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Apr 20, 2024 · The need for a standardized and efficient system. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the American education system was fragmented and lacked standardization. Rockefeller recognized the need for a more cohesive and efficient approach to education. He supported initiatives that aimed to establish uniform curricula, teacher training ...
Jul 7, 2023 · Rockefeller donated millions of dollars to further public education in America, and had strong views about how educational charities should function. He created his own charity, the General ...
- Precursors to A New Philanthropy, 1892-1913
- Finding A Footing, 1913-1928
- The Advancement of Knowledge, 1928-1963
- An Ecological Web of Giving, 1963-1988
- Catalyst, Collaborator, Convener, 1988-2013
A Fortune Too Large to Give Away?
At the dawn of the twentieth century, John D. Rockefeller was the richest man in the world. In a span of only forty years, from his first job as a sixteen-year-old assistant bookkeeper in 1855 to his unofficial retirement as the head of Standard Oil in 1895, Rockefeller not only amassed a personal fortune but transformed American business practices forever. Even after his retirement, thanks to the oil shares he still owned and the demand for gasoline for newly invented automobiles, Rockefelle...
Tackling Root Causes: Making Benevolence a Business
Two men stepped in to help Rockefeller re-envision his ad hoc charitable giving. Together, Frederick T. Gates and Rockefeller’s only son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.(JDR, Jr.), worked with Rockefeller to promote the evolution of large-scale philanthropy. They remade personal charity into an organized, institutional enterprise modeled on corporate business practices. This new style of philanthropy did not seek to provide direct relief to the those suffering from disease or poverty, but instead lo...
Progressive Era Values
The new “wholesale” philanthropy was steeped in the ethos of the Progressive era. Ironically, this ethos had evolved in response to the cataclysmic social changes brought about by the large-scale industrial capitalism that Rockefeller himself had helped to invent. Although Progressivism was infused with Protestant religious values, it embraced secular methods, particularly the “rationality” of science and the quantitative analysis of the social sciences. Its essential tools were organization,...
After a long and unsuccessful quest to obtain a federal charter that played out over half a dozen years, the Rockefellers, Gates, and Murphy agreed to charter their new entity in New York State instead, and the Rockefeller Foundation was incorporatedwith very little trouble on May 14, 1913. On May 22, the trustees held their first meeting. Througho...
After the major reorganization in 1928, the Rockefeller Foundation entered an era that would in some ways become its defining period. Its operations were now more consolidated than ever and its infrastructure functioned like a well-oiled machine. John D. Rockefeller and Frederick Gates’s vision of a philanthropy that would run like a corporate busi...
Reorganizing for Changing Times
The reorganization at the fiftieth anniversary was led by President J. George Harrar, who had risen to the presidency from beginnings as a local director in the Mexican Agriculture Program. The most significant shift in program organization since 1928, the 1963 reorganization transformed the Rockefeller Foundation’s structure from academic divisions similar to university departments into “goal oriented programs in which each component was related to every other in an ecological pattern.”The R...
The Gospel of Ecology
That Harrar described the new programs as an ecological pattern is typical of this era. By the early 1960s, the rhetoric of ecology had extended beyond the environmental movement. Its concepts became commonplace in academic disciplines and even in popular culture. The ecological viewpoint, broadly put, cast social problems as complex, web-like systems in which everything was connected to everything else. In the earlier part of the century, taking care of the environment had meant effective st...
Foundations Under Fire
Harrar was in many ways the ideal candidate to shepherd this transition. A deeply respected leader steeped in the Rockefeller Foundation ethos, he remains the only RF President who has ever risen to the office through the organization’s ranks. He assumed the presidency of the Foundation against a backdrop that included the cultural and social upheavals of America in the 1960s and the controversial Tax Reform Act of 1969. The Tax Reform Actrequired increased public accountability from tax-exem...
A changing global economy in the 1980s challenged the Rockefeller Foundation and other private sector organizations and changed their relationship to the public sector. Longtime RF trustee Richard Lyman assumed the Foundation’s Presidency in 1980 and steered the Foundation through a decade that included the emerging global crisis of HIV/AIDSand, in...
Jan 5, 2022 · The GEB was incorporated in 1903 to foster “the promotion of education within the United States of America, without distinction of race, sex, or creed.” “General Education Board: Purpose and Program,” Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), Family Records, Rockefeller Boards, GEB, III 2 O, Box 15, Folder 145.
Dec 23, 2023 · Rockefeller’s influence on education was not solely altruistic. The GEB played a pivotal role in imposing a standardized model of education across the nation. ... Rockefeller aimed to create a ...
May 17, 2024 · The existing education options at the time were largely focused on traditional academic subjects, which did not adequately prepare individuals for the demands of the industrial workforce. Recognizing this gap, John D. Rockefeller and other industrialists saw the need to create a system that would provide practical training and education to workers.
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John D. Rockefeller (born July 8, 1839, Richford, New York, U.S.—died May 23, 1937, Ormond Beach, Florida) was an American industrialist and philanthropist, founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. He is the major historical figure behind the famed Rockefeller family ...
