LAUSR

Abstract Foundations play an increasingly important role in the creation and maintenance of urban infrastructure supporting social reproduction (e.g. schools, health care, human services, etc.). Yet, geographical scholarship on the consequences of their funding and influence remains relatively sparse, and research from other disciplines is predominately critical. This manuscript offers a more hopeful reading of the consequences of foundations through pragmatic theory. It highlights pragmatism’s pluralistic theory of knowledge, focus on the problematic situation and the future, and its integration of hope as a generative process in creating truths to reveal a more nuanced and ultimately more hopeful reading of the possibilities for nonprofits engaging with philanthropic foundations. It further argues that in an era of mature neoliberalism and hallowed out urban government, abandoning all engagement with philanthropic foundations as a universal principle runs the risk of further starving critical community resources of the necessary funds to do their work.