Daughters of the Declaration: How Women Social Entrepreneurs Built the American Dream

by Claire Gaudiani, David Graham Burnett

Overview

America's founding fathers established an idealistic framework for a bold experiment in democratic governance. The new nation would be built on the belief that "all men are created equal, and are endowed...with a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The challenge of turning these ideals into reality for all citizens was taken up by a set of exceptional American women.

Distinguished scholar and civic leader Claire Gaudiani calls these women "social entrepreneurs," arguing that they brought the same drive and strategic intent to their pursuit of "the greater good" that their male counterparts applied to building the nation's capital markets throughout the nineteenth century. Gaudiani tells the stories of these patriotic women, and their creation of America's unique not-for-profit, or "social profit" sector. She concludes that the idealism and optimism inherent in this work provided an important asset to the increasing prosperity of the nation from its founding to the Second World War. Social entrepreneurs have defined a system of governance "by the people," and they remain our best hope for continued moral leadership in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610390316
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	11/08/2011
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Claire Gaudiani is an expert on the history and economics of American philanthropy. From 2004-2009, she served as clinical professor at the Heyman Center for Philanthropy at New York University, where she directed the graduate program in philanthropic studies. From 2001-2004 at the Yale Law School, she wrote The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism. Gaudiani served for thirteen years as president of Connecticut College, where she was also professor of French. She is married to David Burnett, PhD, her partner in Gaudiani Associates.

Editorial Reviews

Arguing that individual citizens’ initiatives in the voluntary not-for-profit sector have contributed as much as business entrepreneurs to America’s greatness, the authors trace the work of female civic leaders, or “social entrepreneurs,” from the Revolutionary War through the 1938 passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. American philanthropy expert Gaudiani (Generosity Unbound) and husband Burnett, a retired academic and business administrator, begin with the story of Esther Reed, the wife of a Pennsylvania governor, who published a 1778 broadsheet setting out a bold plan for national women’s fund-raising organizations that raised tens of millions in today’s dollars for the Revolutionary War effort. In 1793, a freed slave and foster mother to 48 black and white children, Catherine Ferguson used the income from baking wedding cakes to fund the nation’s first “Sabbath school,” a secular school on Sundays for child laborers that was replicated across New York City. More widely known is the case of Frances Willard, national president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who fought a battle that changed public attitudes on alcohol abuse and its social consequences. Although the examples of strong women who were agents of change for their fellow citizens are edifying and inspirational, this social history is geared toward specialists in public policy, philanthropy, and women’s studies and will have limited appeal to lay readers. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus, August 11
“An interesting sidelight on the transformation of laissez-faire capitalism and the shaping of markets toward more ethical behavior.”

Publishers Weekly, September 15, 2011
“The examples of strong women who were agents of change for their fellow citizens are edifying and inspirational.”
 
Booklist
“[Gaudiani and Burnett] have a broader purpose in examining the work of generations of American women activists…Their subjects are, the authors urge, “social entrepreneurs” who brought to the issues they championed the same optimism, idealism, and determination—and the same strategic planning, tactical flexibility, and operational creativity—that for-profit entrepreneurs applied to their fledgling industries. In the process…these women developed a vibrant “social profit” sector, which continues to demand that American society reconsider, in each generation, whether it is living up to the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”
 

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From the Publisher

A look at how, by inventing philanthropic institutions, American women have played a crucial role shaping the American economy since the first days of the Revolution.

Gaudiani (Generosity Unbound: How American Philanthropy Can Strengthen the Economy and Expand the Middle Class,2010, etc.) and her husband and business partner Burnett, educators and economic consultants to philanthropic organizations, consider the not-for-profit social sector to be a uniquely American third sector of the economy "that mobilizes citizen idealism and responsibility [and] provides a marketplace where buyers and sellers of ideas to improve the nation (and the world) can meet to do business." The authors demonstrate that in each of the wars in U.S. history, beginning with the Revolutionary War, women have played a major role in organizing financial support for soldiers--e.g., going door to door in Philadelphia, Esther Reed raised $7,000 to purchase new uniforms for Washington's soldiers and inspired women throughout the colonies to do likewise. Charity work provided the vehicle for enterprising women of that day whose other activities were severely restricted. Reed's activities, write the authors, began a tradition of female civic leadership and led to the creation of social entrepreneurship. The Russell Sage Foundation, established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 and still active today, became the nation's first think-tank, and it began with the mandate of looking at the impact of social welfare on workers' lives and issued a number of groundbreaking studies on the need for workplace safety and public-health measures. In 1803, the first Widows' Society, headed by Isabella Graham, received $15,000 from the New York State legislature to support its work. Although the book ends with the role of women such as Francis Perkins and Mary McLeod Bethune in the New Deal, its implications for today are clear.

An interesting sidelight on the transformation of laissez-faire capitalism and the shaping of markets toward more ethical behavior.

Kirkus Reviews