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Nov 19, 2024 | 
philanthropy.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
If, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, every presidential election in the United States is “a cause of agitation” and “a period of national crisis,” this year’s did not disappoint. The nonprofit world played its part, mobilizing voters, assisting at the ballot box, and raising issues it considered priorities. By one estimate, philanthropy spent at least $1.3 billion on election administration alone.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
philanthropy.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
A blue-ribbon commission’s most important contribution sometimes has less to do with its findings or recommendations than with how it defines what it is studying. This was the case with the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs, better known as the Filer Commission, which was convened in the mid-1970s to address concerns that hostile policymakers and a weak economy were turning the nation’s charities into what was widely referred to at the time as an endangered sector.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
msn.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
Writing in 2021, not long before becoming a U.S. senator, JD Vance denounced big foundations as “cancers on American society” because they provided tax-sheltered ways for the very wealthy to promote their favorite political causes. He called for taxing their endowments and restricting their size. This criticism echoed charges that have been made across the political spectrum since 1910, when John D.
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Aug 24, 2024 | 
nationalreview.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
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Jul 25, 2024 | 
heraldtimesonline.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
Suppose you were at a crowded movie theater and as the film was about to begin, someone yelled “Free Popcorn.” You might be annoyed by the interruption (or even happy if it were true), but not likely to question the speaker’s right to say it. But suppose, instead, the person shouted “Fire” when there wasn’t one.
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Apr 11, 2024 | 
thegivingreview.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
The below article originally appeared as a contribution to “The Commons” in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on April 1, 2024. ***In May, the Council on Foundations will host its annual conference in Chicago.
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Apr 9, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
Edward C. Banfield, a political scientist who taught for nearly four decades at Harvard University, is probably best known as a conservative critic of Great Society programs. His 1970 book, “The Unheavenly City,” argued that these programs were likely to fail, in no small measure because the urban poor they aimed to help were trapped in a “lower-class culture” of short time-horizons, criminality and broken families that government efforts would not be able to overcome.
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Feb 27, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Leslie Lenkowsky
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
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Nov 22, 2023 | 
americanpurpose.com | Richard Aldous |Gary Schmitt |Jeffrey K. Tulis |Leslie Lenkowsky
Although many now worry that it is endangered, American civil society has long been an important element of what has made the United States an “exceptional nation.” Historian Jon K. Lauck argues that in 19th century America, the surprising epicenter of that civil society turns out to have been the Midwest, a region frequently derided by the literati and others as close-minded and unenlightened.
