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Philanthropic foundations bias heavily towards granting large $ amounts exclusively to organizations (not individuals), meaning there are few existing avenues to fund promising people.

Molly Mielke • Scaling the personal grantmaking sector · Molly Mielke

The Ford Foundation was so committed to the enterprise that it established a separate nonprofit dedicated to the cause. “Learning is the new growth industry,” exulted its president, Harold Gores.

Margaret O'Mara • The Code

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded

INCITE!

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Cover of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded

Forethought Foundation

forethought.org

By the mid-20th century, foundations had reached the height of their power and influence, triggering a congressional investigation into whether foundations were manipulating public opinion and thought. The lawyer Rene Wormser, who wrote the final report, described foundations as a “cartel” that threatened to direct our entire intellectual and cultu... See more

Nadia Asparouhova • Idea Machines

Seed money from the Ford Foundation provided what appeared to be limitless growth for performing arts groups, spawning new foundations to fund an ever-increasing number of projects. Ford’s unique invention, the challenge grant, saw great success in raising money by asking donors to match foundation giving.

Blair Tindall • Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music

A small minority of foundations are in fact interested in systems change, radical action on poverty and disadvantage, and programmes like the Omidyar Group’s ‘Imaginable Futures’.6 But the big money steers well clear.

Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination

Philanthropy to the right of boom

founderspledge.com

“What kind of president will you be?” To which he answered, “I would want to use the platform of being president of the Ford Foundation to really deeply interrogate the structures and systems and cultural practices in our country that increase the likelihood of more inequality in our society and of more exclusion and marginalization of people, part