David Hammack | Case Western Reserve University (original) (raw)

Extended Vitae by David Hammack

Comprehensive list of David C. Hammack's reviews of books.

Philanthropy and Civil Society by David Hammack

Nonprofit Policy Forum, 2016

Conflicting cultural and religious values pose challenges-challenges that are too often ignored-t... more Conflicting cultural and religious values pose challenges-challenges that are too often ignored-to efforts to comprehend and to solve tough social problems. Value-conflict challenges call for much more thoughtful attention both by analysts seeking to understand the sources of problems, and by advocates for particular solutions. This contribution to the ARNOVA Policy Brief series draws on a wide range of historical and social research to advance its argument for recognizing value conflicts.

American Behavioral Scientist, 2018

The United States offers a challenging case for the comparative study of philanthropic foundation... more The United States offers a challenging case for the comparative study of philanthropic foundations. Depending on definition, foundation numbers total 80,000 or 130,000. They hold comparatively large assets per capita, though they vary enormously in assets; most are quite small, and compared with government and profit-seeking business, their wealth and their influence are very limited. Public controversies shape and confuse much of the discussion about them: the increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth, the continuing subordination of people of color and women, the impact of money on elections and on public policies and international relations, the prominence of the largest endowed, nonprofit universities and hospitals. Seeking to evaluate the critiques as well as the foundations’ positive contributions, the U.S. researcher encounters all “the combined complexities” that bedevil comparative international studies of foundations. Deriving their corporate charters from the states, they operate under diverse legal environments and vary in self-understanding and operations. American foundations prize their autonomy, though regulation denies them the privacies and choices available to business firms and the superrich. Historically close affiliations with religion brings many funds under constitutional provisions that restrict public access to information. Although the data are incomplete and superficial, high-quality nonprofit websites and archives do provide much federally mandated and other data. Focusing more on change and the protection of values than on relief of basic need, they underwrite highly diverse and competing purposes; many of them promote the leading universities, hospitals, and arts organizations in their home regions. Recent donors, determined to achieve defined outcomes, have increasingly used community foundation or commercial advised funds rather than independent foundations. Finding that their resources are too limited to advance favored policy or social changes, a number of celebrated funds have recently sought to increase their influence through expertise, collaboration with communities and other organizations including businesses, supplementing grants with loans, and other initiatives.

A Versatile Amerian Institution: The Changing Ideals and Realities of Philanthropic Foundations, 2013

This is a book published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2013. America’s grantmaking found... more This is a book published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2013.

America’s grantmaking foundations have grown rapidly over the course of recent decades, even in the face of financial and economic crises. Foundations have a great deal of freedom, enjoy widespread legitimacy, and wield considerable influence. In this book, David Hammack and Helmut Anheier follow up their edited volume, American Foundations, with a comprehensive historical account of what American foundations have done with that independence and power.

While philanthropic foundations play important roles in other parts of the world, the U.S. sector stands out as exceptional. Nowhere else are they so numerous, prominent, or autonomous. What have been the main contributions of philanthropic foundations to American society? And what might the future hold for them?

A Versatile American Institution considers foundations in a new way. Previous accounts typically focused narrowly on their organization, donors, and leaders, and their intentions—but not on the outcome of philanthropy. Rather than looking at foundations in a vacuum, A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION consider their roles and contributions in the context of their times and their economic and political circumstances.

A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION, 2013

For more than a hundred years, American courts, regulators, and legislators have steadily agreed ... more For more than a hundred years, American courts, regulators, and legislators have steadily agreed that foundations, including non-sectarian, general-purpose foundations, have a right to independent existence and indeed to favorable tax treatment, so long as they are not employed to increase the personal wealth of donors and their families, and so long as they avoid party politics and devote their resources to the very wide range of “charitable purposes” we detail at the beginning of this chapter. The core rationale is that so long as they accept these broad limits, foundations contribute valuably to American freedoms and American pluralism.

Autonomy and variety in purpose have always been fundamental to American foundations. The dominant American political traditions have never required that foundations (or other charities) commit to a single purpose such as reducing poverty or subsidizing government. Instead, American political traditions insist that donors have the right to use their wealth to advance a very wide range of beliefs, virtues, practices, and innovations. American traditions encourage donor commitment across a wide range of concerns, from religion, education, and culture to health and social justice to the advance of sports, hobbies, and collecting.

In every era public opinion has limited the scope of initiative available to foundations – as to other actors. The acceptable range of views has changed over time, reflecting the fortunes and misfortunes of American history. Nonetheless it suggests a general trajectory. Like other charities, foundations encountered significant legal and political limits under slavery, during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, and to some extent in times of war, including the Cold War. Charities devoted to minority religious and cultural traditions long struggled against prejudice in public opinion as well as discrimination in law and legislation. But American charities have always enjoyed wide possibilities, possibilities that have expanded over the decades, even as federal regulation has to a considerable extent supplanted control by the individual states. In the United States, foundations like other charities justify their existence, and their privileges – and indeed, establish their legitimacy – not so much by reducing poverty or by relieving taxpayers of the expense of public facilities and services, as by enriching and strengthening America’s varieties of religious, cultural, educational, scientific, and policy analysis, and by increasing the possibilities for innovation.

Our leading hypothesis is that it is flexibility, the ability to remove funding from one beneficiary or entire field and move it to another that makes foundations distinctive. By their actions, foundations establish or help establish realities – the grant-seeking process itself, the worthiness of certain ideas or achievements, the legitimacy of certain professions and disciplines, the very existence of new self-sustaining organizations, on rare occasions entire sets of interacting organizations – that others come to take for granted.

A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION: THE CHANGING IDEALS AND REALITIES OF PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS

Americans developed the essential elements of the modern philanthropic foundation in the first ha... more Americans developed the essential elements of the modern philanthropic foundation in the first half of the nineteenth century. In their modest wealth, creativity, local focus, engagement with national and international developments, and emphasis on religion, education, the arts, and local economic development, nineteenth-century American foundations had much in common with the foundations of our own day. They engaged with inescapable problems and established enduring patterns. Early in the century, every foundation was devoted to a specific purpose. But by the middle of the century the best-endowed colleges acted very much like general-purpose foundations, as did the largest religious funds, and in the next several decades a number of independent general-purpose funds had joined them.

Misleading and often-repeated statements continue to confuse most discussions of nineteenth-century foundations and philanthropy. Continuing conventions of legal reasoning, in Britain as well as in the United States, have maintained fictions about the laws of charities and trusts. Religious passions shaped what was said in the past – and what was not said – with consequences that persist today. Battles over taxes continue to complicate discussion of religious and cultural freedom. Stories about the American Revolution, about the writing of the Constitution, and about the early presidents, are brandished as trump cards in political debate; these useful often mythic stories have also shaped what is said about early foundations.

Most nineteenth-century writers on charity and philanthropy sought not to describe realities but rather to instruct readers in their religious duties – or to help legal clients achieve their purposes; the same has been true of later commentators. Social critics condemn the wealthy and their works; reformers praise donors for helping others to help themselves; celebrators of achievement dismiss criticism of the successful. In recent years, some critics have emphasized class above all, insisting that we see all effective universities, colleges, hospitals, and arts organizations as nothing more than devices for the dominance of elites. Meanwhile, others have sought a Constitutional and early American legal history that would justify radical changes in the relations of American governments and religion. The fogs of religious, political, and social conflict continue to confuse discussions of foundations.

To work through the conflicting and often false assumptions and assertions that dominate the literature and to find a history that helps account for today’s realities, it is important to start with a clear understanding of some of the key political and religious issues of earlier times. It is also important first to accept the current accepted definition of a foundation in the United States as simply a fund of money held by a trust or corporation, with principal and income to be applied over time to charitable purposes. To say this is not to simplify: the notions of “trust,” “corporation,” “charity,” and “purpose” have always been subject to debate. If we are to understand the history and development of foundations in the United States, we have to find our way through the way these terms have been caught in – are still being caught it – conflicting ideas about the actual and proper relations between church and state, between state and corporation, between the citizen and the state, between the nation and its parts.

Taking the large view, foundations began to appear in some states – notably Massachusetts and Pennsylvania – almost as soon as the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The famous Peabody Fund, the acclaimed essays by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and Carnegie’s public library initiative contributed notably when they came in the last decades of the nineteenth century. But they did not invent the American foundation. Endowed charitable funds had become significant participants in American life long before, especially in the field of religion – where they did much to organize the main Protestant denominations – and in education, culture, and the arts. Indeed, funds and foundations did a great deal to establish the American pattern of church-affiliated schools and colleges – the pattern that the several very large new foundations created by Carnegie, Rockefeller, and a few others would do much to challenge after 1900.

A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION: THE CHANGING IDEALS AND REALITIES OF PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS,, 2013

This is chapter 3 of a book published by Brookings Institutions Press. Three factors converged a... more This is chapter 3 of a book published by Brookings Institutions Press.

Three factors converged at the beginning of the twentieth century to create the classic period of American foundations: fortunes of unprecedented size, especially those of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller; a dramatic shift from religious faith to science as the dominant basis for higher education, research, and the professions; and movements to create whole new classes of organizations – research universities, scientific and medical societies, high schools, county public health departments, public libraries. The convergence of these factors allowed a small group of foundations to play outsized roles in American life for the entire first half of the twentieth century and to set a positive image of the role of the foundation in the public mind – an image that persists.
The devotion of very large fortunes to new science-based organizations brought other changes. Earlier foundation and foundation-like giving had mostly come from comparatively modest fortunes. Denominational funds and endowed universities had persuaded numerous donors to join to support educational and religious work through common efforts that anticipated both the general-purpose private foundation and the community foundation. Leadership in most of these early foundation activities usually came from professional managers educated under religious auspices, although there were conspicuous exceptions, as in the Lowell Institute and Stephan Girard’s orphanage. The wealthiest new donors also sought professional managers, but increasingly turned to professionals educated in science or law rather than religion. Through the nineteenth century religious communities, often supported in part by endowments, had dominated much discussion of state and local policy relating to education, family life, and social welfare. By the beginning of the twentieth century the celebrated new foundations were underwriting policy-shaping work that was nonsectarian, secular, and science-based. And they were seeking to address national concerns in science, medicine, military defense, and international affairs as well as in education and social welfare.
The several Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations (the 1902 Carnegie Institution of Washington, the 1906 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and the 1911 Carnegie Corporation of New York; Rockefeller’s 1902 General Education Board, 1909 Rockefeller Foundation, 1918 Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and China Medical Board), along with the Commonwealth (1918) and Alfred P. Sloan (1934) funds and a series of Mellon foundations (from 1930), held unprecedented wealth. These great foundations often collaborated with the Milbank Memorial Fund (1905), the Russell Sage Foundation (1907), the Rosenwald Fund (1913), the Twentieth Century Fund (1919), the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation (1924), and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1937) – and with smaller funds across the U.S. The various donors of these funds have attracted criticism as well as praise, but whatever we think of the donors or however we evaluate their ultimate impact, these funds did pursue their objectives thoughtfully, creatively and persistently. Through a series of targeted, sustained, often innovative interventions, they played critical roles in the dramatic transformations of several key areas of American life – especially in higher education and in scientific and medical research, but also in public education and public health. In these fields, foundations found strong partners. They had less success in the fields of social welfare, the arts, and international relations, where powerful forces struggled with one another and foundations could build fewer effective partnerships.
Any comprehensive effort to assess the contributions of foundations in these decades must also pay attention not only to these ambitious new funds but to many others as well. Many foundations and endowments continued nineteenth-century practices. They supported religious activity, formal and informal education, arts organizations, local economic development, and local social welfare. Some of the largest new foundations gave a modern twist to traditional purposes, deploying their resources with considerable creativity. For practical, business, or indeed religious reasons, several did not reveal their true assets or provide much information of any kind before the 1970s; as a result, it is still difficult to reconstruct their record. But they dominated the foundation field in numerical terms, some of them were among the nation’s largest foundations, and they deserve close attention.
At least a dozen regional foundations, mostly located in the middle of the nation, did much to reinforce the appreciation of science and of national standards while also continuing quite traditional commitments to religion and their home regions. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Michigan (1930), which has always made available a good deal of information about its grants, promoted public health, public education, and economic development in the rural and small town communities that produced grains for Kellogg’s cereals. The Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis (1937) devoted itself to higher education in Indiana and to religious activities and values. The Duke Endowment for the Carolinas (1924) held and dispensed very substantial funds for universities sponsored by Southern Methodists and Southern Baptists, for education, health, and community development, and for Methodist ministers. The Danforth Foundation (1927) sought to advance Protestant higher education and moral and religious values in general, especially in St. Louis but also in the South and beyond; the Kresge Foundation (1924) of Michigan implemented a similar set of foci, especially in the midwest; the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation of Flint, Michigan (1926) long emphasized local causes, especially children’s health and education. The Houston Endowment (1937) provided college scholarships and supported universities and other charities in its city, where the M. D. Anderson Foundation (1936) focused on health care. The Baptist Foundation of Texas (1930) discharged its “mission to manage endowment funds of Baptist institutions and agencies” (including Baylor University) with great effectiveness. The Texas foundations emphasized direct funding of immediate needs, but they also worked effectively to create major institutions in their state, most notably Houston’s Texas Medical Center. The Amherst H. Wilder charities in the Twin cities (1910), like the Children’s Fund of Michigan (1929), sought to create model clinics and other facilities for child welfare. The A. W. Mellon Charitable Trust (1930-1980) directed a fortune into the National Gallery of Art, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (1929) sponsored art exhibitions and art education across the nation, the Juilliard Foundation built a great music school.
Hundreds of smaller foundations supported local and religious charities in most parts of the nation – as their counterparts had done through the nineteenth century and continue to do today. Although some states closely limited the creation of foundations, no state paid much attention to what foundations did with their money once it had allowed them to be established. As we noted in chapter 2, the acceptance of general purpose foundations by the State of New York in the 1890s did something to open the field, but in the Northeast the trend toward general purposes long predated 1890, while in the South state control over charities of all kinds became tighter as Jim Crow tightened its grip.

A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION: THE CHANGING IDEALS AND REALITIES OF PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS,, 2013

This is chapter 4 of a book published by the Brookings Institution Press. The moment when Americ... more This is chapter 4 of a book published by the Brookings Institution Press.

The moment when American foundations could reshape entire fields had largely ended by the 1930s. Foundation interventions in medicine, science, research universities, public schools and public libraries had by then done much to create self-sustaining enterprises and professions that could now set their own course, without regard to foundation preferences. Government activity had expanded greatly in the face of depression and war. Americans had entered a period of rising incomes and declining inequality that would last for three decades, greatly increasing people’s ability to pay with fees and taxes for education, health care, and other classically foundation-supported services. The movements for equal rights for African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and women confronted foundations, like other institutions, with articulate and urgent demands. Disruptions of war and Cold War, decolonization, fear that rapid population growth would bring famine and unrest, and a vast increase in the resources available to international agencies all changed the international landscape.

Yet at the time neither foundation advocates nor foundation critics recognized the implications of these changes. To all appearances, American foundations remained exceptionally wealthy and influential. The Rockefeller, Rosenwald, Carnegie, and Guggenheim funds, with others, had proved their value in war by investing in technological research that underpinned both American air and atomic power and greatly improved medical care for soldiers and sailors. Foundations (and endowments) had won considerable credit for building research universities as well as regional and faith-based colleges. Foundations were playing key parts in creating such centers for the arts and for patriotic celebration as the National Gallery in Washington, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and National Parks across the United States.

Critics also reinforced the sense that foundations continued to wield great power. Some objected to the (rare) foundation support for expansion of government. Ignoring earlier complaints that secular foundations undermined denominational authority, some insisted that they actually worked to maintain Protestant domination. Some liberals blamed the defeat of New Deal Congressmen on propaganda issuing from a few conservative foundations and organizations that used the “foundation” name. Assuming that foundations had the ability to shape events, some insisted they should do more for the poor, for education, for the environment, for the arts and humanities, and for other causes.

Accounts that focus exclusively on foundations often see the hostile political scrutiny that culminated in the Tax Reform Act of 1969 as responsible for restricting foundation activity. It is true that abuse of the foundation as a legal instrument for family aggrandizement and for blatantly political causes provoked the rewriting of laws and regulations, and that regulation had an impact. But the decisive challenges were economic and institutional.

A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION: THE CHANGING IDEALS AND REALITIES OF PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS,, 2013

This is chapter 5 of a book published by the Brookings Institutions Press. Realities – legal, ec... more This is chapter 5 of a book published by the Brookings Institutions Press.

Realities – legal, economic, political, institutional – define what foundations can do. This has always been true in the past, and it is true today. American foundations have repeatedly reinvented themselves. But as we argue in this book, foundations have been shaped not only by their own visions and choices, but by their times, by law and regulation, and by the institutions and actualities of American society at large.

Early in the twentieth century, the actions of a few foundations accelerated the development of science, medicine, and education in the United States. For many, the legacy of that great achievement sets the standard for today’s most ambitious foundations. Yet conditions have changed, and our basic argument is that to be effective foundations and policy-makers concerned about foundations must take current realities into account. At present American foundations resemble their nineteenth century predecessors: they are diverse, capable of interesting work, deeply committed to self-help and individual achievement, strong proponents for a growing range of cultural and religious initiatives. They seek to stimulate professional work, encourage excellence, foster recognition of new needs, and sometimes seek to empower people who had been shunted to the margins. They find creative ways to control, protect, and enhance financial and other resources devoted to a very wide range of charitable purposes. All but a tiny number of the very largest lack the resources to undertake anything like transformative change.

Under today’s conditions, foundations can encourage people and organizations to help themselves; enable selected individuals to engage in research or writing or art or religious work; underwrite limited initiatives; join with others to align their home regions with national and international standards; call attention to specific problems.
Many more foundations than is usually recognized have redoubled their emphasis on religion, the arts, valued traditions and beliefs, the search for useful knowledge, social justice in a particular sphere. Increasing numbers work hard to provide reliable, useful information about current issues. Working with many other actors foundations can encourage the self-organization of society, inviting a plurality of actors to care about and contribute to the common good. On their own, foundations cannot begin to meet social need, create social or cultural unity, or bring harmony out of conflict. But they can underwrite the work of small groups of participants in national debates.

More numerous and more varied than ever, American foundations respond to the challenges, opportunities, and constraints posed by the institutional patterns they have inherited and by today’s realities in individual and idiosyncratic ways. Foundation wealth has grown, yet the wealth of government, nonprofit organizations, private individuals and families, business and finance has grown faster. Newly influential religious and cultural movements reject nonsectarian foundations and the sciences they support. Secular ideas, popular culture, and persistent mainstream religions confront new funds devoted to revived notions of cultural purity. Some foundations seek to eliminate poverty around the world; some hope to usher in their view of a heavenly future. Yet for all their variety and their disagreements, foundations increasingly recognize their differences and limitations.

Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations: United States and European Perspectives, 2006

Defined as large stocks of wealth controlled by independent, self-perpetuating boards of trustees... more Defined as large stocks of wealth controlled by independent, self-perpetuating boards of trustees and devoted to the support through grants of charitable purposes—or to no specific purpose except “the general good”—philanthropic foundations first attracted notice in the United States only at the beginning of the twentieth century. By the time of World War I, such foundations had won attention as distinctively American phenomena. Since then, though they have often attracted critical scrutiny, their diversity and their close integration with the American nonprofit sector as a whole—together with the commitment of America’s political culture to the rights of property--foundations have enjoyed general acceptance in the United States.

AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS: ROLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS, 2010

This is a book published by the Brookings Institution Press. Foundations play an essential par... more This is a book published by the Brookings Institution Press.

Foundations play an essential part in the philanthropic activity that defines so much of American life. No other nation provides its foundations with so much autonomy and freedom of action as does the United States. Liberated both from the daily discipline of the market and from direct control by government, American foundations understandably attract great attention. As David Hammack and Helmut Anheier note in this volume, “Americans have criticized foundations for… their alleged conservatism, liberalism, elitism, radicalism, devotion to religious tradition, hostility to religion—in short, for commitments to causes whose significance can be measured, in part, by the controversies they provoke. Americans have also criticized foundations for ineffectiveness and even foolishness.”

Their size alone conveys some sense of the significance of American foundations, whose assets amounted to over 530billionin2008despiteadramaticdeclineofalmost22percentinthepreviousyear.Andin2008foundationgrantstotaledover530 billion in 2008 despite a dramatic decline of almost 22 percent in the previous year. And in 2008 foundation grants totaled over 530billionin2008despiteadramaticdeclineofalmost22percentinthepreviousyear.Andin2008foundationgrantstotaledover45 billion. But what roles have foundations actually played over time, and what distinctive roles do they fill today? How have they shaped American society, how much difference do they make? What roles are foundations likely to play in the future?

This comprehensive volume, the product of a three-year project supported by the Aspen Institute’s program on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy, provides the most thorough effort ever to assess the impact and significance of the nation’s large foundations. In it, leading researchers explore how foundations have shaped—or failed to shape—each of the key fields of foundation work.

American Foundations takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour, evaluating foundation efforts in education, scientific and medical research, health care, social welfare, international relations, arts and culture, religion, and social change.

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Part I. Introduction 1

1. American Foundations: Their Roles and Contributions to Society 3
David C. Hammack and Helmut K. Anheier

Part II. Exploring Roles and Contributions 29

Education (K–12)

2. Foundations and the Making of Public Education
in the United States, 1867–1950 31
Pamela Barnhouse Walters and Emily A. Bowman

3. Catalysts for Change? Foundations and School Reform, 1950–2005 51
Elisabeth Clemens and Linda C. Lee

Higher Education

4. The Partnerships of Foundations and Research Universities 73
Steven C. Wheatley

5. Foundations and Higher Education 98
Peter Frumkin and Gabriel Kaplan

Health Care

6. Foundations and Health: Innovation, Marginalization,
and Relevance since 1900 120
Daniel M. Fox

7. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Efforts to Improve
Health and Health Care for All Americans 141
James R. Knickman and Stephen L. Isaacs

Social Welfare

8. Foundations and Social Welfare in the Twentieth Century 158
Wolfgang Bielefeld and Jane Chu

9. The Role of Foundations in Shaping Social Welfare Policy
and Services: The Case of Welfare Reform 182
Jennifer E. Mosley and Joseph Galaskiewicz

International

10. The State and International Philanthropy: The Contribution
of American Foundations, 1919–1991 205
Steven Heydemann with Rebecca Kinsey

11. For the World’s Sake: U.S. Foundations and
International Grant Making, 1990–2002 237
Lehn M. Benjamin and Kevin F. F. Quigley

Arts and Culture

12. Foundations as Cultural Actors 262
James Allen Smith

13. Roles of Foundations and Their Impact in the Arts 283
Stefan Toepler

Religion

14. The Role of Foundations in American Religion 305
Robert Wuthnow and D. Michael Lindsay

Social Movements

15. Foundations, Social Movements, and the Contradictions of Liberal Philanthropy 328
Alice O’Connor

16. Consolidating Social Change: The Consequences of Foundation Funding for Developing Social Movement Infrastructures 347
Debra Minkoff and Jon Agnone

Part III. Conclusion 369

17. Foundations and Public Policy 371
Steven Rathgeb Smith

18. Looking Forward: American Foundations between
Continuity and Change 388
David C. Hammack and Helmut K. Anheier

Appendixes
A. Data Sources 403
B. Cleaning the Foundations Data Set for Chapter 3 405
C. Descriptive Information: The Civil Rights and
Social Action Sector, 2001 406
References 409
Contributors 437
Index 439

American Philanthropic Foundations: Regional Difference and Change, 2018

Once largely confined to the biggest cities in the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states, philanthr... more Once largely confined to the biggest cities in the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states, philanthropic foundations now play a significant role in nearly every state. Wide-ranging and incisive, the essays in this book examine the origins, development, and accomplishments of philanthropic foundations in key cities and regions of the United States. Each contributor assesses foundation efforts to address social and economic inequalities, and to encourage cultural and creative life in their home regions and elsewhere.

Individua chapters take up foundations in New York, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Northeastern Ohio, Chicago, the South, Texas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and Washington State. Appendices document the changing list of the largest foundations by assets in 1946, 1979, and 2012; and the distribution of community foundations and smaller foundations across the U.S.

This book is published by Indiana University Press. It

American Philanthropic Foundations: Regional Difference and Change, 2018

American Philanthropic Foundations Regional Difference and Change, 2018

American Philanthropic Foundations: Regional Difference and Change, 2013

American Philanthropic Foundations: Regional Difference and Change, 2018

Analysis of the data on the assets of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States ... more Analysis of the data on the assets of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States at the end of World War II, ten years after the new regulations for foundations passed in the Tax Reform Act of 1969, and four years after the banking crisis of 2008.

Comprehensive overview of the history and current geographic distribution of community funds and ... more Comprehensive overview of the history and current geographic distribution of community funds and foundations, and of smaller charitable foundations, in the United States.

An agile servant: Community leadership …, 1989

A concise history of community foundations in the United States from the initial Cleveland Founda... more A concise history of community foundations in the United States from the initial Cleveland Foundation to the 1980s, noting the impact of the community chest and chamber of commerce activities of the 1920s, the Great Depression, post-World War II prosperity, and the impact of the Tax Reform Act of 1969 as it was implemented and revised during the 1970s.

Social Science in the Making: Essays on the Russell Sage Foundation, 1907-1972, 1995

"Together, the historical essays in this volume provide the best account of how the Foundation mo... more "Together, the historical essays in this volume provide the best account of how the Foundation moved away from its roots as a policy think tank.... This book of essays is the only extended treatment of the Foundation's history that includes both its distinguished early years and its emergence after World War II as the principal private foundation devoted to strengthening basic research in the social sciences." —ERIC WANNER, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, in his foreword to the volume

SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE MAKING: ESSAYS ON THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, 1907-1972, 1994

Judged by its charter and by the character of its initial program, the Russell Sage Foundation mi... more Judged by its charter and by the character of its initial program, the Russell Sage Foundation might be described as the oldest general-purpose foundation in the United States. Yet it was created to serve particular purposes for one movement, the movement to organize charity and professionalize social work, and it is generally viewed as having been devoted to the field of social work from its founding in 1907 to until its reorganization in 1947. In fact, the Russell Sage Foundation was also deeply involved in several other fields during its first decades: it was as influential in the fields of housing, zoning, and city planning; industrial relations; and social research as it was in the field of social work. It was also prominent in public health (especially in educating people about ways to avoid tuberculosis) and in education. And it sought effectively to shape movements for the welfare of women and children, to reform the pawnshop and consumer loan business, and to care for the blind.