Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Theses and Dissertations

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Performance Measurement and Research Practices in Higher Education-Focused Philanthropic Organizations
(2022-07) Essien, Frank Swanzy, Jr.; Konrath, Sara; Badertscher, Kathi; Pike, Gary; Shaker, Genevieve
Performance measurement and research are key components of the operations of philanthropic organizations (both grant-making [GM] and grant-seeking [GS] organizations) —particularly those in the higher education subsector. Both conventionally and historically, performance measurement and research practices have been portrayed as rational tools that philanthropic organizations undertake to get the needed data or information to make evidence-based decisions. In this dissertation, I investigate, identify, and explain, beyond rational choice, the other possible motives that may drive higher education-focused philanthropic organizations to engage in performance measurement and research practices as well as the ways they use the information gained from these practices. In other words, I answer the research questions: why do philanthropic organizations (both grant-making and grantseeking organizations) engage in performance measurement and research practices? How do they use information from these practices? This dissertation employs a content analysis methodology to explore whether other theories may provide plausible explanations as to why higher education-focused philanthropic organizations engage in performance measurement and research practices. Some of the other theories upon which I draw to help explain why and how philanthropic organizations (GMs and GSs) use performance measurement and research practices are: organizational learning theory, principal agency theory, institutional theory, resource dependency theory, stewardship theory and culturally responsive, equitable and inclusive practices and outcomes theory (CREI).
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.
Cross-cultural Mutuality: Exploring Philanthropic, Faith-based Partnerships Between Cuba and the United States
(2021-11) Goodwin, Jamie L.; King, David; Herzog, Patricia Snell; Wiepking, Pamala; Kahn, Hilary; Konrath, Sara
In the global age, grass-roots religious organizations seek to better collaborate across national and cultural borders. Through the theoretical lens of mutuality, this dissertation explores the nature and quality of interpersonal relationships inherent in faith-based, philanthropic partnerships between the United States and Cuba. Mutuality is a framework for understanding human relationships; it describes when people regard one another as whole persons and a relationship as something of inherent value. This study explores the value of relationships, the processes by which they form, how they relate to institutional structures, and the role of a common faith in bridging other cultural differences. Religious communities are considered the primary civil society institutions with national reach in Cuba. The research site for this study is a Protestant civil society organization on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba called Campo Amor. Campo Amor operates both nonprofit and for-profit activities and receives substantial American donations through a foundation in Spain. Over the past 20 years, Campo Amor has multiplied from two to more than 120 house churches. Before COVID-19 it welcomed more than 500 American partners each year. Using a co-created, phenomenological qualitative design, this study will provide knowledge into the role of relationships in philanthropic, faith-based partnerships, particularly between regions of geopolitical hostilities. It advances understanding of the role of religion and relationships in philanthropy across a variety of cultural differences. Among other findings, interviewees described mutuality as 1. the commitment to sharing; 2. Intersubjective relationships which enter into and care about the thoughts and feelings of another; and 3. the habitual approach that emphasized living one’s way into patterns of thought, versus thinking one’s way into patterns of life.
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.
Reading Between the Lines: Social Contextual Influences on the Production of and Response to Charitable Appeals
(2021-07) O'Connor, Heather Ann; Konrath, Sara; Shaker, Genevieve; Benjamin, Lehn; Haberski, Raymond
This two-article, mixed-methods dissertation examines social contextual influences on donor and fundraiser behavior. It presents an extension of the Charitable Triad Model to conceptualize philanthropic behavior as a contextualized act informed by the social context shared among and between fundraisers, donors, beneficiaries, and organizations. The first article extends research on how social identity shapes donor behavior. This work finds that people are more likely to donate when they share identities, experiences, or group affiliations with beneficiaries. However, donors make philanthropic decisions in the context of multiple—and sometimes incongruent—identities. How might this complexity affect philanthropic behavior? I apply an intersectional approach to consider donors holding two simultaneous yet seemingly incongruent social identities. Using interviews analyzed with grounded theory, I examine the philanthropic journey of twenty Catholic women who donate to pro-choice organizations and identify as pro-choice activists. I uncover a common process shared by the donors as they navigate their seemingly incompatible identities. Findings reveal implications for fundraisers seeking to understand donors and for organizations that address controversial causes. The second article uses an experimental design with professional fundraisers to test how the presence of a teammate affects the performance of a common fundraising task, that of writing a charitable appeal letter. A large body of research in non-fundraising domains finds that working in a team versus alone can positively affect performance and team members’ satisfaction. Further, new research finds that fundraisers who feel like they fit with their environment have higher satisfaction and retention. However, no known research has examined the role of the social environment in fundraisers’ crafting of charitable appeals. Using person-environment-fit theory, we randomly assign fundraisers to work in a team versus alone to examine how this affects their satisfaction with the task, as well as the content of the letter produced. Results suggest implications for the management of development teams. Overall, this dissertation provides evidence-based insights to improve fundraising practice.
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.
Managing a Civil Society Organization in Democratic Crisis
(2020-11) Kilicalp Iaconantonio, Sevinc Sevda; Benjamin, Lehn M.; Mesch, Debra J.; Herrold, Catherine E.; Baggetta, Matthew
This study investigated how civil society organizations (CSOs) adapted to shifts in their external environment that threatened their survival. Specifically, the study considered how CSOs in Turkey were responding to growing authoritarianism and citizens’ demands for a voice and openness. Moreover, the study sought to explain why organizational responses varied across organizations operating in the same field and the challenges CSO leaders confronted as they implemented changes in response to this environment. These pressures, both authoritarian regimes and citizens’ demands for a voice in these organizations, reflect the democratic crisis in many countries and the overall distrust in institutions. In this respect, considering the consequences of both of these pressures for the legitimacy of CSOs simultaneously is both timely and necessary. This study blended theoretical insights from neo-institutional theory and resource dependency theory as well as strategic management literature and civil society literature to fill this theoretical gap. I argue that competing external pressures created conflicting logics by providing different stipulations about how CSOs had to be managed and that CSOs developed differentiated strategies by adopting some features of each logic. I grouped these responses into two main categories: survival and mission-related responses. I demonstrated that competing institutional logics pass through the organizational field and then they are filtered by the following organizational attributes: organizational form, stance toward government, risk tolerance and organizational capacity. Tensions and paradoxical situations resulting from selected practices created various management challenges for CSO leaders. These findings offer new perspectives to the literature on civil society under authoritarian regimes by pointing out the link between outside threats confronting CSOs and significant organizational management issues, thus illustrating how political regimes constrain CSOs’ capacity to contribute to democratic processes and perform internal democracy through soft and hard repression tools.
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.
Shaping Philanthropy for Chinese Diaspora in Singapore and Beyond: Family, Ancestry, Identity, Social Norms
(2019-08) Harper, Marina Tan; Burlingame, Dwight F.; Hyatt, Susan B.; King, David P.; Osili, Una O.
This study analyzes 21 high and ultra-high-net-worth data points whose entities migrated from mainland China into Southeast Asia, and now, with their descendants, have settled in Singapore. Though removed from China over generations, they still retain a continuum of evolved values that were germinated from Confucian morals, rituals, and values — more popularly recognized as Chineseness. This study investigates these traditions, ethos, and value systems through the lens of philanthropy. The principal results and conclusions are: 1) Due to push and pull factors, millions of Chinese migrants fanned out into the Nanyang (Southeast Asia) from mid-1800s to the late 1900s. The first-generation diasporic Chinese (G1) left China with a sojourner mentality. Hence their early philanthropic action mirrored sojourners’ mindsets and pointed their giving back to China, the motherland. 2) As Chinese diaspora and their ethnic Chinese descendants (G2, G3, G4) eventually settled as nationals into various countries of Southeast Asia, new hybrid Chinese identities emerged. 3) Their Confucian Chinese values were confronted and severely tested – very often remolded and evolved as they assimilated, acculturated, and converged with social norms dictated by local indigenous cultures, and political, social, and economic circumstances of the times. 4) Confucian values — honoring the family name and continuing the ancestral lineage — behest multi-generations to stick together in strength. With self-help and mutual aid philanthropy, they thrived in the Nanyang. Very soon, Chinese diaspora’s economic success propelled them into leadership. As leaders of local communities, their loyalties, generosity, and philanthropic action shifted as new generations, locally born, begin to identify as nationals of these countries and engender gratitude to where they built their wealth. Eventually, generosity to China by follow-on generations pulled back or ceased. 5) In philanthropy, the age-old values of family, ancestry, humility, and benevolence now give younger generations of ethnic Chinese pride and purpose to give outside of the traditional familial lines to create opportunities and transform lives in the communities where they work and live – including public good for the countries where they operate their businesses in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Social Entrepreneurship Among Protestant American Congregations: The Role, Theology, Motivations, and Experiences of Lay and Clergy Leaders
(2019-08) Austin, Thad Stephen; King, David; Tempel, Eugene R.; Steensland, Brian; Burlingame, Dwight F.
This qualitative dissertation contributes to the nascent literature on the study of social enterprise in American congregations through an examination of the role, theology, motivations, and experiences of Protestant Christian social entrepreneurs who are pursuing (or have pursued) social entrepreneurship in the congregational setting. These religious leaders engage the free market by establishing social ventures such as hotels, thrift stores, community development corporations, restaurants, retail outlets, publishing companies, and landscaping businesses among others. Drawing on forty-four in-depth, semi-structured interviews with lay and clergy leaders representing a diverse sample of twenty-six American congregations from four Protestant traditions and six geographic regions, this dissertation asks: Who are these congregational social entrepreneurs (their role and their theology)? Why do they engage in congregational social entrepreneurship (motivations)? And how do they go about establishing social ventures (experiences)? This study provides scholars and practitioners insights into the identity, motivations, and experiences of American religious leaders who are pioneering an emerging form of religious practice that blurs the distinction between the pastor and parishioner, the sacred and secular, and the instrumental and expressive. This dissertation offers contributions to both theory and practice. Instead of conceptualizing “social entrepreneurship” and “values and faith” as separate categories (as in prior research), this dissertation introduces a new theoretical paradigm with an intersecting model of instrumental and expressive rationales for nonprofit institutions. Transcending otherwise clearly defined boundaries, the study’s findings speak to the flexibility of social entrepreneurship to conform to the values of its leadership and the pervasive and permeating reach of faith within the context of human endeavor. Additionally, this research offers a constructive understanding of the role, theological tenets, and practical experiences of lay and clergy leaders.

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