carnegie

Actually to do democracy would demand, as she proposes, that philanthropy “better understand the American public’s full range of perspectives and what is fueling their dissatisfaction with how the system is working.”

In the wake of Warren Buffett ending his extraordinary philanthropic partnership with the Gates Foundation, revisiting questions raised after its initial announcement.

As many are examining how AI-generated fortunes may reshape philanthropy, the enduring historical lesson of John D. Rockefeller for them should be more than simply his extraordinary private generosity. It should also include putting institutionalized, tax-incentivized giving in its proper place in America’s democratic order.

If proponents of participatory philanthropy are looking to attract receptive conservatives to their cause, it may be impossible if participatoriness comes to be—or even to seem—just another mechanism to rationalize tax-incentivized philanthropy in furtherance of one particular ideological or partisan political end. If conservative philanthropy is honestly and self-critically looking to exemplify anti-elitism in and improve its grantmaking, however, it would more aggressively explore options to humbly check what might be its own elitism and increase participatoriness in that grantmaking.

As conservatives consider how best to revitalize and depoliticize civil society in America approaching its semiquincentennial celebration, still-relevant thoughts on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector from 2009.

The former director of special projects at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and current policy fellow at the Ash Center’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation talks with Michael E. Hartmann about the various trade-offs in the relationships with government of legacy foundations and the new institutional vehicles that bigger, trillionaire philanthropists likely will use in the coming years, along with the growing global role of American givers.

With Michael E. Hartmann, the former director of special projects at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and current policy fellow at the Ash Center’s Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation talks about his work and research interests, differences between the billionaire philanthropy of the past and the trillionaire philanthropy of the future, and whether the tensions of each with democracy will also be different.

Is there a “Charity, Inc.” and if so, what could perhaps be done about it?

Adam Rutherford’s new book about eugenics reminds us again of those progressive foundations that supported it—and that it’s long past time for a full and fair accounting of them for what they funded and fomented, and why.