The Charles H. Revson Foundation and six philanthropic partners this week launched a new local news outlet in America’s largest city. It  is an attempt to stanch a hemorrhage of local reporting and shine a light on the increasingly invisible politics of New York City and State.

The head of the Hewlett Foundation provides a tour d’horizon of American political dysfunction — and envisions a long and difficult therapy to bring it back to health. 

Using only the traditional tactics of standard philanthropy, the Revson Foundation helped New York City’s struggling branch libraries regain support from City Hall and begin rebuilding their crumbling infrastructure.

Should philanthropists follow the guidance of Duke Prof. Joel Fleishman and his co-author Tom Tierney, in the 2011 book Give Smart, and devote their giving to the causes that most move their hearts? Or should they emulate Facebook billionaires Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, who select their charitable targets with cerebral dispassion, assessing how many people will benefit from any given contribution, how great and lasting the benefit might be relative to the cost, and how much risk of failure they will confront along the way. 

Almost all grants support human beings. But only some concentrate on cultivating human excellence. Five factors, drawn from The Atlantic Philanthropies' work in Viet Nam, seem to define this important form of grantmaking.

Modesty is a personal virtue, but it can be a vice for foundations and their causes. Paul Grogan of the Boston Foundation recently explained why.

Research on time-limited philanthropy used to be scarce, but it’s expanding fast. Foundation Center has just scanned the intellectual landscape, and the results are intriguing.

Are foundation officers more courageous risk-takers than other people? Some new research says: Evidently not. Then again, should they be?

For a foundation spending down, the final years entail a lot of ending, closing, and exiting. But there are good reasons why they should also include some creative new work.

A lot of foundations automatically shun proposals for buildings. There are good reasons to reconsider.