Andrew Carnegie is famous, not for his wealth, but for what he did with it. He believed that wealth should be used to “do real and permanent good in this world.” On this #GivingTuesday, learn more about how Carnegie laid the foundation for modern philanthropy. His conviction that wealth must serve the community may be his greatest gift.
📽️ Narrated by Brian Cox (@coxusa ).
📖 Special thanks to #AndrewCarnegie biographer David Nasaw.
Happy early birthday, America — your Carnegie Libraries are getting $10,000! 🇺🇸🎉
Carnegie Libraries across America are each receiving a $10,000 gift from Carnegie Corporation of New York in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The #CarnegieLibraries250 gifts anchor a $20 million special initiative to celebrate the country’s anniversary by supporting America’s civic institutions and organizations that foster civic participation and bring people together.
Each Carnegie Library may use the funds however they wish to celebrate the anniversary, further their mission, and serve their community.
👉 Tap the link in the @carnegiecorp bio to learn more.
📢 Help us reach your library! Tag your Carnegie Library in the comments below to make sure they’ve heard the good news 👇
#CarnegieLibrariesOfInstagram #CarnegieLibrary #LibraryLove #Philanthropy #AndrewCarnegie #America250
🇺🇸 Immigrants strengthen our democracy 🇺🇸
From building businesses to enriching our culture, immigrants are a vital part of America’s story.
In fact:
💰 Immigrants pay some $652 billion in taxes every year.
🗽 There are 48 million immigrants in America, 14.3% of the population.
🗣️ 3 out of 4 immigrants are proficient in English.
🇺🇸 Half of all immigrants, 24 million, are naturalized U.S. citizens.
🏢 230 Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.
🚀 3.9 million immigrants are entrepreneurs — that’s 24% of all business owners.
🎓 35% of immigrants have a college or graduate degree.
🔬 Immigrants fill roughly 1 in 4 jobs in the fields of agriculture, construction, and STEM.
Find these facts — and more — in our #GreatImmigrants comic book, which includes the stories of Great Immigrants, Great Americans honorees whose contributions and actions have enhanced and strengthened American society and democracy.
📖 Explore their stories and download the FREE comic book at carnegie.org/immigrantstories.
🔗 Link in the @carnegiecorp bio.
#USimmigration #Immigration #ImmigrantStories #ComicBooks #ComicBook #Fact #DidYouKnow
When @dwaynebetts was incarcerated at 16, he spent time in solitary confinement. Books were scarce.
The men in cells around him devised a workaround: they tore bedsheets into ropes, sending volumes through the air in pillowcases between buildings roughly 40 feet apart. “A-yo, send me a book,” Betts recalls calling out — the first thing he asked for since being locked up.
Betts was released in 2005, and today he is a poet and lawyer, but his experience in solitary, and the books that reached him there, have stayed with him.
What began with one man, packing hundreds of books into boxes and driving to the post office has since grown into a national nonprofit.
Freedom Reads installs curated collections directly inside prison housing units — the cellblocks where people live and spend most of their time. The goal, according to Betts, is to remind them “that they are not forgotten, and that they deserve the beauty, solace, and possibility that comes with a Freedom Library.”
Today, there are 600-plus Freedom Libraries installed across 14 states and 60 prisons, and with a new $1 million Carnegie grant, Freedom Reads will reach as many as 4,000 additional readers through the creation of 40 Carnegie Freedom Libraries.
Learn more about the work of Freedom Reads at the link in @CarnegieCorp 's bio.
#Philanthropy
Did you know that nearly 1,700 public libraries across the U.S. were built with grants from Andrew Carnegie? Now you can explore them all in one place.
🔎 Use our interactive map to find out if your neighborhood received some of Andrew Carnegie's #LibraryLove, and access our archival records for each location.
🔗 map.carnegielibraries.org (link in bio)
#CarnegieLibraries #USHistory
Announcing the 2026 class of Andrew #CarnegieFellows!
Twenty-four scholars, selected from a record 381 nominations, will each receive a $200,000 fellowship to pursue research into one of the country’s most urgent issues: political polarization.
The winning projects examine the historical and religious roots of American divisions, how digital communities shape the political identities of young men, and potential institutional reforms in campaign finance, the federal courts, and education, among other areas of research.
Since 2024, Carnegie has committed up to $18 million and provided grants to 78 fellows to build a rigorous body of scholarship focused on how and why American society has become so divided and what can be done to strengthen the forces of cohesion in the United States.
🔗 Learn more about the fellows, their work, and our mission via the link in our bio.
#philanthropy
The Great Immigrants, Great Americans comic book shares the inspiring #ImmigrantStories of 13 naturalized American citizens in their own words.
The individuals, each of them an honoree of Carnegie's #GreatImmigrants initiative over the past 20 years, have made a lasting impact on our society through their contributions as storytellers, community leaders, educators, innovators, and beyond.
Among the featured individuals, explore the #ImmigrantStories of:
🎓 Jean-Claude Brizard, leading educator and innovator
🥣 Betty Kwan Chinn, dedicated humanitarian
🎸 David Byrne, groundbreaking artist and musician
🔬 Katalin Karikó, Nobel Prize–winning biochemist
💥 Jim Lee, record-breaking comic book artist and publisher
💻 Yann LeCun, pioneering AI scientist
🚰 Mona Hanna, whistleblowing pediatrician and advocate
Download the FREE comic book today at carnegie.org/immigrantstories.
Link in the @carnegiecorp bio
#FreeComicBookDay
Did you know Andrew Carnegie’s formal schooling ended at age 12? After immigrating with his family from Scotland to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, he worked as a bobbin boy in a textile mill.
When a retired businessman later opened his personal library to young factory workers, Andrew Carnegie discovered something that would change his life: books. He called them “the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination.” After making a fortune in steel, Carnegie funded the construction of more than 2,500 free public libraries worldwide — including 1,681 in communities across the United States.
As Andrew Carnegie once said, “Whatever agencies for good may rise or fall in the future, it seems certain that the free library is destined to stand and become a never-ceasing foundation of good to all the inhabitants.”
We still believe this.
➡️ Swipe for a preview of the comic.
🔗 Get the full comic at the link in our bio. (It’s free!)
🏛️ Visit carnegielibraries.org to explore Carnegie Libraries Across America.
#NationalLibraryWeek #CarnegieLibraries #USHistory
You helped these stories win two Webby awards — and more importantly, you helped them reach people who'd never heard them before. Thank you.
👀 Follow us to meet the 2026 Class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans in June!
💥 Visit Carnegie.org/immigrantstories to explore the Great Immigrants, Great Americans Comic Series — free to read, download, and share.
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🏆 2026 Webby People's Voice Winner: Belonging & Inclusion, Social Content Series
🏆 2026 Webby Winner: Belonging & Inclusion, Social Video Short Form
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Concept and Script: @jongsma_oneill
Illustration: @chuanming_ong
Animation: @brglesitta
Music: @oceanic.ocean
Sound Design: Arnoud Traa
#GreatImmigrants #ImmigrantStories
When wildfires devastated Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2023, librarian Jessica Gleason rolled in with the Holoholo Bookmobile, bringing books, internet access, and story times to families who had lost everything.
📚 Visit ForTheLoveOfLibrarians.org to read and watch the stories of nine more #ILoveMyLibrarian honorees who are serving and strengthening their communities.
🔗 Link in bio.
🤝 In partnership with @AmericanLibraryAssociation and @NYPL .
#NationalLibraryWeek #LibraryOutreachDay #LibraryJoy #bookmobile
Around 8 percent of people in the U.S. — more than 25 million — have limited English proficiency. Yet as this number increases across the country, public funding for adult education has trended downward.
Despite tight resources, libraries across America are trying to fill this gap.
“I see libraries as a first responder to the rapid changes that we’re seeing in our times,” says Brian Bannon, the Merryl and James Tisch Director of the New York Public Library, which in 2024 received a Carnegie grant to expand its English language services, workforce development, and teen services.
In its 2024 fiscal year, @nypl ’s English language program attendance surpassed 200,000, making it the largest provider of free English language education outside of New York City’s school system.
“It’s a moment where we have to respond quickly,” says Bannon, “and it turns out libraries are designed to do that.”
Libraries are meeting the challenge together — with help from philanthropy. In June 2025, San Diego Public Library (@sdpubliclibrary ), Plainfield Public Library (@plainfieldlibrarynj ), and nine other public library systems were awarded a total of $5 million in new Carnegie grants after responding to the foundation’s nationwide request for proposals.
🔗 Tap the link in bio to learn more about Carnegie’s longstanding support for libraries and how branches across the country have become first responders for America’s opportunity gap.
#NationalLibraryWeek
