Race-rights Lawsuits
In 1967, the Ford Foundation decided to become a major funder of the civil-rights movement. By 1970 it was spending 40 percent of its grantmaking on minorities. Much of the Read more…
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Ford Invents Advocacy Philanthropy
From the time of the Gilded Age—when many political and journalistic careers were built by taking shots at robber barons—wealthy donors and large foundations tended to be skittish about taking Read more…
Making a Case for Government Arts Spending
Founded by businessman Edward Filene in 1919, the Twentieth Century Fund (rechristened the Century Fund in 1999) shaped the course of arts philanthropy by sponsoring the work of Princeton University Read more…
A Report Card for Schools
As policymakers began to focus on improving the performance of public schools, they felt the need for accurate ways to track student achievement. In 1963, U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Read more…
Disarmament Lobbies
The arms control and disarmament movement is a product of philanthropy. The earliest influential donor was Andrew Carnegie, an internationalist and pacifist who felt sure that war could be banished Read more…
Putting Bail on a Scientific Footing
When Louis Schweitzer heard that a thousand boys had languished in a Brooklyn prison for at least ten months without trial, he was astonished and disappointed. Schweitzer, an immigrant from Read more…
Pierre Goodrich and the Liberty Fund
Pierre Goodrich was a successful Indianapolis businessman; as son of a former governor he had a deep interest in public affairs; and he loved to read the great classic books. Read more…
Law School Clinics Institutionalize Political Activism
Beginning in 1959, the Ford Foundation gradually established a network of law-school-based legal clinics that became a powerful tool of liberalism. Many professors resisted the effort at first, because the Read more…
Pastor Robinson Blazes a Path for the Peace Corps
Drawing on the long American tradition of religious missionary work abroad, Harlem minister James Robinson founded Operation Crossroads Africa with donated money in 1958. Several trips to Africa had convinced Read more…
Spawning Birth Control
Katharine McCormick had grown up in a prominent Chicago family, struggled through eight difficult years to become the second woman to graduate from MIT, then married the emotionally disturbed youngest Read more…
AEI Guards Free Enterprise
Founded in 1938 by a group of businessmen aiming to strengthen “free, competitive enterprise,” the American Enterprise Association had been only mildly effective when William Baroody arrived in 1954, quitting Read more…
Creating State Think Tanks
Thomas Roe, founder of the construction-supply firm Builder Marts, was an active public-policy donor until his death in 2000. When he expressed an interest in the “New Federalism” proposed by Read more…
ACLU LGBT Project
Since establishing its LGBT Project in 1986 (to expand lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights), the American Civil Liberties Union has received about $20 million of earmarked donations to support Read more…
Sparking Welfare Reform
In 1986, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation built an intellectual coalition for welfare reform. Its $300,000 grant assembled top conservative and liberal social scientists to see if agreement could Read more…
Minting New Democrats
Following President Ronald Reagan’s landslide re-election in 1984, moderate Democrats sought ways to push their party away from doctrinaire liberalism and toward the political center. Party loyalist Al From organized Read more…
Koch Brothers Take Up Advocacy
From the mid-’70s to mid-’80s, brothers Charles and David Koch contributed to public-policy philanthropy mainly by building the Cato Institute, Mercatus Center, and other research organizations capable of formulating detailed Read more…
Religion in Public Life
Richard Neuhaus, a Catholic priest who had been an anti-war activist in the 1960s, took a look at the rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s and found himself Read more…
A Foundation Behind the Iron Curtain
In 1984, currency speculator George Soros established the first private foundation in a communist country, in his native Hungary. The government in Budapest hoped that by sponsoring Hungarian students to Read more…
Birth of the Federalist Society
The Institute for Educational Affairs, a group backed by the Olin, Earhart, JM, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations, provided a grant of $15,000 in 1982 to underwrite a legal conference Read more…
Give Peace a Grant
Coincident with the election of President Ronald Reagan, a “nuclear freeze” movement sprang up to oppose research and development of nuclear technology, advocate for disarmament, criticize American “belligerence,” resist a Read more…