Karl Zinsmeister, R.I.P.

Editorial note: this essay originally appeared at The Giving Review.

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“Karl Zinsmeister”—I knew the man’s name long before I met him. In the early 1990s, I was beginning a new stage in my life as a single mother of two sons. I rented and then bought a well-worn house in what we call the “flats” of Ithaca, New York. We had friends just a few blocks away on a dead-end street. The last house on that street was a beauty—a classic older home whose residents had clearly put a great deal of love and care into its preservation and landscaping. It was the house of my dreams. I inquired about its owners and for the first time heard Karl’s name. We never crossed paths in Ithaca, and in time, the lovely house had new residents. But I remembered the name.

Fast forward to 2006. By that time, I had renovated my own house and was serving as executive director of Ithaca’s Triad Foundation, a conservative family foundation. I came across the name “Karl Zinsmeister” again in an article about his appointment as President George W. Bush’s domestic policy adviser. I wondered if this was the same man who had lived nearby. I had my answer in 2011, when Karl became a vice president at the Philanthropy Roundtable, a community of donors with which Triad Foundation’s trustees and I were involved.

In April 2013, I moved to Washington, D.C., and joined Karl on the staff of the Roundtable as vice president for public policy. In a happy coincidence I found myself with an office next to his. We shared more than a corridor, enjoying our conversations about living in upstate New York—the weather (it’s always the weather), the natural beauty of the place, and the diminishing role of the Republican party and conservatism in general in that region. One exception, he predicted correctly, would be Elise Stefanik, with whom he had worked in the White House.

Eventually, Karl persuaded me to write for Philanthropy magazine and that began a new phase in our friendship. Three different orders of Catholic nuns had successfully drilled both readable penmanship and proper grammar into me, but I am not a creative person. My writing is typically utilitarian. Do this, don’t do that, here’s how this works. My first piece—a critique of an op-ed written by David Callahan calling for tighter federal oversight of charities—was in that mode. It may have been persuasive, but outside of a reference to Andrew Jackson, it was also dry.

Karl suggested I use interviews to bring life into the other Philanthropy articles I wrote in 2015– one on sunsetting and one on the growing popularity of donor-advised funds. He was also there for me when I first ventured to write for an external outlet—a critical piece on the importance of philanthropic freedom that appeared in Alliance in September 2016. In looking at that article now, I see that I mentioned my mentor: “Karl Zinsmeister, author of the recently published Almanac of American Philanthropy, characterizes civil society as a ‘polyarchy’—a society in which there are many independent sources of power. Private philanthropy is one of those sources.”

By September 2016, however, I had left the Roundtable and returned to Ithaca to help in the establishment of the Atlantic Philanthropies Archive at Cornell University. I had worked in Atlantic’s Ithaca office from 1984 through 1995 and looked forward to my new assignment. Unofficially, however, I was still engaged with the Roundtable, assisting with a pre-session on donor intent at its 2017 annual meeting. Karl stayed in touch, occasionally requesting me to write a book review. In early 2018, he added me to Philanthropy’s list of contributing editors, and in July 2018, I officially returned (remotely) to the Roundtable as vice president for philanthropic services. I had a new assignment—to join David Bass in writing an updated guidebook on donor intent. Interviews conducted by David would once again provide the human-interest stories to embellish the ultimate “how-to” tome.

It took two years to bring that guidebook to publication. Even bland words don’t come to me easily. But throughout that time, Karl was an upbeat and patient editor, never doubting that we’d cross the finish line and always reminding me of the importance of the Oxford comma. Protecting Your Legacy was published in the spring of 2020, an inauspicious moment for a book defending private wealth and the philanthropy it supports. Not long after the guidebook’s publication, Karl exited the Roundtable. We last saw each other by chance when we found ourselves at the same D.C. restaurant, but continued to connect with each other from time to time. And in January 2023, I moved to Washington State to be near my grandchildren, a move I initially intended to be permanent.

I learned about Karl’s diagnosis in August 2025. It was shattering news, yet Karl regularly wrote to alert others to his publications. Early this year, tired of communicating with him by email, I left Karl a phone message and was blessed to have him return my call. We spoke for an hour that day about our workplace collaborations, our families, and life in general. We shared a good laugh when I told him I had once again returned to Ithaca and was at that moment shopping for groceries at our beloved Wegmans. Thank you, Karl, for all you taught me about writing and for the stirring and simply beautiful books and articles you authored. Thank you for reminding your many readers about the importance of charity—both the simple good deeds of everyday life and the more complex acts of giving we call “philanthropy.” And thank you for so many years of friendship. I know you understand the lure of place, and I wish for you eternal happiness in the lakes, the forests, and the mountains of Heaven.