foundations

Book Profile
Thoughts on Philanthropy from Books Featured in the Giving Review in Second Half of 2024
“The vindictiveness was gone, but the prosecution remained.” President William Howard Taft got to preside over something [Theodore] Roosevelt had wanted but did not attain in his presidency: the demise…
by Michael E. Hartmann on January 15, 2025

Book Profile
Big Philanthropy’s Lost Children
Brooke Orr, the protagonist of Rumaan Alam’s captivating recent novel, Entitlement, lands what she thinks is a great new job as a program officer at a big New York philanthropic foundation. The…
by Michael E. Hartmann on January 13, 2025

Philanthropy
Updated List of Various Ideas to Reform Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector
During the past several years, The Giving Review has tried to conscientiously track contemplated or proposed ideas to reform philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Again acknowledging its partiality and anticipating…
by Michael E. Hartmann on December 19, 2024

Book Profile, Philanthropy
Philanthropy’s Corruption of Politics, and Vice Versa
From his perspective as a University of Oxford political philosopher, Theodore M. Lechterman has introduced a richly substantive critique of philanthropy’s anti-democratic nature to the rising number of such critiques…
by Michael E. Hartmann on November 29, 2024

Book Profile
Participatory Philanthropy in Grantmaking Examines Shift Away from Top-Down Power of Elite Foundations
Participatory Grantmaking in Philanthropy: How Democratizing Decision-Making Shifts Power to Communities, forthcoming in December from Georgetown University Press, features several case studies of and perspectives on what its proponents call…
by Michael E. Hartmann on November 27, 2024

Philanthropy
“Roger Federer Philanthropy”
Retired tennis great Roger Federer’s well-received commencement address at Dartmouth College last June is worth the time for you to read or view for several reasons, but among them are…
by Michael E. Hartmann on November 19, 2024

Philanthropy
A Conversation with John Ehrett (Part 1 of 2)
During a panel discussion about the strained and deteriorating relationship between conservatism and corporations at the National Conservatism conference last July in Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill staff attorney and writer John…
by Michael E. Hartmann on October 23, 2024

Philanthropy
Some Past Proposed Specific Time Limits on Tax Benefits for Private Foundations
Last week, 93-year-old Berkshire Hathaway chairman and chief executive officer Warren Buffett told the Wall Street Journal that almost all of his massive fortune will be put into a new charitable…
by Michael E. Hartmann on July 11, 2024

Philanthropy
Concern About and Willingness to Reform Philanthropy Is Cross-Ideological, Survey Finds
As we and colleagues at Inequality.org have recently been getting “together to discuss what’s gone awry in the current state of charitable giving and the incentives our tax system provides to donors,…
by Michael E. Hartmann on March 25, 2024

Philanthropy
Thought Experiment: Post-Fearless Fund, A World of Philanthropy Without Grant Contracts
During the months leading up to June 2023’s Supreme Court decisions finding race-conscious college admissions to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, some in establishment philanthropy forward-lookingly…
by Michael E. Hartmann on March 21, 2024