Putting the ‘Andrew’ Back in Carnegie: A New Name for the Foundation

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the oldest philanthropies in the United States, today said it has changed its name to more accurately describe its work and to clearly identify its founder. It is now called the Andrew Carnegie Foundation

The previous name, which the foundation held since its inception in 1911, was difficult for Dame Louise Richardson to explain to people when she became president in 2023 and moved from England to the United States.  

When asked about her new job, she had to tell people Carnegie is a foundation, not a corporation, and that it makes grants throughout the United States and the world, not just in New York. 

“That’s a bit of a mouthful,” she said.

The name change could help generate interest in Carnegie, the man, and how the industrialist viewed his responsibility as a philanthropist, according to Carnegie historians. But they noted the change could also fall flat at a time of simmering distrust of the ultra-wealthy and of longstanding institutions. 

As a teenager, Carnegie immigrated to the United States from Scotland with very little money. He attributed his success and his rise to become one of the wealthiest people of his generation to luck and to the support of the community that surrounded him, Richardson said. His duty as a philanthropist, spelled out in his famous book Gospel of Wealth, was to use his money to serve the public good, preferably before his death.

Under Richardson, the grant maker’s biggest goal has been to reduce polarization in society. As of 2025, the institution held $4.8 billion in assets, and its annual charitable distributions topped $180 million, which exceeds the $135 million, not adjusted for inflation, with which Carnegie started the fund.

 “He saw himself as a steward of his wealth, and I don’t think many wealthy people today feel that way,” Richardson said. “The Silicon Valley billionaires seem much less interested in philanthropy.”

Several other foundations have changed their names in recent years, each for different reasons. Last year, following Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates’s divorce and her departure from their foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became the Gates Foundation. Others have come from a desire to refine the foundation’s brand. The JPB Foundation, named after Jeffry and Barbara Picower, changed its name to the Freedom Together Foundation to help underscore the partnerships it wants to build to help strengthen a multiracial democracy. 

In 2023, the Brooklyn Community Foundation tossed the word “foundation” from its name, feeling it was stodgy, and emerged as Brooklyn Org.

Shedding the Term ‘Corporation’

Originally, Andrew Carnegie called his grant-making apparatus a corporation to distinguish it from philanthropic trusts, which at the time were usually limited to a person’s lifetime and were more narrow in scope than the philanthropic institution Carnegie envisioned, said Leslie Lenkowsy, emeritus professor at Indiana University.

Carnegie had already established the Carnegie Foundation in The Hague in 1903 as well as the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in California three years later. To create another Carnegie Foundation at the time would’ve been confusing, Lenkowsky said.

There are 26 organizations globally that bear Carnegie’s name, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Carnegie Mellon University. The foundation’s name change is an effort to clear up any confusion about its purpose and highlight it as the founder’s primary philanthropic vehicle, said Janet Robinson, chair of Carnegie’s board. 

“We are embracing the word ‘foundation’ because we wanted to reinforce the work that we have already done and, again, the work that we will do going forward,” she said. “It was really a question of clarity.”

The foundation made all the decisions about the new name on its own and did not run options by focus groups or seek the advice of branding consultants, Robinson and Richardson said.

Reactions to the New Name Vary

Some wonder why the foundation decided to make the change now. Maribel Morey, historian of philanthropy and author, said the renaming was a missed opportunity for a “critical dialogue”  on capitalism and Carnegie’s legacy as a Gilded Age tycoon. Andrew Carnegie represents a huge tension that exists in philanthropy, Morey said. 

On one hand, she explained, his urge to give away the entirety of his fortune set a high standard for his contemporaries and future philanthropists. But his accumulation of wealth was helped by the low pay he provided his workers, and his efforts to suppress labor discontent led to violence, she said.

“Carnegie Corporation is leaning in to the memory of its founder (arguably glorifying it with the name change) when other organizations … have taken more critical lenses to their founders’ legacies as titans of industry,” she wrote in an email.  

But Carnegie’s unique story and approach to giving is worthy of celebration, said David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at City University of New York and author of Andrew Carnegie, a comprehensive biography of the philanthropist.

His contemporaries, including Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller, also amassed fortunes and then created philanthropic institutions to generate social change. But, Nasaw noted, Carnegie was the only one who pledged to give all of his money away.

“It’s really important that we bring this man back to life with all his flaws, that we present a full picture of who this man was and why he remains distinct,” Nasaw said.

The renaming is emblematic of a deep desire among nonprofits to appear transparent to the broader public, said Kade Burns, strategy director at Hyperakt, a branding agency that specializes in nonprofits.

The new name more clearly conveys what Carnegie does, Burns said, which is important because there is a power imbalance between funders and grantees, and greater clarity may engender greater trust. 

Now, she said, the foundation has an opportunity to share additional messaging that makes it crystal clear what its focus is and what kind of world it wants to help create. 

“Transparency is an act of both owning the power you have and being very clear about how you intend to wield it,” she said. “Your name can’t do it all.”

Correction: A previous version of this article said David Rockefeller was a contemporary of Andrew Carnegie. It has been corrected to say John D. Rockefeller.