# Andrew Carnegie only funded libraries if a city agreed to fund them long term In addition to his massive steel wealth, [[Andrew Carnegie]] is known for his philanthropy, including starting a huge number, 2509 to be exact, of libraries across the world.[^1] When building these libraries, he required the town where the library was located to commit to maintain and operate the library after Carnegie put up the initial capital. His reason for this was, in his own words: `an endowed institution is liable to become the prey of a clique. The public ceases to take interest in it, or, rather, never acquires interest in it. The rule has been violated which requires the recipients to help themselves. Everything has been done for the community instead of its being only helped to help itself.` Implicit here is that 1. He wanted to make sure that the library had long term prospects. [[Philanthropists want things to become sustainable]]. 2. The two options for creating those long term prospects were endowing an institution or existing to the public. ### Related * [[§Misalignment between funders and nonprofits in research]] * [[Catalytic funding needs to launch into an existing ecosystem to be effective]] [^1]: [See wikipedia article here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library)