In their quest for social change, givers like Arnold are reluctant to support “causes”; they want to “solve problems—big ones,” as Callahan puts it. But, in Arnold’s case, lessons had to be learned along the way. His early forays into philanthropy, including an effort to reform public pensions, were scorned, with critics noting that Enron’s collapse had resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in pension funds.

Moskovitz and Tuna weren’t keen to embrace traditional development organizations, which they are inclined to view as lethargic and bureaucratic. For them, grant making is akin to venture-capital investing: they want to act decisively and disrupt traditional models and structures. They have contributed $32 million to a group called Give Directly, which is not interested in vaccinating children, digging wells, building toilets, and creating schools. Rather, it gives cash handouts to the poor, who are free to spend the money as they wish. Callahan is skeptical of the ideology guiding Moskovitz and Tuna—who favor Silicon Valley mantras such as “empower individuals over institutions”—but he knows they are too influential to ignore. The couple will give away hundreds of millions of dollars every year. They are not yet thirty-five years old.

There are growing concerns about the influence and reach of the superwealthy: “Philanthropy is becoming a much stronger power center,” Callahan says, “and, in some areas, is set to surpass government in its ability to shape society’s agenda.” The state has retreated; the givers have advanced.

in many U.S. cities, elected officials are overwhelmed by debt obligations, and as a result have precious little money to spend on parks, museums, and other public services. The givers have no such constraints. In Boston, the Barr Foundation has done much to shape the city’s arts, culture, and political milieu. In Houston, Richard Kinder is helping to forge a massive network of urban trails. In Detroit, the Kresge Foundation is contributing funds for a new light-rail system. In New York, the Leon Levy Foundation has helped to revitalize a pair of Brooklyn landmarks, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. These are worthy endeavors, but Callahan is right to express concern about a fundamental shift of power from a “hollowed-out public sector” to elite private givers who are not fully accountable and operate in dark corners.

In 2008 Stephen A. Schwarzman, another cofounder of Blackstone, gave $100 million to the New York Public Library at a moment when the Library was secretly undertaking a dubious real estate and construction scheme. For nearly a decade, the NYPL refused to reveal how Schwarzman’s money was being utilized. Only in recent months did the Library account for the gift’s use: the $100 million formed part of the endowment and will soon be used for new renovation projects.

Under an initiative backed by Broad and like-minded funders, L.A. could add hundreds of new charter schools in a decade. Broad is quick to refute allegations that he is overreaching: “I think everyone is getting heard,” he informed Callahan. “We’re getting heard, the philanthropists. The unions and administrators are getting heard. Overall, we’re creating debate.”

That may be so, but increasingly the debate is among people who already agree. The Givers makes a persuasive case that the superwealthy are expanding their influence at a moment when many Americans are bolting from civic and political life. The author, drawing on the scholarship of Theda Skocpol, evokes an earlier era when mass-membership organizations such as trade unions flourished, giving ordinary citizens a certain degree of influence vis-à-vis elite power structures. These days, he writes, “We’re fast moving toward a future where private funders, not elected officials and the citizens they answer to, choreograph more of public life.”

Of the top eighty American foundations, only twenty-six post detailed information about their current grant making on public databases. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, endowed by Warren’s wealth, “has no real website and the information available on its grant making through tax returns is always a few years out of date,” Callahan notes.

The Givers is alive to these and other contradictions in the philanthropic sector and poses thorny questions for elected officials and nonprofit leaders: why is a check to a right-wing think tank tax-deductible but a check to a conservative senator is not? Why are many large foundations spending a mere 5 percent of their assets each year when they can easily afford to spend more? Why do so many foundations exist in perpetuity, instead of “spending down” and closing their doors? Why is the sector so lightly regulated by government, particularly the IRS? Finally, what exactly is the public getting in exchange for colossal tax breaks granted for philanthropy, which mainly go to rich people?

The Givers, which went to press before Donald Trump was elected, concludes with a stark and prescient warning: the nonprofit sector should initiate its own reforms, before politicians do it with a heavier and more mischievous hand. “It’s not okay,” he warns, “to settle for a status quo in which the foundation world remains forever a black box.” His proposals for change—the creation of a new U.S. federal office of charitable affairs, a reevaluation of what should qualify for tax-exempt status, trustee boards that are more inclusive and transparent—are not likely to be embraced in Trump’s Washington, however.

Katz, writing after Trump’s victory, argued that Callahan has sidestepped the central issue: Our current dire political situation is the product of both traditional American anti-statism and a very different and deliberate assault on the state by plutocrats. We do not have so many billionaires, and thus mega-foundations, because we now have a larger and more adept entrepreneurial class, but because the structure of (mostly federal) economic policy has been captured by people of wealth, who have rewritten the laws to enable themselves to become extraordinarily rich…It seems to me that the new plutocrats are in fact the problem, and they are quite unlikely to be part of the solution, as Callahan contends.

My own wish is that Callahan had confronted, in a more pungent way, the structural features of the behemoth that looms before him: the grant-making model itself, upon which modern American philanthropy rests. Foundation leaders advocate transparency, inclusion, and equality, but they operate in a strikingly hierarchical manner. They are a cloistered elite.

Does this top-down model—in which grantees spend immense time and energy chasing cash—inhibit the growth of dues-paying organizations, which may be more vibrant and democratic than nonprofit organizations dominated by an aloof board of trustees and an executive director? Passages in The Givers suggest that Callahan has pondered these matters, but he stops short of a full critique.

There are now more than ninety thousand private foundations, whose assets total $700 billion. These foundations supply money to more than a million tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations. Some of these nonprofits are financially secure, but many chafe under immense anxiety as they await annual grants from their masters in the foundation suites.

Known as “retention editing” because of its unique ability to keep a user glued to their screen, this style features loud sound effects, fast cuts, flashing lights and zero pauses.

“It’s the Beastification of YouTube,” said Noah Kettle, co-founder of Moke Media Co., a video editing and social media monetization consultancy. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, built his reputation by creating hyper-engaging, fast-paced videos with frequent action on screen. That led smaller YouTubers and content creators to mimic his style.

Donaldson tweeted a plea to his fellow YouTubers to “get rid of the ultra fast paced/overstim era of content.” He said that in the past year, he has slowed his videos, focused more on storytelling, “let scenes breathe, yelled less” and focused on longer videos, all of which has resulted in even more views.

if content creators require fewer editing resources, it could alter the outside editing services that many content creators use.

Creating a retention edited video requires a lot of work. “Every clip in the video should be under two seconds,” said Dara Pesheva, a 17-year-old who works as a freelance video editor for social media content creators. “Every 1.3 to 1.5 seconds you have to have a new graphic or something moving, you have to [use] a lot of effects. For every image and every transition, you have to add a sound effect. You need flashing graphics, and you have to have subtitles in every video.”

TikTok has trained users to scroll away if they aren’t hooked within the first half-second, social media video editors said. This is why so many retention edited videos start with a loud bang or whoosh sound.

“People around my age can’t focus,” Pesheva said. “They have very short attention spans. They’re used to TikTok, and so editors have to adjust for Gen Z. They have to adjust to the fact that people can’t keep their attention on something for more than a second if it’s not entertaining.”

CapCut, the video editing platform owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance, allows users to add catchy sounds and special effects to their videos with just a few taps. This has allowed anyone, even children, to create videos with tons of explosions, laser effects and animated text. Replicating those same effects on older video editing tools such as Adobe Premiere or After Effects could take hours and is far more complicated.

Connor Bibow, a freelance videographer in Georgia, said that it’s no surprise retention editing works so well on channels like MrBeast’s that cater to children, because the editing format is very similar to children’s cartoons. “It’s a lot of noises and bright colors,” he said.

Thavaseelen said he began leveraging retention editing after seeing MrBeast speak about it. “MrBeast is very open and transparent with his content, and he tells people what he said,” Thavaseelen said. “He tells people you have to optimize for retention. A lot of clips he puts on short form are retention edited.”

as MrBeast has cooled on the style, experts say that other creators are already beginning to follow. “There’s been a wave of creators who have now transitioned to just making hour-and-a-half videos with just them and a whiteboard,” Kettle said, “and they’re outperforming every single video that they’ve done that was optimized for attention.”

Cicero, the Syracuse University instructor, said that YouTube, like many art forms, has different styles that define different periods. Retention editing, he said, has defined the 2020 to 2024 era, but fatigue eventually sets in.“Early on, it was very easy to blow up and become a viral hit with [this type of editing], but now it’s a lot harder,” he said. “There are these waves of different trends in editing, or in fine art, or in music, where you have these different styles. Maybe retention editing is like the impressionist period for YouTube.”