Philanthropy
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic non-profit organization established by Sloan in 1934. The Foundation's programs and interests fall into the areas of science and technology, standard of living, economic performance, and education and careers in science and technology. The total assets of the Sloan Foundation have a market value of about $1.8 billion.
The Sloan Foundation bankrolled the 1956 Warner Bros. cartoon Yankee Dood It, which promotes mass production. In the late 1940s, the Sloan Foundation made a grant to Harding College (now Harding University) in Searcy, Ark. The foundation wanted to fund the production of a series of short films that would extol the virtues of capitalism and the American way of life.
According to Edwin Black, Sloan was one of the central, behind-the-scenes founders of the American Liberty League, a political organization whose goal it was to defend the constitution. In turn, the League would finance other groups with openly more extreme agendas. One such group was the Sentinels of the Republic to which Sloan himself made a $1000 check. After a Congressional investigation into this group went public in 1936, Sloan issued a statement pledging not to further support the Sentinels.
Also according to Black, the GM chief continued to personally fund and organize fund-raising for the National Association of Manufacturers, which was critical of the New Deal.
The Sloan Foundation has made two grants, of USD 3 million each, to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). These are some of the largest grants that the WMF has received.
Read more about this topic: Alfred P. Sloan
Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)