Charity From A to Z

New encyclopedia explores American philanthropy

In the preface of his newly published Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Dwight Burlingame, the book’s editor, uses the words “foolish,” “futile,” and “impossible” to describe his initial thoughts on developing such a book.

“The idea that you could encompass the broadness of philanthropy in any single work was just so daunting,” says Mr. Burlingame, director of academic programs at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy. “Philanthropy touches us everywhere in our lives. What do you include?”

In the 1990s, two different publishers had asked him to edit such a project, and he politely refused both. But by the time ABC-CLIO, a publisher in Santa Barbara, Calif., approached him with its plans for a philanthropy encyclopedia in 2001, Mr. Burlingame endorsed the idea.

A comprehensive “starting point” for those interested in exploring the emerging, multidisciplinary field of philanthropy, he felt, could have real value. Mr. Burlingame’s colleagues, meanwhile, impressed upon him that his deep knowledge of the field made him well suited to serve as editor.

“I took the bait,” he says with a chuckle. “I decided to accept the challenge.”

Charting a Path From the 17th Century

Published last month, Philanthropy in America is a 923-page work organized into three volumes. Volumes I and II provide A-to-Z entries on people, events, organizations, and ideas in American philanthropy. A bibliography is included for each entry as a guide to further reading. The third volume includes documents related to philanthropy — from Aristotle’s 350 BC writings on ethics to excerpts from the current Internal Revenue Code.

The encyclopedia also includes a 17-page timeline of key events in American philanthropy, spanning from the 1600s (when American Indians provided food and assistance to early settlers) to 2000 (when charitable giving reached $212-billion in the United States).

The encyclopedia is written and marketed to be appropriate for seventh graders and older and sells for $285. An electronic version is available for $310. Both versions together sell for $450.

Mr. Burlingame says his goal with the encyclopedia is to provide “a reference where those new to the field can come and get an understanding of philanthropy and begin exploration.”

His aspirations for the book he once thought couldn’t be written now reach beyond colleges and universities. “I’d like to see it on the shelf at every public library and high school in the country,” he says.

ABC-CLIO, an educational and reference book publisher with a focus on history and social studies, would not reveal how many copies of Philanthropy in America were printed. Encyclopedias are a large part of the company’s product line, accounting for around 30 percent of its 250 in-print titles. Its encyclopedias have covered such topics as birth control, conspiracy theories, and constitutional amendments.

“ABC-CLIO will often examine an emerging area of study in history in its reference encyclopedias,” Ronald Boehm, the publisher’s chief executive officer, wrote in an e-mail response to questions about Philanthropy in America’s origins. “Philanthropy has had a significant impact on the people and institutions of the United States. Without an understanding of this impact, a student’s view of American history is incomplete.”

Deciding What to Include

To assist with the problematic “What do you include?” question, one of Mr. Burlingame’s first tasks upon signing on to the project was to form a 10-member advisory committee comprised of scholars and nonprofit leaders. It took more than a year for Mr. Burlingame and the committee to develop the list of 219 entries ultimately included in the book. “The selection process took way longer than I thought it would,” Mr. Burlingame says.

When it came to choosing the entries to represent ideas, concepts, or topics within philanthropy, Mr. Burlingame says the committee reviewed philanthropic publications to determine which topics garnered enough coverage to be included. Among the ones selected: civil society, e-philanthropy, donor-advised funds, social capital, and women’s impact on philanthropy.

Selecting which philanthropists to include was more of a challenge.

“Traditionally, philanthropists are thought of as people who give a lot of money to something,” Mr. Burlingame says. “I started with a premise that philanthropists cannot only give money for the public good, but also their time and effort. I’m defining social-movement leaders as philanthropists. Giving of their time was as important as it might be for Rockefeller to give his millions.”

A fortunate byproduct of this approach, Mr. Burlingame says, is that more women and minorities are in the encyclopedia than would appear if inclusion was based on gifts of money alone. The well-known industrialists-cum-philanthropists Andrew Carnegie, Eli Lilly, and Henry Ford all warrant entries within the book, but then so do Mary McLeod Bethune, a black civil-rights activist, and Cesar Chavez, who advocated for Latino farmworkers’ rights.

Mr. Burlingame says he strove for geographic diversity as well, consciously choosing representative philanthropists from all regions of the country. For example, when looking to include a philanthropist to represent arts giving, he looked beyond the Northeast and chose Ima Hogg, a Texan heiress who was a prolific donor of artworks and founder of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

Contemporary philanthropists — “living people who hadn’t passed the test over the course of their lifetimes” — were not considered for inclusion, says Mr. Burlingame. An exception was made for the billionaire Bill Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest foundation in the world.

Enlisting Experts

After determining what the entries would be, the next move was to figure out who would write them.

Mr. Burlingame, who taught his first class in philanthropy in 1987 and helped found the International Society for Third-Sector Research in 1991, says he has no lack of contacts within the field. More than 175 contributing authors — from foundation officials to philanthropic-studies graduate students — were called on to write entries, with Mr. Burlingame himself tackling the entries on his areas of expertise: altruism, Andrew Carnegie, and corporate giving.

For Volume III, Mr. Burlingame included the speeches and writings of some of the most prominent figures in the history of philanthropy, including Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Jane Addams. Also included are significant court rulings and legislation related to philanthropy, as well as documents from notable philanthropic organizations. Some 75 significant philanthropic documents are reprinted.

“I like the model of teaching from documents,” Mr. Burlingame says, “the idea of a living document: being able to go back and read the historical pieces and make your own judgment or determination on what’s being said, rather than having somebody tell you what’s being said.”

Driven by a desire “to give some flavor of what was going on in literature about philanthropy,” two chapters from Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women and the O. Henry short story “The Chair of Philanthromathematics” are also included.

‘The Good and Bad’

One selection that has the potential to raise eyebrows is “The Ku Klux Klan: Organization and Principles,” a document from the white supremacist group’s founding in 1865.

“I particularly wanted to include that to represent the fact that there is the good and bad in philanthropy,” Mr. Burlingame says. “The KKK is a nonprofit, and it is identified as a philanthropic organization based upon its original goals of education.”

He adds: “Philanthropy is grounded in our constitutional First Amendment right to freedom of assembly.”

Some decisions about what to include were out of Mr. Burlingame’s hands, as he was unable to acquire — or in some cases, afford — the republishing rights to certain 20th-century documents. (He declined to say which ones.)

In the end, the more than three years Mr. Burlingame spent on the formerly considered “futile” task of compiling an encyclopedia of American philanthropy had a profound effect on him.

“Going back and rereading my way through this history really left me with a deep sense of how important philanthropy is,” Mr. Burlingame says. “What I came away with is the sense that in a democratic society based upon capitalism and the marketplace, you really need the balancing factors that are in play today that help to keep capitalism from running amok. At the same time, you need more than just the government to provide for public need. You need private action in that balance, and this is the function of the philanthropic sector as we think of it today.”

More information about the encyclopedia can be found on the publisher’s Web site, http://www.abc-clio.com.