The historian, author, and curator talks to Michael E. Hartmann about the democratic character, moral tensions, and organizational evolution of early American philanthropy—and reflects on how later developments, especially during the Progressive Era, changed it.
Amanda Moniz is the David M. Rubenstein Curator of Philanthropy at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. She leads the museum’s efforts to collect objects from and research about, and to interpret, the history of American giving and civic engagement. With more than 250 objects that tell stories of Americans giving of their time, money, and goods to support others, its philanthropy collection is one of its newest.
Before joining the Smithsonian in 2016, Moniz worked with the American Historical Association and its National History Center.A historian by training, her book From Empire to Humanity: The American Revolution and the Origins of Humanitarianism, published by Oxford University Press in 2016, won the inaugural Peter Dobkin Hall History of Philanthropy Book Prize. She returned to some of the book’s themes last month in a great article for The Conversation, “How America’s independence from England revolutionized US philanthropy.”
In the article, Moniz argues that the American Revolution fundamentally reshaped philanthropy in the United States by breaking older, imperial patterns of charitable giving and encouraging more democratic, locally organized forms of civic action. The post-Revolutionary period helped establish enduring features of American philanthropy, she writes, including voluntary associations, grassroots fundraising, and reform campaigns.
Moniz was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation two weeks ago. In the first part of our discussion, which is here, we talk about the Smithsonian’s philanthropy collection and how the Revolution and independence changed philanthropy in America.
The just less than 12-and-a-half-minute video below is the second part, during which we discuss the democratic character, moral tensions, and organizational evolution of early American philanthropy—and reflects on how later developments, especially during the Progressive Era, changed it.
“[O]ne of the things that was really notable after the Revolution is that there was an upsurge in a sense of universal goodwill and helping strangers, and that included the rise of the anti-slavery movement,” Moniz tells me. “That was an ethos that really boomed after the Revolution, but it did cause a lot of tensions. In the late 1790s in early, early 1800s, there was a backlash against that kind of universal approach, but it was a debate.”
She notes that this as an enduring philanthropic dilemma—finite resources forcing continual debate over who deserves help and how broadly obligations extend. Even early charitable organizations wrestled with institutional scope and what would now be called “mission creep.”
Moniz explains that religion strongly motivated many charitable efforts, with churches and synagogues routinely organizing aid for congregants and communities, but she notes that 18th Century philanthropy was not exclusively religious; secular charities also flourished in both Britain and America, and Protestant groups often cooperated across denominational lines.
Discussing managerialism and professional fundraising in early American philanthropy, Moniz says, “18th Century Americans were savvy fundraisers indeed. Earlier than that.”
Eras and cautions
Asked whether the Revolution or the Progressive Era effected more change in philanthropy, Moniz jokes,
Well, I would love to say the Revolution because my background is as an 18th Century historian, but I think In fairness that the scale of wealth, the new scale of wealth in the late 19th and early 20th Century probably, you know, we could say it changed it more. … The rise of huge fortunes, the rise of huge foundations, and also of mass fundraising that grows up with the advertising and marketing professions also in the early 20th Century, it grows over and changes throughout American history, but it really does reach a new scale in the early 20th Century.
Moniz cautions against projecting later developments backward too neatly. “I don’t want to look back and say, Well, let me see if I can find the roots of this later development in an earlier development.” She does offer an early example of proto-managerial thinking from the 1790s, though: At the New York Dispensary, founded by clergymen and doctors to provide medical aid to the working poor, volunteer physicians proved disorganized and conflict-ridden. The clergymen overseeing the institution centralized authority, dismissed the volunteer doctors, and hired a younger physician who could be managed more effectively. She cites the example as evidence that organizational control and managerial concerns existed well before modern philanthropy became professionalized.
Similarly, Moniz cautions against what may be another too-“neat” comparison. Asked about current invocations by defenders of donor freedom of the philanthropists funding Revolutionary advocacy and activities to argue against those who might be receptive to some conditions on the nonprofit sector’s tax benefits, she says, “They weren’t doing it for a deduction because there wasn’t an income tax,” and exemption itself “goes back centuries to England, where churches did not pay taxes and that was true for charitable institutions. … You really can’t analogize,” she concludes, “to today because the whole framework was different.”
