Our History

Established in 1911, our foundation is one of the oldest and most influential of American grantmaking foundations.

‘To Do Real and Permanent Good in This World’

The Andrew Carnegie Foundation was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 as Carnegie Corporation of New York. The foundation was the last of more than twenty organizations Carnegie created in the United States and abroad. One of the oldest and most influential of American grantmaking foundations, the philanthropy changed its name to the Andrew Carnegie Foundation in 2026.

In his 1889 essay “The Gospel of Wealth,” Carnegie described the necessity and challenges of trying “to do real and permanent good in this world.” By 1911, Carnegie had endowed five organizations in the United States and three in the United Kingdom, and had given away more than $43 million for public library buildings and close to $110 million for other purposes. On the advice of Elihu Root, the Nobel Peace Laureate and long-time friend and legal adviser, Carnegie established a trust to which he transferred the bulk of his remaining fortune to be given away during his lifetime, and endowed it with the responsibility to distribute his wealth after his death.

By 1912, Carnegie had given the foundation $125 million, making it the largest single philanthropic trust ever established up to that time. Carnegie’s fortune has since supported everything from the discovery of insulin and the dismantling of nuclear weapons to the creation of Pell Grants and Sesame Street. For more than a century, Carnegie’s commitment to “real and permanent good in this world” has improved the lives of millions of people.

A Legacy of Grantmaking

Explore grantmaking highlights

1911

Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie establishes Carnegie Corporation of New York with a $135 million endowment. The mission is “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.”

1923

The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to Dr. Frederick Banting and Dr. J.J.R. Macleod for the discovery of insulin through experiments conducted at a University of Toronto laboratory funded by Carnegie.

1938

Carnegie commissions Gunnar Myrdal to conduct a massive study of conditions endured by Black Americans, resulting in An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. The findings helped end the segregation of schools based on race.

1948

With Carnegie support, the Russian Research Center (now the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies) is founded at Harvard University to help the nation understand its Cold War adversary.

1964

The Carnegie Commission on Educational Television studies the role of noncommercial TV in society, producing a 1967 report that lays the groundwork for the Public Broadcasting Act and government funding of educational television, including PBS.

1969

Groundbreaking children’s program Sesame Street debuts on PBS based on a Carnegie study conducted by Joan Ganz Cooney to determine whether television could be used to educate young children.

1990

The Corporation funds the Committee on Reducing the Nuclear Danger, leading to the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and the deactivation and removal of nuclear warheads across the former Soviet Union.

2000

Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller foundations form the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA), investing $150 million over five years to improve technological capacity, gender equity, access, and research at universities in nine African countries.

2003

With the University of Maryland’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Carnegie publishes The Civic Mission of Schools to support civic learning in K–12 education nationwide.

Andrew Carnegie

Founder

Dame Lousie Richardson

Current President

Past Presidents

Resources for Research

The Gospel of Wealth

Originally published in the North American Review in June 1889, Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth” is considered a foundational document in the field of philanthropy.

The Archives

The Andrew Carnegie Foundation’s historical records are open to researchers and have been housed at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, in New York City, since 1990.