Independent Sector Visiting Scholar: 2025-Present
Benjamin Soskis is a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. His work explores the ways historical inquiry can inform contemporary philanthropic practice. He is especially interested in the relationship between philanthropy and democratic norms and institutions, and in changing understandings of pluralism and civil society.
A historian and journalist, Soskis is cofounder and coeditor of HistPhil, a web publication devoted to the history of civil society and the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and served as editor of the Generosity Commission’ Final Report (2024). Previously, he was a fellow at the Center for Nonprofit Management, Philanthropy, and Policy at George Mason University.
A frequent contributor to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, his writing on philanthropy, charitable giving, and civil society has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Town & Country, The Guardian, Inside Philanthropy, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Boston Review. Soskis is coauthor of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song that Marches On (Oxford University Press, 2013); author of “A History of Associational Life and the Nonprofit Sector in the United States” in the third edition of The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook (Stanford University Press, 2020); coeditor of Giving in Time: Temporal Consideration in Philanthropy (Rowman & Littlefield/Urban Institute Press, 2023), and coauthor of Standing Up for Nonprofits: Advocacy on Federal, Sector-Wide Issues (Cambridge University Press, 2024). He received his PhD in American history from Columbia University.
