Purifying the Air of American Business
In the aftermath of the religious revival known as the “Second Great Awakening,” a web of evangelical Christian charities called the “Benevolent Empire” mobilized across America. Lewis Tappan was a Read more…
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Building the Underground Railway
To agitate against slavery and “create a fund to aid colored persons in distress,” a group of abolitionists established the Vigilant Association in Philadelphia in 1837. The association had a Read more…
Initiating Black Colleges
America’s 106 historically black colleges played a major role in improving the status and social contributions of our black citizens. The very first of these, Pennsylvania’s Cheyney University, was launched Read more…
Educating the Blind
America’s first school for the disabled sprang from a cocktail combining a Boston Brahmin with two quite different visionaries. John Fisher first envisioned a school for the blind after visiting Read more…
A Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents
Until 1825, it was standard practice to lock up delinquent children with adult criminals. As a New York Times report put it, this often served only to make the youthful Read more…
A Bank for Modest-income Workers
Born in 1758, Thomas Eddy was a paragon of entrepreneurial ingenuity in both business and philanthropy. The scrappy Quaker founded the first mutual insurance company in New York City, helped Read more…
An Orphanage for New York
The New York Orphan Asylum Society was established in 1806 by a group of concerned women. (These included the recently widowed Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, who was then caring for six Read more…
Serving Elderly Sailors in America’s First Secular Charity
Robert Randall, a founder of the Chamber of Commerce and heir to a maritime fortune, signed a remarkable will that left his property as a bequest to establish America’s first Read more…
A Charity By Women for Women
Isabella Graham was born in Scotland to a comfortable family of strict Presbyterian beliefs. After she moved to the New World, her husband died just before the birth of their Read more…
Manumission in New York
Kidnapping black residents (both free and slave) and selling them into bondage in other places was common enough in 1785 to inspire some of New York City’s most influential citizens Read more…
Charity for State-side Britons
Englishmen living in New York City founded a group in 1770, named the St. George’s Society, for Britain’s patron saint, to provide relief to any of their fellow countrymen who Read more…
The Green Revolution
In the early 1940s, disease was destroying half of the wheat harvest in Mexico, and the country’s farmers (like many others in the developing world) were unable to produce enough Read more…
Loomis Laboratory
Finding himself bored in the practice of law as a young man, Alfred Loomis returned to an earlier interest in scientific experimentation—befriending internationally prominent experimenters and conducting quite advanced investigations Read more…
Laying the Intellectual Foundation for Racial Equality
In 1935, the board of the Carnegie Corporation expressed interest in “negro problems” in the United States, and the extent to which they could be reduced through education. This led Read more…
Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Herbert Hoover, now remembered mainly as a President, was both a wealthy businessman and a prominent humanitarian and donor. Orphaned at an early age, he had a lifelong devotion to Read more…
Saving European Intellectuals
As fascism swept Europe, scholars, artists, scientists, and religious leaders began to come under serious official pressure. In Germany, and later the countries that Germany overran, some were discharged from Read more…
Inventing Molecular Biology
By the early 1930s, the Rockefeller Foundation had dramatically accelerated the fields of chemistry and physics through its grants. In 1932 the foundation hired mathematician Warren Weaver to create programs Read more…
Making Books Talk for the Blind
For most of history, the enormous repository of human knowledge represented by books was out of reach for the blind. Only a small percentage of persons with vision loss have Read more…
Launching Rocketry
Robert Goddard was the world’s greatest genius in rocketry, which only existed in science fiction when he penned his first articles about it in high school. After he earned a Read more…
200-inch Telescope
The pioneering U.S.-based telescopes used by scientists to make fundamental scientific discoveries have been products of private philanthropy. The first modern mega-telescope was the 60-inch reflector, at that point the Read more…