The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

The Flowering of Foundations

Once Carnegie and Rockefeller had shown the way, many others followed in their footsteps. One of the more outstanding of the smaller followers was the Russell Sage Foundation, established in 1907 as a widow's revenge on the deceased “donor.” By all accounts, Russell Sage was America's answer to Ebenezer Scrooge, except that he never was visited by three spirits. His biographer, Paul Sarnoff, wrote, “to the world at large … he was the meanest, most miserly skinflint that ever lived” (1965). Upon his death, Mrs. Sage used a goodly portion of the $64 million that he had left behind to establish the Russell Sage Foundation. The naming of the foundation fairly dripped with irony, as did its first major grant, which funded ...