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Foundations as Mirrors of Public Culture

United States Bureau of the Census

We expect private foundations to shape public culture. They have the motive (to improve the world) and the means (discretionary funds); they certainly have tried to alter beliefs and practices. Close examination, however, indicates that foundations do not create so much as accomodate prevailing cultural practice. The earliest large-scale foundations took their cue from the progressive movement and a rationalistic approach to social reform. Across foundation history, the pattern has been to be early followers rather than initiators as evident in the history of funding for environmentalism, feminism, or multiculturalism. Moreover, the decisive changes in political-economic culture in the 1930s and again in the 1980s were only marginally affected by foundations.

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