Educating the Orphaned
Born in France in 1750, Stephen Girard was a financier who immigrated to the United States nearly penniless and then made his name as a businessman and philanthropist of renown. Read more…
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Western Reserve University
Western Reserve University, which sprang up in 1826 in a just-burgeoning section of Ohio, survived only through the sacrificial giving of frontier settlers. Western Reserve was not supported by a Read more…
Rensselaer School and the Rise of Scientific Education
Stephen Van Rensselaer was heir to one of the most valuable landholdings in the United States. Comprised of over a thousand farms, Rensselaer’s New York estate and the requirements of Read more…
New York Free School Society
In early nineteenth-century New York City, free primary education was largely the province of church-run charity schools. For families of means there was also the option of private schools maintained Read more…
Washington and Lee University
George Washington was not only “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” He was also first in philanthropic support for higher education in the Read more…
A University Across the Woods
In the early years of the American republic our population erupted over the heights of the Allegheny Mountains, starting the long national journey to the Pacific. Unlike their worldly possessions, Read more…
Philadelphia Library Company
In the first half of the eighteenth century, American libraries were limited to small collections of books in private homes, or at colleges and seminaries, of which there were only Read more…
Endowed College Chairs
The endowed professorship—an educational post funded over a long period of time by the earnings from an initial gift—is among the signal accomplishments of U.S. educational philanthropy. The pervasiveness of Read more…
A School for Slaves
There were about 1,500 African-American slaves living in New York City at the beginning of the 1700s, nearly all illiterate and intellectually degraded. Elias Neau, a French Huguenot who had Read more…
First Fundraising Campaign
Harvard University conducted what is considered to be America’s first recorded fund drive when it launched an appeal in 1643 for donations to build up its new college. A gift Read more…
Early American Colleges
Education philanthropy in the United States is much older than our country. The New College was founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and renamed in 1639 after a Read more…
Carnegie Enhances Legal Education
Early in the twentieth century, rising demand for legal services led to a sharp increase in the number of lawyers, and a perceived decline in the professional standards of many Read more…
John Sterling’s Golden Bequest to Yale
By the time John Sterling graduated from Yale in 1864, the university had left an indelible mark on him. Upon his death in 1918, three quarters of the corporate lawyer’s Read more…
Mental Hygiene for Children
A $10 million gift from Anna Harkness, the wife of one of John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil partners and a great advocate of civic improvement and self-help, established the Commonwealth Fund Read more…
Desert Educator
There are few institutions that generate more affection in the hearts of donors than excellent small colleges. And no college in America is smaller, nor really more excellent, than Deep Read more…
Lincoln School at Columbia
For three decades, the Lincoln School at Columbia University’s Teachers College was at the vanguard of experimental education. Teachers College was the country’s most influential center for teacher training, and Read more…
Rosenwald Schools
For his fiftieth birthday in 1912, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, donated $650,000 to a group of charities. One of the gifts was $25,000 to Booker T. Read more…
George Eastman Puts M.I.T. and Rochester on the Map
As founder of the camera manufacturing and supply company Eastman Kodak, and the inventor of many of the central processes of modern photography, George Eastman was well acquainted with the Read more…
Milton Hershey School
Chocolatier Milton Hershey didn’t invent the candy bar, but he was the first to transform it from expensive delicacy to treat affordable by all, and in the process he became Read more…
Collaborating to Educate the Segregated
In the decades after the Civil War much effort was expended by philanthropists to remedy the educational disadvantages of African Americans. (See 1867, 1902, and 1912 entries.) In addition to Read more…