Showdown looming? NYT notes that tied for second largest gift in this $7.2b tranche from Scott was $70m to Hispanic Scholarship Fund. The week before, HSF was target of lawsuit from Edward Blum's American Alliance for Equal Rights for illegal discrimination. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/b...

I think you have to sit Hurts for a bit.

Jalen Hurts is simply not playing well now.

New HistPhil post: John Miles Branch writes on the history of debates over union exemptions for nonprofit organizations, and in doing so, helps bridge labor and nonprofit history, two subfields that, as Branch notes, have often moved along "separate tracks." histphil.org/2025/12/08/u...

NEW: I got a hold of letters from nearly 20 of Trump's ballroom donors, sent to a senator who requested details on how much they gave + who solicited money from them. Most ignored the actual Qs and instead boasted of their philanthropy and love of America. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

Scott Bessant at WH event announcing Dells $6.2B pledge toward the Fed Savings Accounts for Children: it will usher in a "new age of capitalism and market interest for the whole country..." and of philanthropy, providing an inspiring platform. “Every Tuesday can become Giving Tuesday.”

New HistPhil post: Gizem Zircirci on her book, The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty, which recently received ARNOVA's 2025 Outstanding Book Prize. histphil.org/2025/11/24/t...

New HistPhil post: Peter Kurie on what the history of the Hershey Trust--the OG U.S. nonprofit with controlling stakes in a major for-profit corporation--can tell us about the OpenAI Foundation, on paper now the wealthiest private foundation in the U.S. histphil.org/2025/11/13/f...

This is obv a clash abt a very particular political moment, w/ implications touching on shutdown politics. But it likely has implications as well relating to philanthropy's ability to target pub benefit recipients & to the politics of voluntarism more generally. www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-r...

Prediction: if MTG runs, she will tap into the dormant conservative tradition of voluntarism that MAGA (& really Trump) has up till now shown little sympathy for. You could see it bubbling up in inchoate form in some of the recent congressional hearings she chaired on nonprofits...

One of the least remarked parts of Mamdani's speech yesterday was its strong implication that he wants his army of 100k volunteers to stick around and do stuff.

Call it political Skocpolianism or what you will--but this is going to be a major focus of progressive philanthropy in the coming year.

This morning, more convergence btw 2 discourses: recognition of a real appetite for participation in civic & political life as a way to address disconnection; & an appreciation that in investing in infrastructure to support that civic life, prog philanthropy is presented with a real opportunity.

Now it’s @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social, declaring civil society to be a “horrifying disappointment.” He’d like to see leaders of civil society “not be cowards”.

At the Center for Effective Philanthropy conference, @feliciawong.bsky.social discusses the Beyond Neoliberalism initiative, its successes & failures & cites the Garland Fund as historical inspiration (as chronicled by @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social). Garland Fund met the moment…is philanthropy today?

New HistPhil post: David Pozen continues our book forum on @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social' s The Radical Fund, questioning whether, given evolution in nonprofit law since the fund's heydey, it can serve as a model for contemporary philanthropy seeing to "upend America." histphil.org/2025/11/03/c...

Reporting from NYT there were other donors to the WH ballroom not cited by the administration, including several that have business before the admin. The admin's use of a nonprofit as a receptacle for the funds allows them to maintain discretionary anonymity. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/u...

One striking element of lawsuit that coalition of nonprofits filed in RI district court to challenge Trump admin's suspension of SNAP benefits, which highlights damage that will be done to nonprofits bc of massive increase in demand for their services. www.councilofnonprofits.org/pressrelease...

In Emma Green's recent NYer piece on Trump's war on higher ed, she reports she heard a version of this from multiple admin officials: "[I]f the endangered research is truly vital, universities can figure out other ways to fund it, such as donor dollars." Market infallibility applied to philanthropy.

New HistPhil post from John Witt, inaugurating a book forum on his recently published "The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America," which chronicles the influence of the American Fund for Public Service (the Garland Fund, est 1922). histphil.org/2025/10/27/w...

Not a parody.

Besides assessing how large conditional donations to fed agencies might violate the Antideficiency Act, another policy consideration must involve questions of transparency. It seems to me that over a certain dollar threshold, these sorts of gifts should not be allowed to be made anonymously.

Keep in mind as well that Congressional Republicans have directed lots of attention recently to the dangers of foreign philanthropy into US, w/ calls to restrict funding & for greater transparency.

Trump: "It's awfully strange to make a decision where I'm paying myself. But I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get I would give to charity."

The whole recent Benioff saga--the about-face, the push back from Powell Jobs & Conway, and then the quasi-apology, w/ the lure of govt contracts & social ostracism as likely motives, is a perfect illustration of liabilities of reliance on engaged living mega-donors. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/u...

For those seeking to promote civil society, good to know who's marching under its banner. NYT reports that Nigel Farage led "Civil Society Round Table" at Westminster, attended by delegation from House Judiciary Comm, to discuss threats to free speech in UK, w/ help from Alliance to Defend Freedom.

You have to read this article to its (literally) jaw-dropping end. Just quote after quote from Marc Benioff, pledging fealty to Trump, in highlight what rivals Zuckerberg as most intense shift in *public* political identity of major philanthropist in recent years. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

New HistPhil post: Nicole Marwell and Jennifer Mosley chronicle the rise of the randomized controlled trial to the top of the hierarchy of program evaluation, while also highlighting the significant ambivalence nonprofit & foundation staff have to that ascension. histphil.org/2025/10/10/r...

I think the Capital Research Center should get its story straight--the "aw shucks, we're just doing research on Open Society & had no idea the Justice Dept would weaponize it" argument is laughable. They are a part of the civil society they are working to erode. (Links in comments)

With a little bit of perspective I think it’s fair to say: that was one of the more miserable, draining nights of Philadelphia sports fandom I’ve experienced in my lifetime. When does the Sixers season start!!

Among the 9 groups cited by WH to Reuters as examples of orgs it said helped finance or plan protests where violent incidents occurred are *Indivisible*--which really does make clear how admin's anti domestic terror campaign is being used to go after pol opposition. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Just to develop the tax / nonprofit angle a bit more, the last sentence (allowing donors to claw back donations) would violate every 501(c)(3) organization's governing documents, and make them ineligible for deductible contributions. State orgs a little more complicated but likely same result.

That rare initiative in which excessive philanthropic power and state power are exquisitely intertwined. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u...

Is this populism? [Butterfly meme]

CEO of DonorsTrust, the conservative DAF supporting org, warns Free Press against "weaponiz[ing] philanthropy in a way that is antithetical to philanthropic freedom.” Key to stress that defense of civil society extends across ideological & partisan spectrum. www.thefp.com/p/conservati...

I want to flag an exchange in Ross Douthat's recent NYT interview with May Mailman, "the Harvard-Trained Layer Behind Trump's Fight Against Top Universities," as the Times put it, in which Mailman directly discusses the relationship btw govt funding and philanthropy. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...

New HistPhil post: I gave close watch to two cong. hearings this summer on fed funding of nonprofits to get a better sense of scope of the right's antagonism to nonprofits. One striking dimension: stirrings of MAGA voluntarism premised on split btw good & bad nonprofits. histphil.org/2025/09/25/n...

This is very bad. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

Coming to a US near you soon.

In one sense, Searchlight is the institutional embodiment of the "Groups" critique that Jentleson has championed. But it's the popularist variety of critique & not the more powerful Skocpolian one, since it seems to rely on a funding model dependent on big donors. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/u...

"They praised Mr. Kirk’s commitment to free speech while threatening to exact a price against the “far left” that they accused of fomenting political violence in America." A crack down on civil society & associational rights under the banner of free speech... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

The bar is pretty low for what constitutes an act of political bravery from conservatives now in defending civil society, but still, good to see.

Here we go. Trump just made it unmistakably clear that it will now be absolutely open season on whoever they decide to label "the left," and that this will be pursued with the full force of the government. This could get very, very bad.

@mattyglesias.bsky.social flagged this exchange elsewhere and he's exactly right. The attack on Kirk was obscene. Full stop. There's also a good chance that it will be used as pretext for a massive crackdown on progressive nonprofits and philanthropy.

This seems like a case that could have some definite implications for philanthropy and the politics of naming rights, abt the 1st Amend rights of students at schools that have been turned into "mobile billboards" for messages they do not endorse. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

New HistPhil post: Nancy Um & Matthew Westerby introduce findings from Scholars Data Project, hosted by the Association of Research Institutes in Art History, on residential fellowships sponsored by 4 leading research institutions in art history over last six decades. histphil.org/2025/09/08/t...

FOX: Are these protesters actually being financed from the outside, and is that something Homeland is looking at -- the financing of how these so-called organic protests are happening? HOMAN: Absolutely ... they will be prosecuted too

This will be one of the more significant books on the history of philanthropy in quite a while! I’ve read parts of it. It’s a phenomenal read—and more timely than ever.

“We see this as a Free Exercise issue under our First Amendment rights,” said Peter Gudaitis, the exec director of New York Disaster Interfaith Services. “...[T]he federal government has never attempted to tell the nonprofit sector who we can and cannot serve." www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...