Sponsoring Low-income Children in Catholic Schools
When Catholic schools serving poor children in New York City were in danger of shutting down for lack of tuition-paying capacity on the part of parents, banker and longtime donor Read more…
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Bradley Foundation Puts School Choice on the Map
Education policy doesn’t change overnight; it must be nurtured until its moment arrives. The organization that did most to incubate America’s expanded interest in school choice was the Lynde and Read more…
Hillsdale College Shifts to Private Funding
Founded in Michigan in 1844, Hillsdale College was built up in the early 1850s by hundreds of small private donations after professor and preacher Ransom Dunn rode more than 6,000 Read more…
Educational Excellence Network
In 1982, a dozen or so education scholars devoted to high standards, choices for families, and accountability for schools and teachers met at Columbia Teachers College and resolved to assemble Read more…
Keeping Phonics in the Reading Mix
For reasons that are hard to fathom, phonics (teaching children to understand the relationship between word sounds and various letters or groups of letters) became controversial with “progressives” at many Read more…
“I Have a Dream” Scholarships
Eugene Lang attended the East Harlem elementary school P.S. 121 back in the 1930s. He went on to Swarthmore College on a scholarship, and then Columbia and Brooklyn Polytechnic for Read more…
Olin Brings Law and Economics to Campus
Among the most significant intellectual revolutions of America’s twentieth century is the so-called Law and Economics movement. Pioneered at the University of Chicago, this school of thought has injected market Read more…
Children’s Television Workshop
By the time he endowed the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911, Andrew Carnegie had already given away some $43 million and started five charitable organizations. But he was Read more…
Carnegie Seminar on the Coleman Report
In 1966, the federal government published a major investigation into the effectiveness of schools (and how that intersects with race) which came to be known as the Coleman Report. As Read more…
A Gift Teaches Donors Not to Write Blank Checks
In 1961, Charles and Marie Robertson anonymously gave Princeton University $35 million to create programs at its Woodrow Wilson School for Public Policy and International Affairs that would “strengthen the Read more…
Ford Foundation Aid for Inner-city Schools
During the 1960s (and after), many liberal reformers became convinced that the best way to improve social outcomes in areas like schooling, crime and safety, employment, and family structure was Read more…
Olmsted Scholars Program
Even the quintessential government responsibility of national defense turns out to have elements where private giving can solve needs more effectively than state action. Retired general and successful businessman George Read more…
Ford Foundation’s Special Appropriation
In 1955 the Ford Foundation announced an extraordinary “special appropriation” of $560 million—the equivalent of more than $5 billion in 2015—the largest single investment in the history of philanthropy—to strengthen Read more…
Ford Bolsters Business Education
In mid-twentieth-century America, business was already a popular college major, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Even with one out of seven students on campus specializing in some form Read more…
Area Studies Programs
New U.S. responsibilities on the global stage after World War II brought needs for expertise in many exotic regions. To fill knowledge gaps that were handicapping policymakers, business executives, and Read more…
Earhart and Relm Foundations
Harry Earhart expanded the White Star Oil Company into a large enterprise during the automobile revolution, then established the Earhart and Relm foundations. In 1949, the Earhart Foundation focused on Read more…
United Negro College Fund
Originally formed to establish a reliable flow of donations to America’s historically black colleges and universities, the United Negro College Fund later took on the added mission of distributing individual Read more…
John Bowlby and Child Psychology
The seminal research and theory explaining the development of young children was formulated by a British psychiatrist named John Bowlby, whose career was built largely on American philanthropy. In the Read more…
Duke University
Though his success in business took him far beyond the borders of his native state, James Duke never truly left North Carolina. The longtime owner of Southern Power, and American Read more…
International Education Board
Two decades after his father founded the General Education Board (see 1902 entry), John Rockefeller Jr. set out to expand the reach of the family’s education philanthropy. Having been involved Read more…