Prologue
Foundations—Their History, Structure, and Societal Role
Program officers work in foundations, so before we discuss the work that program officers do, it is important to begin by discussing how foundations have developed in the United States. The idea of a foundation—an endowment established, whether for a fixed term or in perpetuity, the income from which is dedicated to charitable or philanthropic purposes—is a very old one, indeed. As Warren Weaver notes in U.S. Philanthropic Foundations: Their History, Structure, Management, and Record (1967), the notion can be traced, in Western cultures at least, as far back as Plato's academy, founded in Athens about 387 B.C. Plato left the academy, along with its supporting farmland (in effect, ...
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