In Progress
The Disruption of Philanthropy in the San Francisco Bay Area
A book on philanthropy in the San Francisco Bay Area from roughly the 1930s to the present, which examines the critical role of philanthropy professionals in creating models of giving that appealed to the preferences of their clients–and the constraints they faced in ensuring those models served the poor, locals, and the least politically powerful.
“Society’s Risk Capital” for HistPhil.
A history of how federal policy and the turmoil of the 1960s incentivized foundations to develop practices later associated with venture philanthropy in the 1990s, such as outcomes-focused giving and particular notions of risk and grantee accountability.
“Society’s Risk Capital: Foundations and Midcentury Venture Philanthropy”
A study of how foundations analogized their giving to venture capital between the 1940s and 1970s as a way to justify their privileged tax status, as well as the factors that compelled foundations to question their midcentury practices in ways that ultimately produced the outlines for venture philanthropy later in the century.
Completed
Emma Goldman, A Documentary History of the American Years: The War Years, 1917-1919. Ed. Candace Falk, Catherine Hollis, Micah McElroy, and Amy O’Hearn (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2021), book.
Rhea Wong and Micah McElroy, “#23, History of Philanthropy with Micah McElroy” The Nonprofit Lowdown (March, 2019), https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/anchor-podcasts/nonprofit- lowdown/e/59839536
Micah McElroy, “Thinking Historically about Big Bets in Philanthropy” The Social Investor (Chandler Foundation, February 2018)
Micah McElroy, Panel Speaker “Contending Visions of Philanthropy, 1940-1960” History of Capitalism 2.0 Conference, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (September, 2016)