Benjamin Soskis is a senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. 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. A historian and journalist, Soskis is the coeditor of HistPhil, a web publication devoted to the history of civil society and the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. 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 has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Inside Philanthropy, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Boston Review. He 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); and coeditor of Giving in Time: Temporal Consideration in Philanthropy (Rowman & Littlefield/Urban Institute Press, 2023). Soskis has taught at the George Washington University and the University of California, Washington Center. He received his PhD in American history from Columbia University.