Carnegie Corporation of New York
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a private foundation established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding."
Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or otherwise helped establish institutions including the United States National Research Council, Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, the Carnegie libraries, the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, and the Children's Television Workshop. It also has funded the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Carnegie Institution for Science. According to OECD, Carnegie Corporation of New York's financing for 2019 development increased by 27% to US$24 million.
Carnegie Corporation of New York's president is Louise Richardson and the chairman of its board of trustees is Janet L. Robinson.
History
Founding and early years
By 1911, Andrew Carnegie had endowed five organizations in the United States and three in the United Kingdom, and given more than $43 million to build public libraries and given another almost $110 million elsewhere. But ten years after he sold the Carnegie Steel Company, more than $150 million remained in his accounts and at 76, he wearied of philanthropic choices. Long-time friend Elihu Root suggested he establish a trust. Carnegie transferred most of his remaining fortune into it, and made the trust responsible for distributing his wealth after he died. Carnegie's previous charitable giving had used conventional organizational structures, but he chose a corporation as the structure for his last and largest trust. Chartered by the State of New York as the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the corporation's capital fund, originally worth about $135 million, had a market value of $4.6 billion on October 2025.In 1911–1912, Carnegie gave the corporation $125 million. At that time the corporation was the largest single philanthropic charitable trust ever established. He also made it a residual legatee under his will so it therefore received an additional $10 million, the remainder of his estate after it had paid his other bequests. Carnegie reserved a portion of the corporation's assets for philanthropy in Canada and the then-British Colonies, an allocation first referred to as the Special Fund, then the British Dominions and Colonies Fund, and later the Commonwealth Program. Charter amendments have allowed the corporation to use 7.4 percent of its income in countries that are or once were members of the British Commonwealth.
In its early years, Carnegie served as both president and trustee. His private secretary James Bertram and his financial agent, Robert A. Franks, acted as trustees as well and, respectively, corporation secretary and treasurer. This first executive committee made most of the funding decisions. Other seats on the board were held ex officio by presidents of five previously established US Carnegie organizations:
- Carnegie Institute
- Carnegie Institution of Washington
- Carnegie Hero Fund Commission
- Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Corporation strategies changed over the years but remained focused on education, although the trust did also increasingly fund scientific research, convinced that the nation needed more scientific expertise and "scientific management". It also worked to build research facilities for the natural and social sciences. The corporation made large grants to the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanford University's now-defunct Food Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, then became interested in adult education and lifelong learning, an obvious follow-on to Carnegie's vision for libraries as "the university of the people". In 1919 it initiated the Americanization Study to explore educational opportunities for adults, primarily for new immigrants. After Carnegie died in 1919, the trustees elected a full-time salaried president as the trust's chief executive officer and ex officio trustee. For a time the corporation's gifts followed the patterns Carnegie had already established.
Frederick P. Keppel
With Frederick P. Keppel as president, the Carnegie Corporation shifted from creating public libraries to strengthening library infrastructure and services, developing adult education, and adding arts education to the programs of colleges and universities. The foundation's grants in this period have a certain eclectic quality and remarkable perseverance in its chosen causes. His vision for adult education drew from both Victorian values of character as well as democratic ideals of freedom of thought and reasoning. Through the Carnegie Corporation, he established the American Association of Adult Education, which focused on grant funding for adult education programs. The creation of an outside organization helped shield the Carnegie Corporation from accusations of political involvement in education, which would be viewed as private influence over public education. The corporation was aiming to prevent accusations of social-engineering of citizens by creating a separate organization. The AAAE's primary focus in the 1930s was promoting a more democratic society through the education of adults. The AAAE's most notable contribution was the Harlem Experiment, an initiative to provide adult education to African Americans in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance that began in 1926.In 1927, Keppel toured sub-Saharan Africa and recommended a first set of grants to establish public schools in eastern and southern Africa. Other grants went to for municipal library development in South Africa. During 1928 the corporation initiated the Carnegie Commission on the Poor White Problem in South Africa. Better known as the "Carnegie Poor White Study", it promoted strategies to improve the lives of rural Afrikaner whites and other poor whites in general. A memorandum sent to Keppel said there was "little doubt that if the natives were given full economic opportunity, the more competent among them would soon outstrip the less competent whites" Keppel endorsed the project that produced the report, motivated by his concern with maintaining existing racial boundaries. The corporation's concern for the so-called "poor white problem" in South Africa stemmed at least in part from similar misgivings about poor whites in the American South.
White poverty defied traditional understandings of white racial superiority and thus became the subject of study. The report recommended that "employment sanctuaries" be established for poor white workers and that poor white workers replace "native" workers in most skilled aspects of the economy. The authors of the report suggested that white racial deterioration and miscegenation would be the outcome unless something was done to help poor whites, endorsing the necessity of the role of social institutions to play in the successful maintenance of white racial superiority. The report expressed trepidation concerning the loss of white racial pride, with the implicit consequence that poor whites would not successfully resist "Africanisation". The report sought, in part, to forestall the historically inevitable accession of a communal, class based, democratic socialist movement aimed at uniting the poor of each race in common cause and brotherhood.
Keppel initiated a famous 1944 study of race relations in the United States by the Swedish social economist Gunnar Myrdal in 1937 by naming a non-American outsider as manager of the study. His theory that this task should be done by someone unencumbered by traditional attitudes or earlier conclusions led to Myrdal's widely heralded book American Dilemma. The book had no immediate effect on public policy, but was later much cited in legal challenges to segregation. Keppel believed foundations should make facts available and let them facts speak for themselves. His cogent writings on philanthropy made a lasting impression on field and influenced the organization and leadership of many new foundations.
Charles Dollard
and its immediate aftermath were a relatively inactive period for the Carnegie Corporation. Keppel was succeeded as president by Walter A. Jessup from 1941–1944 and Devereux C. Josephs from 1945–1948.Charles Dollard joined the staff in 1939 as Keppel's assistant and became president in 1948. The foundation took greater interest in the social sciences, and particularly the study of human behavior. Dollard urged it to fund quantitative, "objective" social science research like research in physical sciences, and help to diffuse the results through major universities. The corporation advocated for standardized testing in schools to determine academic merit regardless of the student's socio-economic background. Its initiatives have also included helping to broker the creation of the Educational Testing Service in 1947.
The trust also entered into international affairs. The corporation determined that the U.S. increasingly needed policy and scholarly expertise in international affairs, and so tied into area studies programs at colleges and universities as well as the Ford Foundation. In 1948 the trust also provided the seed money to establish the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, today known as the Davis Center for Russia and Eurasian Studies, as an organization that could address large-scale research from both a policy and educational points of view.
In 1951, the Group Areas Act took effect in South Africa and effectively put the apartheid system into place, leading to political ascendancy for Afrikaners and dispossession for many Africans and colored people suddenly required to live in certain areas of the country only, on pain of imprisonment for remaining in possession of homes in areas designated for whites. The Carnegie corporation pulled its philanthropic endeavors from South Africa for more than two decades after this political change, turning its attention from South Africa to developing East African and West African universities instead.