Topic: Philanthropy & the Private Sector
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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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Photo Essay: The Rockefellers, National Parks, and Public Lands
The nation’s parks, perhaps our most remarkable public resource, have a history of development through private giving.
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Photo Essay: Radburn, New Jersey – the Town for the Motor Age
Philanthropy helped architects and planners create a new kind of suburban community in the 1920s.
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Philanthropy’s Search for an HIV Vaccine: Building Public-Private Partnerships in a Global Pandemic
How a meeting of scientists and health experts sparked a new international campaign to find a way to prevent AIDS.
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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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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.
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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.