A telling historical snapshot of five foundations.
“By 1960,” that which later was renamed the American Enterprise Institute “had twelve full-time employees and an annual budget of $230,000,” according to onetime Twentieth Century Fund program officer and historian James A. Smith in his 1991 book The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite.
“The money came primarily from large business corporations,” but its president William J. Baroody, Sr., “also tapped the funds of the relatively few foundations that were interested in either conservative causes or economic research, including the Earhart, Falk, Kresge, Pew, and Sloan foundations.”
Sixty years later, where are those five foundations now? Closed, closed, gone left, gone left, and gone left.
I miss the ground breaking start Earhart gave to new scholars. It stood alone and was relevant always with a clearly focused mission. The staff and board I met were solid and in tune. The existing others have forgotten their founders views and , I think, their founders messed up . Their founders should have considered criteria for new board members/staff to continue their values. The staff’s transitioned and took over with boards unattached to the founders and began to swim always in the trendy thinking of the day. A potential founder should use these examples as guides if he or she wants their new foundation to live much beyond her or his lifetime.