On the Issue of Trust

Peter Karoff's essay "On the Issue of Trust" explores the impact and potential consequences for philanthropy in light of society’s diminishing trust in its institutions. It also provided the background and context for a provocative Tuesdays@TPI forum, Trust and Transparency: Philanthropy as Private Action in Public Space on March 9, 2004. At a time when philanthropy is increasingly a subject of scrutiny and criticism by the media and the government, when trust in its institutions is at its nadir,TPI concluded that this forum and a special issue of Initiatives were both important and timely.