Location: United States
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In Brief: James Baldwin’s Creative Writer’s Fellowship
How a foundation provided the final ingredient to an era-defining novel.
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Funding a Sexual Revolution: The Kinsey Reports
The inside story of the study that first questioned binary sexuality and spurred outcry and controversy.
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“Investment Philanthropy” Investing for Social Good, a Century Ago
An early twentieth-century foundation tried using its endowment to support for-profit projects that also would achieve a social goal.
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Photo Essay: Supporting Minority Enterprise in the late 1960s
In 1968, the Ford Foundation began to make social investments using a new tool borrowed from the for-profit world, the Program-Related Investment.
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The “Insulin Gift”
In 1923, a wealthy philanthropist’s funding helped make life-saving treatment for diabetes available to patients and doctors.
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The Commonwealth Fund and the “Insanity Defense”: Unexpected Outcomes
Our understanding of the insanity defense relies on a book that was an unintended outcome of a Commonwealth Fund grant.
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The Birth of the Modern MBA
Why would an American foundation transform the field of business education?
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Ping-Pong Diplomacy: NGOs and International Relations
When a friendly interaction unexpectedly emerged between American and Chinese table tennis players, one nonprofit seized the opportunity to support broader cultural diplomacy.
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Supporting Economic Justice? The Ford Foundation’s 1968 Experiment in Program Related Investments
How the largest US foundation began supporting market-based projects in the late 1960s.