Carnegie Corporation of New York

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CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK

CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK, a private grant-making foundation, was created by Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) in 1911 to "promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States." Capitalized with a gift of $135 million, the Carnegie Corporation has been influential in a number of areas, including education, race relations, poverty, and public policy. In 2001 the Carnegie Corporation had assets of around $2 billion, putting it in the top thirty of American foundations, making grants of around $60 million annually.

In 1889 Carnegie wrote "The Gospel of Wealth," in which he argued that wealth is a community trust, for the "man who dies rich dies disgraced." Carnegie's philanthropic activity became more systematic after his retirement in 1901, when he sold his steel companies to J. P. Morgan for $400 million. Carnegie set up a variety of philanthropic organizations, including the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh (1900), the Carnegie Institution of Washington (1902), the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1905–1905), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1910), the Carnegie Corporation (1911), and several foundations in Europe. The Carnegie Corporation was his largest single endowment and was operated chiefly under his personal direction until his death. One of Carnegie's early interests was the establishment of free public libraries, a program he began in 1881 and continued through the corporation, building over 2,500 libraries. The corporation terminated the program in 1917 but supported library services for several decades thereafter.

In the mid–twentieth century the Carnegie Corporation, along with the Rockefeller and Russell Sage Foundations, shifted research funding away from independent institutes and bureaus into higher education, leading to the development of the research university. For example, after World War I the corporation reallocated resources away from advocacy groups, like social settlement houses, and instead began funding university-based sociology.

Under the presidency of Frederick P. Keppel (1923–1941), the corporation funded large-scale policy studies, including sociologist Gunnar Myrdal's study of racism, An American Dilemma (1944). After World War II, under John W. Gardner (1955–1965), the corporation experimented with funding liberal social movements and policy-related research. Gardner left the corporation to head the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, illustrating the ties between the corporation and the liberal policy establishment. Alan Pifer (1965–1982) continued this activist grant making, funding Common Cause and advocacy groups associated with Ralph Nader. The Carnegie Corporation provided major support for educational television, especially the children's show Sesame Street. In the 1970s the corporation joined with the Ford Foundation in providing significant funding for women's studies programs.

The Carnegie Corporation continued its program of activist grant making into the twenty-first century. It concentrated especially on education, electoral reform, international development, and peace studies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carnegie Corporation of New York. Home page at http://www.carnegie.org.

Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Home page at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/rare. Archive of Carnegie Corporation activities from 1911 to 1983.

Wall, Joseph Frazier. Andrew Carnegie. 2d. ed. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh, 1989.

Fred W.Beuttler

Dictionary of American History