Re-Founding the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress was established by an official act in 1800 as a modest reference library for America’s legislators, and composed primarily of law books. The collection was destroyed Read more…
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Preservation of Monticello
Thomas Jefferson sometimes argued that the earth belonged to the living and that each generation owed little to those before or after it. At times he lived his own life Read more…
Wadsworth Atheneum
An atheneum, in nineteenth-century parlance, was a cultural institution broadly devoted to art, books, science, history, and other fields, often broadly combined in a mix of library, gallery, scientific rooms, Read more…
Smithsonian Institution
James Smithson was a British scientist with no obvious connection to the United States. He had no family in the New World, had never visited, and had built his successful Read more…
Preservation of Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon was the legacy of one great man. Preserving it was the work of many great women. The Mount Vernon estate had been in George Washington’s family since 1674. Read more…
Metropolitan Museum of Art
On July 4, 1866, a number of well-to-do Americans in Paris are celebrating Independence Day with a fancy dinner. The group includes Mr. Bigelow, the American ambassador; Mr. Fox, assistant Read more…
Corcoran Gallery of Art
William Corcoran was a D.C. native, having been born in Georgetown in 1798. He started his first business by age 19, lost it in an economic downturn by age 27, Read more…
Art Institute of Chicago
After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, the city’s art scene was devastated. It was Chicago philanthropists who rebuilt it. One notable funder was Charles Hutchinson, who founded the Art Read more…
Carnegie’s Libraries, and Others
Waldemar Nielsen called Andrew Carnegie “an extremist in every sense.” When Carnegie gave, he really gave. And the man who had started life as a poor immigrant considered libraries the Read more…
Carnegie Cultures Pittsburgh
Like so many other great philanthropists, Andrew Carnegie was raised poor. He started work at age nine and steadily progressed upward, making it big in railroads, oil, mining, steelmaking, and Read more…
William Volker Fund
William Volker was a millionaire by age 47, and could have been so earlier had he not begun each workday by meeting with anyone who asked and writing checks to Read more…
$50 Million for Gun Control
Though he is no longer mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg continues to nudge public policy—these days as a donor. In 2014 he put up $50 million to create Read more…
The Independence Project
With almost predictable regularity over recent years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has become embroiled in repeated scandals combining failed services with mushrooming backlogs. A root of the problem is Read more…
Keeping the Lights on in Detroit
Detroit may be America’s most ill-governed, and saddest, city. That’s the public’s verdict: The city’s population plummeted from 1.9 million in 1950 to just 680,000 in 2014, just after Detroit Read more…
Boosting Policy Instruction at U. Chicago
he national rankings of top graduate schools in public policy have held pretty steady for some years, centered on Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, the Kennedy School at Harvard, Indiana University, Read more…
A $250 Million Media Experiment
Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay, first pursued an interest in media operations that promote “good government” when he funded a digital “newspaper” devoted to investigative reporting, public policy, Read more…
9/11 Funds and Subsequent Disaster Giving
The attacks of September 11, 2001 prompted an unprecedented outpouring of American giving. The American Red Cross organized one of the nation’s largest charity drives after 9/11, called the Liberty Read more…
A Private Performance Hall
When Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium (longtime home to the Philharmonic and other Kansas City cultural organs) was erected, it was paid for entirely by the federal government with New Deal Read more…
New Bronx School Teaching Students Their Futures Are in Their Control
Most mornings, the 108 ninth graders walking into Vertex Partnership Academies Charter School in the Soundview section of the Bronx, in New York City, are met at the sidewalk by the school’s principal, Joyanet Mangual, greeting each one of them as an individual.
Elizabeth McGuigan in Trusts & Estates: Donor Privacy in the Wake of Dobbs
The Roundtable’s campaign “Our Values Improve Lives” will share examples of how private philanthropy has empowered the charitable sector to strengthen communities and help individuals reach their full, unique potential. Learn about Albert C. Barnes, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who rose from humble beginnings in Philadelphia to amass a great fortune and one of the world’s most valuable art collections.