Topic: Issues in Philanthropy
In Brief: The 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference
The global conversation about women’s issues takes a big step forward.
Who Belongs in the Boy Scouts? Philanthropy’s Support for Black Scouting
A foundation struggled to make one of America’s oldest youth organizations more racially inclusive. But it only got so far under Jim Crow.
In Brief: James Baldwin’s Creative Writer’s Fellowship
How a foundation provided the final ingredient to an era-defining novel.
Funding a Sexual Revolution: The Kinsey Reports
The inside story of the study that first questioned binary sexuality and spurred outcry and controversy.
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.
Ted Watkins and the Rockefeller Foundation: An Unlikely Partnership
How a charismatic community activist from Watts challenged a foundation’s civil rights strategy through a jobs training program.
“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.
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.
The “Insulin Gift”
In 1923, a wealthy philanthropist’s funding helped make life-saving treatment for diabetes available to patients and doctors.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Creates a National Park
Who defines the public good? The showdown caused when a wealthy philanthropist bought land and tried to give it to the American people.