Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Theses and Dissertations by Author "Badertscher, Katherine"

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    Cultural Implications of Fair Trade: Aligning Intent with Impact
    (2019-12) Baugh, Courtney Lynn; Badertscher, Katherine; Andersson, Fredrik; McIntosh, Ian
    The modern fair trade movement and resulting network emerged during the twentieth century as a strategy to alleviate extreme poverty through creating equitable trading initiatives and markets. Since its emergence, fair trade has grown tremendously to include initiatives across the globe, particularly within the Global South. Although the intent to do good is present amongst fair traders, the impact of these initiatives remains rather ambiguous, especially in regards to culture. Using a case study approach, this thesis aims to identify the cultural implications of fair trade activities and initiatives on Ghanaian basket weavers and their local communities, and then determine the effectiveness of the fair trade movement in aligning intent with impact within this context given these findings. From there, specific policy recommendations are provided for future initiatives.
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    Economic Inequality and Prosocial Behavior: A Multidimensional Analysis
    (2022-06) Yang, Yongzheng; Wiepking, Pamala; Badertscher, Katherine; Konrath, Sara; Ottoni-Wilhelm, Mark; Rooney, Patrick
    Rising economic inequality has become a widespread trend and concern in recent decades. Economic inequality is often associated with pernicious consequences such as a decrease in individual health and social cohesion and an increase in political conflicts. Does economic inequality have a negative association with prosocial behavior, like many other aspects of inequality? To answer this question, this dissertation investigates the relationship between economic inequality and prosocial behavior, particularly charitable giving, by conducting three empirical studies. The first study is a meta-analysis on the overall relationship between economic inequality and prosocial behavior. Results from 192 effect sizes in 100 studies show that there is a general small, negative relationship between economic inequality and different forms of prosocial behavior. Moderator tests demonstrate that social context, the operationalization of prosocial behavior, the operationalization of economic inequality, and average age of participants significantly moderate the relationship between economic inequality and prosocial behavior. The second study differentiates between redistributive and non-redistributive charitable causes and examines how income inequality is associated with charitable giving to these two causes in China. Using synthesized data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) and official data, this study shows that income inequality has no significant relationship with charitable giving to redistributive causes, but it has a negative association with charitable giving to non-redistributive causes. Of the four moderators, only education significantly moderates the relationship between income inequality and redistributive giving. The third study tests whether and how government social spending mediates the relationship between income inequality and charitable giving. Using the US county level panel data, this study finds there is no significant relationship between income inequality and government social spending as well as between government social spending and charitable giving. Thus, government social spending does not significantly mediate the relationship between income inequality and charitable giving. However, income inequality has a robustly and significantly negative relationship with charitable giving. In sum, this dissertation furthers our understanding of the relationship between economic inequality and prosocial behavior, especially charitable giving. Given the higher economic inequality facing many countries, it is a timely dissertation and has important practical implications.
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    Faith-Based Social Entrepreneurial Orientation: A Case of Evangelicals
    (2021-10) Clark, Richard S.; Craig, David M.; King, David; Steensland, Brian; Badertscher, Katherine; Guo, Chao
    The focus of this study is the experiences of eight individual evangelical social entrepreneurs within their congregations. What type of legitimacy do they seek and/or receive for? Do they sense any pressure to conform/motivations to act relative to their congregation’s values/identity? Do these relationships encourage or discourage their entrepreneurial orientation/intensity and in what ways? The primary research question is “how does embeddedness in an evangelical faith community affect the experiences and expression of social entrepreneurial orientation and intensity for evangelical faith-based social entrepreneurs, if at all?” The study identifies three types of congregations in terms of their relationship to the social entrepreneurs in their communities. Two are entrepreneurial, two others are supportive, four are non-supporting. Three areas of tension emerged that highlighted the experiences of the entrepreneurs within their communities of faith in different ways and to various degrees. The first is a tension between the sacred and secular, which is a question about whether entrepreneurism is itself a sacred calling and whether sacred activities and profit motives can mix. The second tension is between differing visions of what it means to do good. This is fundamentally about diagnosing the problem efforts at doing good are attempting to ameliorate. The entrepreneurs in this study generally agree that the problem is both personal and societal and requires a holistic transformational approach to discipleship and social entrepreneurship. The final tension is between institutionalism vs. movements. Movements tend to be somewhat chaotic and allow freedom for adherents to take risks and test ideas whereas institutions tend to restrict and control in the interest of preserving focus on mission. A key finding is that regardless of the posture of the various churches, the entrepreneurs in every circumstance maintained their social entrepreneurial orientation. If they could not find support for their entrepreneurial efforts within their existing community of faith they may or may not continue to maintain the same level of commitment to that community while seeking support elsewhere, but in all cases, their level of entrepreneurism remained high.
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    International Efforts to Promote Local Resource Mobilization for Philanthropy in Africa: Why the Ford Foundation's Initiatives Failed
    (2018-12) Akpilima-Atibil, Christiana Ankaasiba; MacLean, Lauren Matthews Morris; Benjamin, Lehn M.; Brass, Jennifer N.; Badertscher, Katherine
    The exportation of institutions from developed economies to developing countries has been a development strategy that international actors have employed for decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s international donors introduced philanthropic foundations into African countries. The Ford Foundation was instrumental in setting up a number of foundations in African countries to promote the mobilization of local philanthropic resources for self-reliant community-driven development. However, more than a decade after their establishment the Ford-founded philanthropic institutions continued to depend heavily on international funding. This dissertation investigates why Ford’s exportation of foundation philanthropy to African countries for the promotion of local resource mobilization was unsuccessful. Current explanations attribute the local resource mobilization ineffectiveness of donor-founded philanthropic institutions to domestic factors --- developing country governments’ failure to provide an enabling environment for the development of nonprofit institutions. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, I go beyond the endogenous explanations to examine the role and institutional transplantation strategies of the external actor, the Ford Foundation. Based on in-depth interviews with former staff and consultants of the Ford Foundation, as well as staff of selected Ford-founded African foundations in Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal (namely The Kenya Community Development Foundation, the African Women's Development Fund, and TrustAfrica) I contend that the oft-cited domestic “obstacles” are actually the preexisting local conditions that Ford should have taken into consideration during the formulation and implementation of its philanthropy promotion program in African countries. Using institutional transplantation theories as a framework, I argue that Ford failed to achieve its local resource mobilization goal in African countries because the American-inspired foundation model that it transplanted in those countries for the purpose was incompatible with the local African cultures of giving and philanthropy.
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    The Social Capital Fundraising Model
    (2021-04) Dilworth, Kathryn Frances; Burlingame, Dwight F.; Applegate, Rachel; Badertscher, Katherine; Heyns, Erla P.; Shaker, Genevieve
    In current higher education fundraising models where alumni are aligned with their degree-granting unit, the academic library struggles to match the fundraising outcomes of its campus peers. A survey of seventy-nine fundraisers in academic libraries collected data on fundraising activity. It reveals common practices amongst fundraisers working in this environment and ongoing challenges to success. In a second study, a fundraising model based on social capital is proposed as an alternative to the traditional alumni model. The final study evaluates interviews with thirty-two individuals that further explores the challenges to fundraising success and the efficacy of social capital building as a method to overcome systemic challenges. Interviewees include academic library fundraisers, library deans/directors and university development leaders. Findings reveal a strong interest in a social capital-based approach to fundraising but reveal the necessity to pair the new model with revised fundraiser assessment models capable of measuring these soft skills.