Browsing by Subject "Foundations"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    21st -Century Community Foundations
    (2015-06-08) Carson, Emmett
    Community foundations across the United States are actively thinking through how to engage with donors who have local, national, and international interests. This paper examines how different community foundations are responding to changing definitions of community to meet the needs of their donors and their local communities. It posits that the key characteristic of community foundations compared to other donor advised fund providers is their leadership and civic engagement within and outside of their stated geography. I wrote this paper because increasingly, community foundations are wrestling with this definitional issue, which is becoming a fundamental question to their operations. It’s not going away—it shouldn’t go away—and community foundations have a responsibility to explore and debate what can and will happen as a result.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Henry Ford : sustaining Henry Ford's philanthropic legacy
    (2013-12) Kienker, Brittany Lynn; Burlingame, Dwight; Witkowski, Gregory R.; Moody, Michael P.; Scarpino, Philip V.
    This dissertation argues that the Edison Institute (presently known as The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan) survived internal and external challenges through the evolution of the Ford family’s leadership and the organization’s funding strategy. Following Henry Ford’s death, the museum complex relied upon the Ford Foundation and the Ford Motor Company Fund as its sole means of philanthropic support. These foundations granted the Edison Institute a significant endowment, which it used to sustain its facilities in conjunction with its inaugural fundraising program. Navigating a changing legal, corporate, and philanthropic landscape in Detroit and around the world, the Ford family perpetuated Henry Ford’s legacy at the Edison Institute with the valuable guidance of executives and staff of their corporation, foundation, and philanthropies. Together they transitioned the Edison Institute into a sustainable and public nonprofit organization by overcoming threats related to the deaths of two generations of the Ford family, changes in the Edison Institute’s administration and organizational structure, the reorganization of the Ford Foundation, the effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, and legal complications due to overlap between the Fords’ corporate and philanthropic interests. The Ford family provided integral leadership for the development and evolution of the Edison Institute’s funding strategy and its relationship to their other corporate and philanthropic enterprises. The Institute’s management and funding can be best understood within the context of philanthropic developments of the Ford family during this period, including the formation of the Ford Foundation’s funding and concurrent activity.   This dissertation focuses on the research question of how the Edison Institute survived the Ford family’s evolving philanthropic strategy to seek a sustainable funding and management structure. The work examines its central research question over multiple chapters organized around the Ford family’s changing leadership at the Edison Institute, the increase of professionalized managers, and the Ford’s use of their corporation and philanthropies to provide integral support to the Edison Institute. In order to sustain the Edison Institute throughout the twentieth century, it adapted its operations to accommodate Henry Ford’s founding legacy, its legal environment, and the evolving practice of philanthropy in the United States.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    LEVERAGING THE POWER OF FOUNDATIONS: An Analysis of Program-Related Investing
    (3/17/2013) IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
    This study provides a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the Foundation Center’s PRI database for the years 2000 to 2010. Analysis of this single and uniform dataset helps to shed light on the trends and landscape of foundations’ PRI activities. Additionally, the study explores the driving forces and challenges of PRIs through in-depth case studies of seven U.S.-based private foundations that use PRIs. This research aims to fill the gaps in knowledge about PRIs and to advance and disseminate new information about PRIs so that foundations might better leverage their impact for the greater good.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Local Foundations and Medical Research Support in Indianapolis after 1945
    (2019-07) Lupton, Suzann Weber; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Badertscher, Katherine E.; Kaefer, Martin; Lenkowsky, Leslie; Schneider, William H.
    Philanthropy plays an important and often publicly visible role in modern medicine. Names like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Gates are associated with medicine both personally and through the foundations they created. This phenomenon also played out on a local level, where communities are dotted with hospitals, university laboratories, and medical schools bearing the names of families who contributed to build, literally and figuratively, the institutions of medical research. Little is known about these local philanthropists, including why they decided to support research and how they organized and carried out the work of grantmaking. Consequently, there is no deep understanding of the value of their contributions. I seek to remedy that omission through this study of the history and work of three small foundations dedicated to medical and scientific research and located in a single, midsized American city. Ultimately this work considers a question fundamental to medical research philanthropy: Can smaller foundations make a meaningful contribution to modern medical research given the scale, complexity, and cost of the work as well as the dominance of federal government funding? This work concludes that the primary value of the foundations under study was not their financial support for research per se, but their flexible and sustained contributions to the local research infrastructure, including philanthropic investments that helped launch research projects and the careers of individual scientists; provided capital for needed physical space; and supported recruiting efforts to bring innovative and productive faculty members to staff new research and patient care departments. The foundations in this study, both individually and collectively, served as valuable strategic allies to the research institutions in their community. As a result, the foundations contributed directly and meaningfully toward the expansion and improvement of the research institutions. The resulting growth in the size and reputation of these programs and facilities generated economic gain that benefitted the broader community. This finding supports a call for the development of a more nuanced and complete understanding of the potential impact that smaller funders can have in a large and complicated system.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Opening the black box of conservation philanthropy: A co-produced research agenda on private foundations in marine conservation
    (Elsevier, 2021-10-01) Gruby, Rebecca L.; Enrici, Ashley; Betsill, Michele; Le Cornu, Elodie; Basurto, Xavier; Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
    In the ‘new Gilded Age’ of mega-wealth and big philanthropy, academics are not paying enough attention to private foundations. Mirroring upward trends in philanthropy broadly, marine conservation philanthropy has more than doubled in recent years, reaching virtually every globally salient marine conservation issue in all corners of the planet. This paper argues that marine conservation philanthropy warrants a dedicated research agenda because private foundations are prominent, unique, and under-studied actors seeking to shape the future of a “frontier” space. We present a co-produced social science research agenda on marine conservation philanthropy that reflects the priorities of 106 marine conservation donors, practitioners, and stakeholders who participated in a research co-design process in 2018. These “research co-designers” raised 137 unique research questions, which we grouped into five thematic research priorities: outcomes, governance roles, exits, internal foundation governance, and funding landscape. We identify issues of legitimacy, justice, and applied best practice as cross-cutting research priorities that came up throughout the five themes. Participants from the NGO, foundation, and government sectors identified questions within all five themes and three cross-cutting issues, underscoring shared interest in this work from diverse groups. The research we call for herein can inform the practice of conservation philanthropy at a time when foundations are increasingly reckoning with their role as institutions of power in society. This paper is broadly relevant for social and natural scientists, practitioners, donors, and policy-makers interested in better understanding private philanthropy in any environmental context globally.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Paying for Overhead: A Study of the Impact of Foundations’ Overhead Payment Policies on Educational and Human Service Organizations
    (2007-03) Rooney, Patrick; Frederick, Heidi
    This paper examines the impact of foundations’ overhead funding policies on educational and human services organizations. Data was collected from two original surveys, one of foundations and one of educational and human services organizations, and from six case studies. The results of this study found that most foundations fund nonprofits’ overhead expenses, mostly within program grants. Large foundations and those that fund locally were statistically more likely than smaller foundations or those that grant nationwide to fund nonprofits’ overhead expenses, controlling for other factors.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Roles of Foundations in American Religion
    (2009) Wuthnow, Robert; Lindsay, D. Michael
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    US giving reached a near-record $450 billion in 2019 as the role of foundations kept up gradual growth
    (The Conversation US, Inc., 2020-06-16) Pruitt, Anna; Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    What happens to charitable giving when the economy falters?
    (The Conversation US, Inc., 2020-03-23) Rooney, Patrick; Bergdoll, Jon; Lilly Family School of Philanthropy