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FEATURED BOOK
The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America,
The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, by John Fabian Witt, tells the story of how a single million-dollar inheritance, redirected in 1922 toward radically progressive causes, helped fuel a wave of transformative social change in the United States. During a political moment markedly similar to the one we face now, the book shows how the American Fund for Public Service - also known as the Garland Fund - was used to finance civil rights, working-class power, and free speech, including initiatives led by the ACLU, the NAACP, and organizations like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black labor union in the US. The Garland Fund helped reshape American democracy by backing movements for free speech, racial justice, and workers’ rights. Ultimately, Witt’s book is a call to action, showing us what becomes possible when wealth is redirected to fund social movements and to build a better world.
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Control: Why Big Giving Falls Short
Control: Why Big Giving Falls Short, by Glen Galaich, presents a sharp critique of U.S. philanthropy, arguing that its structures and culture normalize excessive donor control over resources that are, effectively, public assets. As billionaires wield increasing control over public funds and daily life, Gailach combines personal experience with systemic analysis to show how charitable ‘Big Giving’ prioritizes endowment growth and for-profit investment over the timely and direct disbursement of funds to communities and nonprofits.
Tracing his own personal shift from championing centralized donor power to advocating for community-engaged decision-making, Gailaich argues for a fundamental transformation of philanthropy. Gailaich urges funders to change this system by reorienting their mindsets away from ownership and entitlement and towards more democratic, equitable, and participatory approaches to philanthropic giving.
MODERATOR
Dr. Carmen Rojas is the president and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation. Under her leadership, which started in 2020, MCF launched the prestigious Freedom Scholar award and has granted more than $323 million in funding to dozens of organizations doing the hard work of shifting power to those people who have long been excluded from having it. Prior to MCF, Dr. Rojas was the cofounder and CEO of the Workers Lab, an innovation lab that partners with workers to develop new ideas that help them succeed and flourish.
PANELISTS
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Megan Ming Francis is the G. Alan and Barbara Delsman Associate Professor of Political Science and an associate professor of law, societies, and justice at the University of Washington. During the 2021–22 academic year, she is also a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and a Racial Justice Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School. Francis specializes in the study of American politics, with broad interests in criminal punishment, Black political activism, philanthropy, and the post–Civil War South. She is the author of the award-winning book Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. She is currently working on two book projects: (1) “The Crimes of Capitalism” examines the role of the criminal punishment system in the rebuilding of southern political and economic power after the Civil War, and (2) “How to Fund a Movement” examines the history and future of philanthropy’s complicated relationship with social movements. Her research and commentary have been featured in numerous academic and public outlets, including a popular TED Talk. Francis is a proud alumna of Seattle Public Schools, Rice University in Houston, and Princeton University, where she received her MA and PhD in politics.
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John Fabian Witt is the Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a professor of history at Yale University, where he teaches and writes on the history of American law and the law of torts. He is the author of six books of legal history, including The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America (October 2025) and Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which won the Bancroft Prize, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was awarded the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Witt is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and former head of college at Yale’s Davenport College. He teaches annually in the Warrior-Scholar Project Academic Boot Camp for enlisted veterans and has launched a course on the history of the US Constitution for secondary school teachers and other educators through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
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Glen Galaich is a thought leader and national voice on the future of philanthropy and social impact. As CEO of the Stupski Foundation—a major US spend-down foundation—he oversees initiatives advancing food justice, economic empowerment, post-secondary success, and health equity across the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaiʻi. He is the host of the podcast Break Fake Rules and the author of Who Gives?!, a newsletter that interrogates the myths, incentives, and power structures shaping modern philanthropy. A political science PhD with more than 25 years of experience, Galaich has conducted national research on Americans’ perceptions of philanthropy, donor control, and the effectiveness of common foundation practices. He has worked with major donors, policymakers, advisors, corporate leaders, and grassroots organizers to build trust-based relationships and accelerate systems-level change in the Big Giving system. Galaich previously served as CEO of Forward Global, where he led a landmark international merger to create a global learning network for philanthropists. Earlier in his career, he helped launch the Global Philanthropy Forum and held national fundraising roles at Human Rights Watch. Galaich has earned a Colorado Broadcasters Award for his work as a talk show radio host, and his writing has appeared in American Political Science Review, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and other leading publications. He lives in Marin County, California, with his wife, two children, and two dogs.
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