Topic: Self-Sustaining Initiatives

Red Cross Nurses at Riverside Theater in 1918.

Success and Failure in Community-Based Healthcare: The East Harlem Health Center

An innovative nursing program gathered crucial data and brought healthcare to needy families, but ultimately lost its way.

City Housing Corporation published material, "Radburn Garden Homes". This colorful pamphlet depicts community members playing in a playground and other sports, as well as an illustrated map of the community lay out.

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.

1950s 1960s

Early Experiments in Public Broadcasting

The American public broadcast system as it exists today came out of years of work by organized philanthropy.

1910s 20th Century

“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.

1960s 1970s

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.

Black and white image of local residents sitting around a large table discussing the start-up capital for Progress Plaza.
1960s 20th Century

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.