LONG TRAIN OF DISASTERS: Can you guess to which institution the following words refer to? ” … failed to achieve a more-inclusive government, to reduce urban poverty and inequality, and to dismantle racism.” And no, it’s not simply Big Government. It’s Big Government and Big Philanthropy.

Michael Hartmann, writing in Philanthropy Daily and Director of Capital Research Center’s Capital-Giving program, is the author of those words as he is describing Prof. Claire Dunning’s forthcoming Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State.

“Decision-making about government grant-making to nonprofits, Dunning basically believes, has not included a wide-enough group of those who contributed to the pool of funds out of which it was drawn.

“In fact, she thinks, government-nonprofit partnerships were and are so popular in large part because they furthered the interests of an elite, or sets of elites, that benefited — and in some cases outright profited — from the problems they’re supposed to have helped solve,” Hartmann writes.

Don’t expect to see Dunning’s book praised by the NYT. Guess we could say “government of, by and for the elites,” no?