Topic: Issues in Philanthropy
Featured
“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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A “Constructive and Important Failure”: A Foundation Funds Job Training in the 1970s and 1980s
Prompted by Reagan-era budget cuts, a new program serving low-income single parents receiving public aid failed to meet its constituents’ needs.
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From Populist Crusade to Comprehensive Regulation: the Tax Reform Act of 1969
Is private wealth an obstacle to democracy? Fifty years ago, Congress thought so.
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“For Initiative and for Experiment”: The International Education Board, 1923-1938
Incorporated in 1923 with funding from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the IEB built a major scientific network in Europe and the US in only five years.
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The Women Pioneers of Global Nursing Education Who Built the Rockefeller Foundation Program
A massive program in nursing education extended to 53 schools across the globe. But it never became a top priority of the foundation that supported it.
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“A Roomful of Brains”: Early Advances in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
At midcentury, Rockefeller Foundation staffers hoped new technologies might find solutions to complex problems.
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International Cooperation and Soft Diplomacy: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center
Convenings at Bellagio have tackled global challenges of every sort, from trade and finance to public health, agriculture, and food security.
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The Birth of International Agricultural Research Institutes in the Mid-20th Century
Rockefeller Foundation agriculture programs begun in Mexico achieved global reach through four major research institutes. Building them was the result of partnership.
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Toward a More Robust Study of Mental Health: Rockefeller Foundation Funding for Psychiatry
Two decades of funding helped legitimize the study of psychiatry as a medical issue, not a problem of character.
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