Community-Led Grantmaking: Collective Wisdom for Social Change

Bringing the History of Philanthropy to a Wider Audience

Giving Compass' Take: · HistPhil talks about a new digital platform called Re:source which is  used to tell stories about the history of philanthropy. · Why is it important to learn about the history of philanthropy? How has philanthropy changed with the times? · Check out this article to read more about the history of philanthropy. We’re doing things a little differently in the Research and Education program of the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), the archival repository for some three dozen foundations and nonprofits, including the Hewlett, Ford, Luce, Rockefeller, and Russell Sage Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, and many other institutions. Over a year ago, under the leadership of our new director Barbara Shubinski, our team of historians, educators, and archivists began to brainstorm how we might engage new audiences in the history of philanthropy. Working with foundation and nonprofit archives, we observe and analyze the worldwide and everyday effects of philanthropic endeavor, and yet these stories remain largely unknown to many in the public. With a commitment to access – one of the tenets of archival ethics – the Rockefeller Archive Center hopes to communicate the stories from our vaults to foster transparency within the third sector. To do this, we have recently launched a new digital storytelling platform, RE:source. We are hoping to reach four target audiences: philanthropic practitioners, educators, scholars, and interested thought leaders. Our team has long worked in public history – in the sense that we have been “doing history” outside of the academy. And we have been working in the digital space for nearly a decade, carrying out public history projects and working with philanthropic practitioners to help history inform current practice. With archival holdings from more than forty foundations and not-for-profit organizations, along with a commitment to transparency and access, we felt that the RAC would be uniquely positioned to shed light on the role organized philanthropy has played in shaping the world we live in. The stories embedded within RAC collections touch upon nearly every aspect of global life in the modern era – from cultural and economic development to health care and innovation, to education, immigration, and more. Drawing on the work we do in these fields internally at the Archive Center and with our depositing organizations, we hoped that a digital platform would help us engage a broad public to foster dialogue, debate, and transparency. Read the full article about the history of philanthropy at HistPhil.