The Fabric of Character: A Wise Giver's Guide to Supporting Social and Moral Renewal

What is character and how do you shape it? This question has preoccupied parents, teachers, clergy, and leaders since time immemorial. But it takes on vital importance in our era. While the complexity and autonomy of life in the twenty-first century call for character more than ever, the conditions under which such character is forged are in trouble. How do we replenish the store of moral capital in such a diverse, individualistic, consumerist, and stressed society? How do we encourage a shared pursuit of the good? This book aims to break open a new path for donors and a wide range of institutional leaders in launching a character revival. Through inspirational stories of exemplary organizations, and a powerful set of 16 questions that you can use to evaluate your own, this book will equip philanthropists to shape existing initiatives that attempt to transform lives, and to build new ones.

Anne Snyder directs The Philanthropy Roundtable's Character Initiative, a program that seeks to help foundations and business leaders strengthen the "middle ring" of morally formative institutions in the United States. She is also a fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, a Houston-based think tank that explores how cities can drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens, and a senior fellow at The Trinity Forum. From 2014 to 2017 Anne worked for Laity Lodge and the H. E. Butt Family Foundation in Texas, and before that, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, World Affairs Journal, and the New York Times. She has published in Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, City Journal, and elsewhere, and is a contributing editor to Comment Magazine and a trustee at the ­Center for Public Justice. Anne spent the formative years of her childhood overseas before earning a bachelor s degree from Wheaton College (IL) and a master's degree from Georgetown University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.