Foundations run on documents: theory-of-change frameworks, strategic plans, pitch decks. I made some of them. This thesis reads that body of institutional design as the affective infrastructure of American liberal philanthropy after 2008 — the forms through which a sector decides how much suffering it can treat as acceptable while calling itself the remedy.

The empirical anchor is the 2021–22 expanded Child Tax Credit: a policy that cut child poverty sharply, then was left to expire. The output is hybrid: a critical reading, a counter-archive, and a counter-designed artifact that turns the planning document against its own logic.

In progress. Defense expected May 2027.