation support for the humanities in higher education, based on their book The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education (Johns Hopkins, 2021). And then there were none. As the millennium unfolded, humanists have watched as funders have deserted U.S. higher … Continue reading
The many meanings of ‘community’ and nonprofits’ place in urban policy
Editors’ Note: Jeremy Levine discusses the indeterminate meaning of ‘community’ and how it shapes nonprofit organization’s place in urban policy, a major theme of his 2021 book, Constructing Community: Urban Governance, Development, and Inequality in Boston (Princeton University Press). It is impossible to understand urban policy in the United States without appreciating the role of … Continue reading
A Masterpiece of Political Imagination: What Tocqueville Saw–and Didn’t See–in the United States
Editors’ Note: The following is an adaptation of a lecture delivered in May 2022 by Olivier Zunz at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture on his book, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville (Princeton University Press, 2022). When Alexis de Tocqueville, only 25 years-old in 1831, … Continue reading
Inequality and Organizational Vitality: A History of Nonprofit Neighborhoods and the American State
Editors’ Note: Claire Dunning introduces her new book, Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State (University of Chicago, 2022). I first encountered the puzzle that inspired my recent book, Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State, at a meeting I attended while working at The Boston Foundation … Continue reading
Corporate Philanthropy as Diversity Capital
Editors’ Note: Patricia A. Banks reflects on the significance of Black cultural patronage and diversity capital, key concepts in her new book, Black Culture, Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford University Press, 2022). In 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) opened its doors to the public. … Continue reading
The Tyranny of Generosity and How we Can Tame it
Editors’ Note: Ted Lechterman introduces his new book, The Tyranny of Generosity: Why Philanthropy Corrupts Our Politics and How We Can Fix It (Oxford University Press, 2021). When philosophers assess philanthropy, they tend to focus narrowly on the decisions of donors and the relationship between donors and recipients. Do individuals have a duty to give? … Continue reading
‘A sprawling, complicated chronicle’ of ACT UP New York: A review of Schulman’s Let the Record Show
Editors’ Note: Dan Royles reviews Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York, 1987-1993. This version of the review has been revised to reflect a response from Schulman. Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 is a sprawling, complicated chronicle of … Continue reading
Hybrid entities on the Nonprofit-Government Continuum
Editors’ Note: Ellen Aprill introduces her research on governmental and semi-governmental federal charitable entities. A version of this post appeared on Notice & Comment, a blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice. Few American taxpayers know that they can make tax-deductible charitable contributions of cash and … Continue reading
What’s New? Exploring the concept of nonprofit organizational founding
Editors’ Note: Jamie Levine Daniel introduces her research, done with Fredrik O. Andersson, on expanding the definition of nonprofit organization founding, recently published in the Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research. “When is a nonprofit founded?” This seems like a straightforward question. However, the answer is anything but straightforward, because founding is a … Continue reading
The many meanings of “women’s empowerment”: a history of the “women in development” movement
Editors’ Note: Joanne Meyerowitz examines the history of the “women in development” movement, based on material in her recent book, A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit (Princeton University Press, 2021). Today “empowering women” is a ubiquitous buzz phrase in both the policy and philanthropy of global … Continue reading
Behind the Scenes of WHITE PHILANTHROPY
Editors’ Note: HistPhil co-editor Maribel Morey introduces her new book, White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order (2021), and underscores the research methodology at the foundation of the book’s historical narrative. Earlier this month, my first book, White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s An American Dilemma and the Making … Continue reading