Job Training for Hard Cases
Two Manhattan banker/donors disturbed by a chronic lack of employment among many inner-city residents. An East Harlem ex-convict and drug addict who got clean and then earned a master’s degree Read more…
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Turning Addicts Into Workers
Bob Coté was clutching a vodka bottle one night when he saw three of his drinking buddies passed out on the street with urine stains on their trousers. Standing in Read more…
Olin Brings Economic Logic Into Our Legal System
Legal scholar Bruce Ackerman described the “law and economics” movement as “the most important thing in legal education since the birth of the Harvard Law School.” The movement’s roots go Read more…
Settling a Million Vietnamese Refugees
After the fall of South Vietnam, two million people poured out of that country plus Laos and Cambodia, many of them taking desperate risks in fear of their lives, often Read more…
Marriage Encounter
In 1967, a program developed by a young Catholic priest in Spain to help married couples create a deeper and more honest relationship was presented as a weekend conference to Read more…
Addicts Support Themselves in Group Living
If any group of unfortunates would seem to need outside, professional assistance, it would be substance abusers. Yet the Oxford-House movement has produced an amazing story of self-help. In over Read more…
Cultivating Community Colleges
In 1947, as the post-WWII boom in higher education was taking off, the President’s Commission on Higher Education urged the spread of community colleges to serve students of diverse abilities Read more…
Saving Traditional City Neighborhoods
American cities were just beginning to fall apart in the middle of the twentieth century—a process accelerated by many of the technocratic efforts undertaken to “improve” them, like “urban renewal,” Read more…
Artificial Intelligence
In its first half-century of existence, the Rockefeller Foundation was a powerful supporter of basic research in the sciences, medicine, and technology—driving many breakthroughs that increased economic prosperity and human Read more…
Highway Safety Breakthrough
John Dorr was an industrial chemist whose inventiveness allowed him to build a successful company, and then a charitable foundation which he eventually focused on practical solutions to everyday problems. Read more…
Ford Helps Privatize RAND
The RAND Corporation (the name is a truncation of “research and development”) began as a U.S. military project at World War II’s end. Air Force General “Hap” Arnold wanted to Read more…
Creating an Ecosystem of Aid for Servicemembers
Three years into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, hedge-fund co-founder David Gelbaum walked into the California Community Foundation, put $105 million into a fund, and asked that it be funneled Read more…
Sanford Underground Research Facility
Astronomical observations demonstrate that as much as a quarter of the universe is made up of some material which is invisible to conventional measurements. The gravitational effects of this invisible Read more…
Nutrition Research Hub in North Carolina
A site near the geographic center of North Carolina that housed one of the world’s largest textile mills until it went bankrupt in 2003 has since had $781 million of Read more…
World’s Most Powerful Telescopes
The most influential tool in astronomy and astrophysics over the last generation has been the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2014, construction began on a new instrument that will provide images Read more…
Building Basic Science
Texan George Mitchell spent his work days peering downward, deep into the earth, where he was one of the most successful men of his generation at finding valuable oil and Read more…
Battling Poverty via Family Support and Economic Incentives
Mauricio Miller’s bio states that more than two decades of working in social services left him “disenchanted with the social sector’s approach to fighting poverty” and wanting to try something Read more…
Year Up
Gerald Chertavian co-founded one of England’s fastest-growing companies while living there in the early 1990s, then cashed out in 1999 at age 34 to devote the rest of his career Read more…
Daniels Scholarship Program
Bill Daniels completed a couple years of junior college before serving as a fighter pilot in World War II, but never returned to campus or received a degree. He subsequently Read more…
Grove Scholars Program
Former Intel co-founder Andrew Grove wanted to overturn the common assumption among educators, parents, and students that technical education is for less intelligent people. So he funded vocational-training scholarships at Read more…