The American Spirit Behind The Establishment Of Modern Philanthropic Foundations

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was facing a critical social splitof the poor and the rich. Philanthropy, as one of the remedies to deal with the socialcrisis, became prosperous, but the philanthropic activities of some of the wealthiest ofthat time assumed a different form from the preceding charitable works. Theyestablished large-scale foundations with general purposes. They tended to attack theroot of the problems rather than provide immediate relief to individuals and theyorganized these new foundations in the way they dealt with their businesses. Therewere various reasons for the rise of these modern philanthropic foundations. Thisthesis is devoted to the research of ideological forces lying behind this phenomenon.And the spirit of religious faith and the spirit of liberalism are highlighted as thefundamental ideas that have influenced the founders of these foundations. The studyis mainly based on the analysis of the activities and thoughts of Benjamin Franklin,Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller and some other philanthropists around theturn of last century.The thesis follows the argument of Max Weber and points out that the Protestantdoctrines encouraged the pursuit of wealth as a duty to God, which contributed to thegiant size of the foundations. Also, the religious belief of brotherly love led people tocharitable work, but the Protestant rationality provided the psychological basis for theidea of attacking the root of the problems and organized philanthropy.The thesis holds that the influence of the spirit of liberalism is best seen from thebelief in individualism, natural rights and limited government. The belief inindividualism and natural rights led people to cherish the equality of opportunity, andthis partly explains the choice of projects of these foundations, which wanted to dealwith the causes of the social problems, not the result of competition. Despite theirlove of individualism, American people had a long tradition of forming organizationsto solve their problems and this collective individualism had great influence onorganized philanthropy. American idea of limited government also had bothpsychological and practical influence on the establishment of modern philanthropicfoundations.In the end, the thesis concludes that besides all the material factors like economic andtechnological development, the establishment and prosperity of philanthropicfoundations in the U.S. had a deep root in their religious faith and belief in liberalism,and these forces of ideas contributed much to shaping the development of organizedphilanthropy in the U.S.