American Foundations

Author : Helmut K. Anheier
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 0815704577
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Foundations written by Helmut K. Anheier and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations play an essential part in the philanthropic activity that defines so much of American life. No other nation provides its foundations with so much autonomy and freedom of action as does the United States. Liberated both from the daily discipline of the market and from direct control by government, American foundations understandably attract great attention. As David Hammack and Helmut Anheier note in this volume, "Americans have criticized foundations for... their alleged conservatism, liberalism, elitism, radicalism, devotion to religious tradition, hostility to religion—in short, for commitments to causes whose significance can be measured, in part, by the controversies they provoke. Americans have also criticized foundations for ineffectiveness and even foolishness." Their size alone conveys some sense of the significance of American foundations, whose assets amounted to over $530 billion in 2008 despite a dramatic decline of almost 22 percent in the previous year. And in 2008 foundation grants totaled over $45 billion. But what roles have foundations actually played over time, and what distinctive roles do they fill today? How have they shaped American society, how much difference do they make? What roles are foundations likely to play in the future? This comprehensive volume, the product of a three-year project supported by the Aspen Institute's program on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy, provides the most thorough effort ever to assess the impact and significance of the nation's large foundations. In it, leading researchers explore how foundations have shaped—or failed to shape—each of the key fields of foundation work. American Foundations takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour, evaluating foundation efforts in education, scientific and medical research, health care, social welfare, international relations, arts and culture, religion, and social change.

Author : Mark Dowie
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262262385
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.8X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Foundations written by Mark Dowie and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2002-08-23 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In American Foundations, Mark Dowie argues that organized philanthropy is on the verge of an evolutionary shift that will transform America's nearly 50,000 foundations from covert arbiters of knowledge and culture to overt mediators of public policy and aggressive creators of new orthodoxy. He questions the wisdom of placing so much power at the disposal of nondemocratic institutions. As American wealth expands, old foundations such as Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Pew, and MacArthur have grown exponentially, while newer trusts such as Mott, Johnson, Packard, Kellogg, Hughes, Annenberg, Hewlett, Duke, and Gates have surpassed them. Foundation assets now total close to $400 billion. Though this is a tiny sum compared to corporate and government treasuries, and foundation grants still total less than 10 percent of contributions made by individuals, foundations have power and influence far beyond their wealth. Their influence derives from the conditional nature of their grant making, their power from its leverage. Unlike previous historians of philanthropy who have focused primarily on the grant maker, Dowie examines foundations from the public's perspective. He focuses on eight key areas in which foundations operate: education, science, health, environment, food, energy, art, and human services. He also looks at their imagination, or lack thereof, and at the strained relationship between American foundations and American democracy. Dowie believes that foundations deserve to exist and that they can assume an increasingly vital role in American society, but only if they transform themselves from private to essentially public institutions. The reforms he proposes to make foundations more responsive to pressing social problems and more accountable to the public will almost certainly start an important national debate.

Author : Inderjeet Parmar
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231517939
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Foundations of the American Century written by Inderjeet Parmar and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inderjeet Parmar reveals the complex interrelations, shared mindsets, and collaborative efforts of influential public and private organizations in the building of American hegemony. Focusing on the involvement of the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations in U.S. foreign affairs, Parmar traces the transformation of America from an "isolationist" nation into the world's only superpower, all in the name of benevolent stewardship. Parmar begins in the 1920s with the establishment of these foundations and their system of top-down, elitist, scientific giving, which focused more on managing social, political, and economic change than on solving modern society's structural problems. Consulting rare documents and other archival materials, he recounts how the American intellectuals, academics, and policy makers affiliated with these organizations institutionalized such elitism, which then bled into the machinery of U.S. foreign policy and became regarded as the essence of modernity. America hoped to replace Britain in the role of global hegemon and created the necessary political, ideological, military, and institutional capacity to do so, yet far from being objective, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations often advanced U.S. interests at the expense of other nations. Incorporating case studies of American philanthropy in Nigeria, Chile, and Indonesia, Parmar boldly exposes the knowledge networks underwriting American dominance in the twentieth century.

Author : Joel L. Fleishman
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1586485385
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Foundation written by Joel L. Fleishman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations are a peculiarly American institution. They have been the dynamo of social change since their invention at the beginning of the last century. Yet they are cloaked in secrecy -- their decision-making and operations are inscrutable to the point of obscurity-leaving them substantially unaccountable to anyone. Joel Fleishman has been in and around foundations for almost half a century . . . running them, sitting on their boards, and seeking grants from them. And in this groundbreaking book he explains the history of foundations, tells the stories of the most successful foundation initiatives -- and of those that have failed -- and explains why it matters. The baby boomer generation is going to participate in the largest transfer of wealth in history when it passes on its assets to its successor generation. The third sector is about to become more powerful than ever. This book shows how foundations can provide a vital spur to the engine of the American, and the world's, economy -- if they are properly established and run.

Author : David C. Hammack
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 0815721951
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Versatile American Institution written by David C. Hammack and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2013-02-27 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's grantmaking foundations have grown rapidly over the course of recent decades, even in the face of financial and economic crises. Foundations have a great deal of freedom, enjoy widespread legitimacy, and wield considerable influence. In this book, David Hammack and Helmut Anheier follow up their edited volume, American Foundations, with a comprehensive historical account of what American foundations have done with that independence and power. While philanthropic foundations play important roles in other parts of the world, the U.S. sector stands out as exceptional. Nowhere else are they so numerous, prominent, or autonomous. What have been the main contributions of philanthropic foundations to American society? And what might the future hold for them? A Versatile American Institution considers foundations in a new way. Previous accounts typically focused narrowly on their organization, donors, and leaders, and their intentions—but not on the outcome of philanthropy. Rather than looking at foundations in a vacuum, Hammack and Anheier consider their roles and contributions in the context of their times and their economic and political circumstances.

Author : Hyrum Lewis
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781611650303
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Foundations 2e written by Hyrum Lewis and published by . This book was released on 2017-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Alin Fumurescu
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 1108489184
Total Pages : 421 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Foundations of American Political Thought written by Alin Fumurescu and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of primary sources from the founding period covers the unique combination of theoretical influences in American political thought.

Author : Donald R. Kinder
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226435725
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Us Against Them written by Donald R. Kinder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnocentrism—our tendency to partition the human world into in-groups and out-groups—pervades societies around the world. Surprisingly, though, few scholars have explored its role in political life. Donald Kinder and Cindy Kam fill this gap with Us Against Them, their definitive explanation of how ethnocentrism shapes American public opinion. Arguing that humans are broadly predisposed to ethnocentrism, Kinder and Kam explore its impact on our attitudes toward an array of issues, including the war on terror, humanitarian assistance, immigration, the sanctity of marriage, and the reform of social programs. The authors ground their study in previous theories from a wide range of disciplines, establishing a new framework for understanding what ethnocentrism is and how it becomes politically consequential. They also marshal a vast trove of survey evidence to identify the conditions under which ethnocentrism shapes public opinion. While ethnocentrism is widespread in the United States, the authors demonstrate that its political relevance depends on circumstance. Exploring the implications of these findings for political knowledge, cosmopolitanism, and societies outside the United States, Kinder and Kam add a new dimension to our understanding of how democracy functions.

Author : David C. Hammack
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253025435
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Philanthropic Foundations written by David C. Hammack and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once largely confined to the biggest cities in the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states, philanthropic foundations now play a significant role in nearly every state. Wide-ranging and incisive, the essays in American Philanthropic Foundations: Regional Difference and Change examine the origins, development, and accomplishments of philanthropic foundations in key cities and regions of the United States. Each contributor assesses foundation efforts to address social and economic inequalities, and to encourage cultural and creative life in their home regions and elsewhere. This fascinating and timely study of contemporary America's philanthropic foundations vividly illustrates foundations' commonalities and differences as they strive to address pressing public problems.

Author : Helmut K. Anheier
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780815734840
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book American Foundations written by Helmut K. Anheier and published by . This book was released on 2010-03-24 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations play an essential part in the philanthropic activity that defines so much of American life. No other nation provides its foundations with so much autonomy and freedom of action as does the United States. Liberated both from the daily discipline of the market and from direct control by government, American foundations understandably attract great attention. As David Hammack and Helmut Anheier note in this volume, "Americans have criticized foundations for... their alleged conservatism, liberalism, elitism, radicalism, devotion to religious tradition, hostility to religion--in short, for commitments to causes whose significance can be measured, in part, by the controversies they provoke. Americans have also criticized foundations for ineffectiveness and even foolishness." Their size alone conveys some sense of the significance of American foundations, whose assets amounted to over $530 billion in 2008 despite a dramatic decline of almost 22 percent in the previous year. And in 2008 foundation grants totaled over $45 billion. But what roles have foundations actually played over time, and what distinctive roles do they fill today? How have they shaped American society, how much difference do they make? What roles are foundations likely to play in the future? This comprehensive volume, the product of a three-year project supported by the Aspen Institute's program on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy, provides the most thorough effort ever to assess the impact and significance of the nation's large foundations. In it, leading researchers explore how foundations have shaped--or failed to shape--each of the key fields of foundation work. American Foundations takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour, evaluating foundation efforts in education, scientific and medical research, health care, social welfare, international relations, arts and culture, religion, and social change.