SPEAKER_06 0:37

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rod Davis, and this week we've got the second of our quarterly series in partnership with Earn OP, the European Research Network on Philanthropy, where I speak to three academics whose work has been featured in the latest uh release of Earnop Research Notes, which try to summarise interesting academic papers and journal articles for the benefit of practitioners. So we've got three great conversations for you this week. So, firstly, I talk to Claire Van Turnenbroek from University of Twente about some research that she has done on crowdfunding, which is absolutely fascinating. So I hope you enjoy that one. We've then got a conversation with Tobias Jung from the University of St. Andrews about a wonderfully left-field paper that he co-authored about the concept of spectrality and what role that plays in philanthropy, uh, all to do with uh the sort of long-standing specter of death that plays a role in philanthropy and foundation. So I've very much enjoyed that one. Uh and then finally we've got a conversation with Fiona Fairbairn at the University of Kent about uh a paper that she wrote a couple of years ago uh looking at the current state of uh gala fundraising and kind of charity, big uh black tie ball fundraising events in light of the President's Club scandal here in the UK. Um, so without further ado, let's go into those conversations. Uh, I hope you enjoy them. I certainly did. Uh, there's links in the show notes to places where you can find the relevant research notes and the papers that they summarise. Uh, and I'll also put some other bits and pieces in there. Uh, and I'll be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping and tidying up. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Claire Van Turnenbrook. Hi there, Claire.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Hi.

SPEAKER_06 2:37

Uh and Claire uh is an academic at the University of Twente and has the author of one of the papers that's out in this current crop of Earn-Op research notes that we're here talking about on the podcast. And a really fascinating paper that I hope lots of you go away and read, uh, all about crowdfunding and kind of looking at what we can find from some of the wider literature that's out there on crowdfunding that sort of tells us about how the mechanisms work within that. Um, but maybe the best place to start is just for you to tell us a bit in your own words about what the focus of this particular paper was and what you found.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, perfect. Thanks. Um, so the focus on the paper is indeed crowdfunding. And to start off, we focus on donation and reward-based crowdfunding. So that basically means crowdfunding for charities. Um, we do not focus on financial crowdfunding like equity and lending-based crowdfunding, as that differs from the more philanthropic-based crowdfunding project. So that's like sort of like the side note. Um, and I started with the project um after reading a lot of the literature based on crowdfunding and being kind of frustrated that they were very um general and descriptive. There are exceptions, of course. And I was really looking for some sort of like a framework that could explain the behavior that I could use also to, you know, like for workshops for our practitioners. But I couldn't really find one. The best ones that I found were more summaries of the crowdfunding literature, but they didn't try to really go in depth, focus on the behavior that's behind um the behavior that we can see online, because crowdfunding is an online mechanism where we basically see whether someone makes a donation and we can uh see uh the donation amounts. But all the different motives for giving, yeah, well, we know those from traditional philanthropy, but we are not sure if they were the same with a crowdfunding context because you have the online context.

SPEAKER_06 4:26

And and yeah, and in the paper, as you say, to try and kind of give a theoretical framework around some of what's out there in terms of the empirical findings on crowdfunding that that is of use to um practitioners, you identify kind of four key characteristics of crowdfunding that you you look at in the paper. Um maybe you could sort of say a bit more about what those are, because I think they're they're really interesting, the ways that you've kind of segmented those.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. So our aim was really, um I should also mention it, it was written with Carolina Dalla Gisa and Laura Hesse. So our aim was really to make it simple because the crowdfunding literature is very broad, even though it's a very tiny field. It comes from a lot of different uh scientific uh foundations like marketing and sociology, psychology, economics. And so we put them all together and then we started categorizing like what are like the key features of crowdfunding if you look at the projects. And we came up with four of those, the first one being the creator, which is the individual or the organization that starts the project. So that can be you and me, but it can also be a charity or an organization. The second one is a term that people might not know, but it's quite simple and it's a social information, and that's basically any information about the behavior of the other donors. So that's really key to crowdfunding in that we can see the number of donors that are per project. If you would go to a crowdfunding project, often it states that like a hundred people before you made a donation. So that is a key example of social information, which is simply any information about the behavior of others, but then in an online context. And then the third one is the project description because the crowdfunding is really project-based. This is also one of the key variables if you compare it to other ways of fundraising, because you have to be very specific about what you are going to fund. And then we have the rewards, those are not key for all the projects, but um I think my advice would also be to please don't disregard the fact that you could add an award a reward. So the four key features are the project creator, um, social information, the project description, and then uh the rewards.

SPEAKER_06 6:37

Yeah, and I I thought this was really interesting. I'd I mean, I would I'd love to talk in lots more depth, and we probably don't have enough time here, but there were a few things I wanted to ask questions about on each of those that that really struck me. Um one was around the the use of social information as you described it there. And you you mentioned at one point in the paper that that actually you need to be careful not to assume that social information automatically has a positive effect in terms of driving more giving, because actually you can sometimes inadvertently have a negative effect where people see that others have given lower donation amounts and actually give less than they otherwise would. Um, could you just say a bit more about what you you found overall in terms of that impact of social information? Does it tend in general to have a stronger upward or downward effect?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Okay, yeah, yeah, interesting. Um, yeah, um, I do love this question. This is my PhD. Oh, right, brilliant. Yeah, four years of study. So uh um so what we found basically and the other academics as well, which are in the paper, is that social information mostly has a positive effect unless you are um sort of like deliberately um posting lower amounts, but that's very that is very unnatural. So um in a natural context with crowdfunding, the system would simply calculate the average. It's very unlikely that it will be lower. I need to explain as well. So the average in giving behavior is always higher than you would expect. That's because of the people who are making a lot of high donations. And if there are only a couple of those with like a thousand euro, then the average goes up already. So that way it will have a positive effect. However, it can also be too high. So some of the projects they mentioned the last five donation amounts. And then you would it could happen that you see two times a donation that's so high that you feel like, okay, um, they no longer need my donation. I could I could either keep it to myself or give it to another project. So those are cases when it could have a negative effect. So it's really about the framing of how you're going to do it on your page. And then if you would focus on the number of donors, so that's different because we just talked about the amount of the previous donors, then in the beginning, if your project is going very slowly, it could have a negative effect in that it's signaling to people that people don't really trust the project or they don't feel inclined to give to it. So in that way, um, it can my advice always is like in the beginning, start with your own network and make sure that the number of donors goes up naturally, and then people can use it as some sort of like trust signal.

SPEAKER_06 9:16

Yeah, I mean, absolutely fascinating. And I think it shows that there's a lot, a lot of thought needs to be given to how you present information rather than just assuming that you can put it out in any old way and that it will have a positive effect. Um in a similar vein, I wanted to ask about we know when you were talking about um the way in which projects are described, which as you say is kind of crucial to the nature of crowdfunding. You talk in in the paper about the um the choice to be made between whether to frame uh that project description in a positive way or in a negative way, which it seemed to me goes to a kind of question that's always there for fundraising and and charity in in general, which is do you kind of present positive stories that drive empathy and make people feel warm and hope that that will get them to give? Or do you try and make the problem seem so bad that people feel guilty and that kind of drives them to give? What what did you find about you know where people tended to go in crowdfunding projects um in terms of that balance?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, interesting. Yeah. So um, based on the literature, um, mostly between the positive and negative, um, we are just not sure yet. Um it's very difficult to decide because it's really context-based. And with crowdfunding, what I could say is that if you are developing your description, so that's your written text, then it's m the best advice would be to be very um rational because it's based on arguments. That has been tested actually. But if you focus on video or imaging, then uh most of the literature seems to suggest that it's more emotional, and in that way you can play with emotions, but you don't want to so bump people out. I mean, if it's so negative, which I've sometimes seen with uh projects, then people who are very emphatic, they will click away because it's just too too too much for them. Um so it's really like a U shape in between going too negative towards too positive, because if you are too positive, people might feel like, okay, you don't need it anymore. So you need to be balanced, like you and I would be talking. Um, you don't want to be too extreme or um anything like that, because crowdfunding is really your way of communicating with your crowd. So to sum up for your written description, it would be really argument-based, very rational. And then for your video and your image, you can use emotions, but please do it as if you would be talking to someone and don't show something that's just too too negative or too positive.

SPEAKER_06 11:39

And I guess that I mean that sort of brings me to a question I really wanted to ask about the kind of broader context around the paper, which is something I'm really interested in around crowdfunding. I guess as you highlight in the paper, there definitely seems to be a shift towards more people using uh crowdfunding mechanisms and kind of peer-to-peer giving mechanisms and maybe kind of bypassing some of the traditional um ways in which people might have otherwise given to charitable causes. Um, do you do you get a sense from from looking at this literature and from the work you do that there are things that we should be concerned about in that shift? And I'm I'm thinking here of whether the fact that crowdfunding seems particularly dependent on people having strong existing links and being able to kind of draw on existing networks, whether that means that uh it it advantages those who have those strong existing networks rather than necessarily meaning that money gets to where the need is greatest. And so there are kind of biases that get built into these systems. Are these the sorts of things that we need to be careful about as we as we lean more and more on crowdfunding in the future?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Oh, again, perfect question. I think this is such an important question from more of like an ethical perspective. You're kind of asking two questions. First of all, I think you're also kind of hinting towards is it competing with other ways of funding? And then if crowdfunding is so essential, um is it usable for everyone? So for the first one, is it competing with the other forms? Thus far, we don't know exactly because the the data we would use for that is just absent at the moment. But if I'm looking at the people who are supporting crowdfunding, they are mostly younger individuals. So I wouldn't say it is um a dangerous thing to add because it's sort of like fishing in a different pond, end up being the younger individuals who are generally less inclined to give to charities in more traditional ways. And then depending on the relationships, because you're right, um the relationship that you have, your network, so to say, is very essential for crowdfunding. But if you look at the paper, we've really tried to highlight that crowdfunding brings something new to the table, and that is the quality of the project. So it seems to suggest that a part of the individuals they are donating because they think the project is worthwhile. They are not really donating because of the connection with the creator, so that being the charity, for instance, but they are mostly interested in the project description and in the aim of the project. So even if you do not have a huge um network, because you're right, that does really help, then I would suggest you connect to an existing platform and use their facilities to help you with social media because that is still important, and then you focus on developing a very good and very impactful project that can be executed correctly based on the amount that you are collecting, because a large part of the people are focusing exactly on that part, on the quality of the project and the credibility.

SPEAKER_06 14:42

Yeah, it's I mean it's all absolutely fascinating. Um I just wanted to zoom out at this point and sort of ask about the wider question of the links between uh academia and practice when it comes to philanthropy, which is obviously the focus of this Earnot research notes series, is to try and bridge that gap. And it feels as though you're very aware of that and doing putting a lot of effort in your work into trying to make it relevant to practitioners. What challenges have you found in doing that? And what you know, what do you think the barriers are perhaps towards getting better links between academia and practice in this field?

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Well, um, I think the challenges were mostly in my junior face when you don't really have the time or the expertise to focus on um your network because you do have to develop your own network because you can't really use someone else's network, because this is uh something you have to develop. And if you don't have time based on your university contract, that is very challenging and something you do in your spare time, and not everyone is uh looking for that. And another thing for me was if you want to publish, and you do as an academic, because that's what you're judged on, then you need to publish in high-standing journals, and they still don't always value the practical aspects that you try to add to your paper. So what I've done in this paper is constantly considering okay, what am I reading? How can I use this for practice? And I've been able to do that because I have a network with practitioners and I I've had a lot of meetings with them, so I'm kind of starting to understand their language and their way of communicating and what they need. So that was phase one. And phase two is that you need to find a journal that accepts both high academic quality and a value for practitioners. So yeah, I I hope more journals will focus on that unique combination.

SPEAKER_06 16:31

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, initiatives like the one that Urnop is doing with this research notes series can really help, but it takes a lot of quite conscious effort on the part of practitioners and academics, I guess, to kind of find ways of meeting in the in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think the notes do really help, being slightly biased, working as well. Um, because it can be like sort of a step up for people, because we are um we're very active in sharing them. And the podcast, of course, that is this is great as well, because if people simply start reading, I mean the abstract of the paper, and if they then email me or someone else of the research, then we can start having a conversation because I'm very aware that these articles are are very dry and hard to read, but we are also accessible for having just a normal conversation. And I think that is exactly what the research notes are trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_06 17:23

Yeah, absolutely. And I'd you know, definitely encourage anyone who's listening to this and thinks it sounds interesting to check out the research notes and as you say, to get in touch if they they want to explore it further. Before I let you go, I just wanted to ask Claire what it is that you're working on now, whether it's kind of a further development of this work around crowdfunding or whether there are other areas that you're you're interested in in the philanthropy field at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Oh yeah, um, so I'm I'm I recently moved to another university and I am now still focused on crowdfunding because I just think it's very interesting. Um I love that it's connected to so many different research fields, and I will now focus on the quality signals really starting to research my own model because I've proposed it and I think I should also test it to some extent. Um and I want to see how strong the impact of quality is in terms of the project. If you can if you, for instance, connected to social aspect uh like knowing the creator, is that more important than a project description? Basically, the question you just asked, like how important is the network? But or can we also use the the project quality?

SPEAKER_06 18:32

Great. Well, yeah, absolutely. Really interested to see, you know, um what you you find in that research. So we'll definitely kind of keep an eye on that. Just remains to say thanks ever so much for for coming on the podcast. I'll certainly put links in the show notes to places where people can find the research notes and the journal article and and um, as you say, the offers there if they read those and want to get in touch. So um thanks again, Claire.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, thank you. Perfect. Uh thank you for listening, and of course for reading the paper.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Yet today is not far distant when the man who dies, leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was need for him to administer during life, will pass away on with and once this place guys, guys this place, this place, this place.

SPEAKER_06 19:48

Okay, great. So I'm here with Tobias Jung. Hi there, Tobias. Hi Rodri, how are you? I'm good, thank you. It's great to have a chance to chat to you on the podcast. And yeah, in the the context of uh this episode and and the the Urnop Research Note series, it's about a paper that you had out and a research note, um, all on about the idea of spectrality uh and how that relates to the work of foundations and kind of wider context of philanthropy, which I thought was really fascinating. It was uh you know a concept I hadn't come across before and definitely a kind of an idea within within the philanthropy academia that I hadn't seen explored before. So great to have a chance to talk to you about it. Maybe you could just say a bit in your own words about you know what brought the paper about and what the kind of central core idea is.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking. It's like a bit off the beaten truck, really. I must admit, yes, spectrality is not something you normally see in the philanthropy discourse. And the way it starts is really uh foundations being one of the most under-researched form in general. I mean, as you know, there's no legal form in the UK or in the US, where it's a tax um distinction. So the question was really about like how can we conceptualize, perceive, explore foundations in more appropriate ways. And here the starting point actually goes back to a little pamphlet that was written by Frederick Joff. He's the person who came up with the community foundation idea in the US at the beginning of the 20th century. And the pamphlet he wrote was called the dead hand. That was like back in 1921. And in that, he sort of like really criticizes the idea of the endowed foundation. He refers to sort of like the deadness of foundations, but also like criticizes the idea of the donus, dead hand that reaches out beyond the grave and then influences the present and the future. And as part of that, then bearing in mind that the whole discourse around spectrality in different disciplines, such as international relations, like in art history, the idea was like how can we actually apply that to the foundation world? Because if you think about philanthropy and if you think about the foundation world more broadly, they are both inherently spectral concepts. First of all, if you think about philanthropy itself, it's like testation, bequest, memorial, leaving a legacy, um, what's a book called Odenberg, I think, 1990, so like highlighting. That one of the motivations for Dole is like leaving footprints in the sand of time, so leaving a legacy. And spectrality is about the absent presence. It's like an idea originally put forward by Derrida. It allows us to explore and unpack sort of like the internal, external histories, practices, context, discourses of what and how philanthropic actions really arise. If you then think about the foundation world itself, there are sort of like three pillars of spectrality that we can identify. First of all, there's the social and historical origins of the foundation idea. If you think back to sort of like the early or the earliest uh notions of the foundation, you can see them in the ancient religious texts from Egypt, the Book of the Dead, where sort of like the first references to contemporary foundation ideas being made. And then it's like if you look at the Middle Ages and beyond foundations are always about sort of like bridging that gap between the living and the dead. So specifically in the Middle Ages, the idea is that the donor provides a request, which then will look after the living. The problem is that such a request then leads to an unreciprocited gift. So it's like you've got something, but you can't give back. And if you think about the gift relationship, it's always about exchange. So what we then see is that in return for the gift to the living, the dead or like donor is expecting the recipient to pray for them, to remember them, to memorize them. So that we've got like this balance coming back. And that goes like throughout foundation history. If you then look at the legal context of the foundation form itself, again it's sort of like rooted in the idea around testation and the will and the wishes of the dead and how they're being identified, explored, and implemented in the present. And then finally, so like the foundation practices. The third pillar is the question around sort of how do you actually maintain, dedicate the organization, and continue the will and ambitions of the original donor. So these are sort of like the three pillars that led to as to why we should look at spectrality as a concept in philanthropy and specifically in the foundation world. It's really interesting.

SPEAKER_06 24:16

And I I I mean you're absolutely right. I think you know, when you dig into the history of philanthropy, it becomes very clear that that actually, I mean, a very large proportion of philanthropy historically happened once people had died in the form of bequests, and then, as you say, kind of latterly in the form of endowed institutions that allowed those, the wishes of the donors to be put into a structure that then continued it in perpetuity, and it caused, you know, it's caused a lot of debate at varying points. In in terms of the kind of the modern context, um, the thing, I mean, the thing I really like about this paper is it's not not afraid to engage with you know the kind of the theoretical construct of spectrality and apply it to the context of foundations. But it also feels as though it's actually very relevant to some conversations and debates that are going on at the moment about the tension between perpetuity and the need to spend down within foundations and that kind of thing. What, from your point of view, do you do you think the insights that the work this paper can offer for practitioners and people kind of working in the foundation world is?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

So various aspects that really isn't like if we so it's like as part of the work, we identify four overarching themes. Like so, what we did in the papers, like we look at all the different ways in which spectrality has been used across different disciplines, then bring these different ideas together and synthesize them into four overarching themes. The first one is relationality and decentring, the second one narratives and representation, the third one ethics and politics, and the fourth one continuity and change. I'm gonna unpack them in a second. And they're all sort of like interrelated, so it's like you move from one to the other, they're not like separate clusters, but they're sort of like an ongoing story that develops. So the relationality and decentring looks at sort of like the different relationships that make up a foundation. If you think about foundation discourse and research more broadly, we really focus on a centered approach. What a centered approach means is we're looking for similar characteristics. We map out how much foundations give, we map out how big they are, we map out the areas where they operate. It's really about like typologizing them, which is like the center of which is fantastic for getting sort of like comparative insights and comparative information, but really doesn't provide sort of like the richness of the relationships, the different facets that make up the foundation form. This is really the first aspect than relationality essentially. Who are the real stakeholders, who are the different players that make up a foundation, present and absent, and how do they relate to each other? And by that we get sort of like a more complex understanding and an opportunity to re-examine some of the questions about foundation identity and situatedness. The second one is like around the narratives and the representation. So, what's the what are the different specters in the foundation world? How do they influence and sort of like irrelate to contemporary practices? So, some of the questions they present are like what impacts do have like the dead owners or like other deeds on the choices and strategies of the foundation? How are founders represented and what narratives surround them? What are the different directions of these narratives that they both encourage but also that they inhibit? So, like what are some of the stories that are not being told or being put in the closet? This then moves on to the questions around ethics and politics, which highlights issues around what are acceptable and unacceptable, appropriate and inappropriate sources of income and how they're being used, as well as what other wider specs might influence the foundation world. And then then that leads to the third one, uh, sorry, the fourth one around continuity and change. It's like where are we now? How did we get there as a foundation? And what are some of the steps we can take to move things forward and ahead? So it's really about bringing different ideas and questions that present themselves in foundation discourse together. And as part of that, it's both like the positive aspect, but also like some of the more challenging aspects. For example, like the resources, where do resources come from? Like, and what sort of specters do they bring with them? Like there's a whole discourse in international relations around um the dispossessed and like the unheard. So, what are the voices that are not being represented? Um, and bringing these four themes together is about like, okay, how can we encourage such debates within the philanthropy discourse and specifically the foundation discourse more broadly?

SPEAKER_06 28:32

Yeah, it's it's really interesting, as you say, kind of as a conceptual lens, I think it potentially brings you real value in terms of insights for practitioners and people kind of grappling with some of these big questions about philanthropy. And I you know certainly encourage people to read it and put a I'll put links in the show notes to where they can find the research note and the paper. Um, I just wanted to zoom out a little bit and just ask you for your sense of the wider relationship between academia and practice when it comes to philanthropy. Um, it feels as though you know it's a crucial relationship because philanthropy as a discipline is sort of fundamentally practice-based in a sense, but often it feels as though there is there aren't necessarily the connections that there could be. What's your sense of that current state of play and what are some of the challenges perhaps in getting better links between the two?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah, and philanthropy is one of the most under-researched areas in general. And if you look at, I think Web of Science, Web of Science is one of those big databases that provides sort of like decades of um scholarly outputs. And if you type in philanthropy, I think last time I checked, you got roughly 10,000 publications, and that's going back to the beginning of the 20th century, which is absolutely nothing. And most of them, I think like more than 50%, come from the S. So, first of all, there's a question around the whole transferability of knowledge. It's like what is the relevant knowledge we've got, like for the UK, within the UK, within other parts of Europe, within other continents as well. So, and how do we develop that? Secondly, like the size one, just like to put this into perspective, if you type in, I don't know, organization culture or public management, you get hundreds and thousands or like into the millions of papers published. So it's like to show you some of the um discrepancy in actual knowledge base than is there. Um, last September, Earnop, the European Research Network on Philanthropy hosted a meeting in Turin with colleagues. And one of the questions was like, how do we bridge that relationship between academia and practice more strongly? And the way I described it was like dancing in the dark. So you've got like two different parties that are trying to dance together. You're not quite sure about the moves of the dance, you're not quite sure about the lay of the land, and you repeatedly can step onto people's toes as well. So I think first step would be really about understanding the respective settings a bit more. Like what is academia about? What is academia for? What are the challenges, opportunities present, and the same with philanthropy research? Because to some extent, these two worlds are not necessarily well aligned as regards incentives, key performance indicators, um, time frames, resources, etc. So there's a question about a reality check first. And secondly, there's a question around what do academics bring to the table? I think that's an unresolved question. Quite often, if you think about debates, academics are not necessarily invited historically. I mean it's improving substantially over the last couple of years because the value of academic research is not necessarily recognized. And that's a problem for academics to clarify and present that more strongly to the field. There's a question around alignments of topics. It's like, okay, what is of interest to practitioners, what's of interest to academics, might not necessarily align. And then the time frames, I was like, yeah, I think it's a joke, running jokes, they're so completely apart. That's again is a question about how do we get a better understanding of what is feasible within specific time frames to which different parties operate.

SPEAKER_06 31:48

Yeah, absolutely. And just picking up on that one about topics, one of the things I wanted to ask you actually, I mean, either from your sort of pure academic perspective or from the perspective of what you think might be a value to practitioners, what what's an example of one topic that you'd really like to see covered more in terms of uh philanthropy academia that you think is just underserved at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 32:07

I'm personally obviously the theory of the foundation, I think, has so much work to do around like foundation scroll and practices. And generally, I think the topics are not the problem because one of the issues in philanthropy is there's so many topics we don't know anything about it. It's like go out, explore them. It's really fascinating. What I'm looking for and always hoping for something exciting, thinking, oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. That's a novel perspective, rather than sort of like regurgitating and repackaging of old ideas, which we can see on all sides. Um, and as part of that, I think like a historical awareness of all the things in philanthropy that have gone before would be really useful because far too often it seems that we are like reinventing the field. So if you think, for example, around philanthropicapitalism, if you think about um effective altruisms, like venture philanthropy, all of these ideas go back to Carnegie's like scientific philanthropy idea, more or less, and beyond. So these ideas, the trajectory, the storyline, the narrative of how they have developed, what are the different facets they bring, um, are not necessarily taken into account. Instead, new concepts are permanently re-invented and repurposed.

SPEAKER_06 33:13

Yeah, no, I mean, I absolutely 100% agree on that one. And I'd be really interested to hear. I mean, you said, you know, there's the timescales in academia are sort of slightly out of step with practice sometimes. And even in terms of these research notes, they often reflect uh work that people did a good few years ago now. So, um, what is it that you're focusing on at the moment in your uh research and work?

SPEAKER_00 33:34

So uh first of all, we're looking at um finishing the Edward Elger handbook on philanthrocapitalism. We're looking at how has philanthrocapitalism played out in different contexts. What are some of the criticisms and critiques, challenges and opportunities that presents? The second one looks at the well, we call it the community philanthropy kaleidoscope, and which in essence acknowledges the diversity of ideas that contribute to the notion of community philanthropy. How can we bring these together in order to learn from each other, in order to develop a more integrative framework around community philanthropy? And the third one, which is sort of like the hobby horse right now, is the images of foundation. That's some work we started just before COVID and was on hold for various reasons, which looks at what are the different metaphors and analogies that are used in order to describe the foundation form, and what does this tell us about understanding foundations? No, that's fascinating. And is that is that aimed towards uh a journal article or a paper? Yeah, we had a like conference presentation uh was 2020. And since then, it's like my work has been going on, so the next output will be a paper. Great.

SPEAKER_06 34:38

Oh, we'll keep an eye out for that because that sounds absolutely fascinating. Um, listen, Tobias, um, thanks ever so much for finding time to come on the podcast. It's been great to have a chance to talk to you about that research and to hear more about what you've got going on. Hopefully, we'll get another chance to maybe catch up in a bit more detail about some of these things in the future. Brilliant. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

Back where I come from, there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called Philip uh Philip uh good deed doers.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

Hi, Rodri. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_06 35:44

Yeah, no, great to have you on. Really, you're really keen to talk about this um paper that you've got and uh the work that's featuring in this uh not research note. And and I should say for for the benefit of people listening, are actually a a colleague of mine, at least in a sense, in that we both uh work at the University of Kent in the Centre for Philanthropy, or at least I do sort of one day a week. So we have kind of worked on things uh before. So it's great to have a chance to talk to you about your research. Maybe the best thing, uh best place to start is just for you to say a little bit about what the paper in question that you wrote is actually all about and what it was that brought you to do it and what the key findings were.

SPEAKER_05 36:18

Okay, sure. So um the paper that was published in um the voluntary sector review in, I think it's about June 2020, was actually a sort of came out of the dissertation that I did whilst I was doing the MA in philanthropic studies at Kent. And the dissertation looked at, I sort of considered whether charity galaxies were still a relevant form of fundraising from affluent sort of donors. So that's that's where the sort of paper came out. So there's a lot more behind what appears in the article. Do you sort of want to know why I landed on that topic?

SPEAKER_06 36:59

Yeah, it'd be really, really interesting to know what you know what it was that kind of made that something you were interested in in the first place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:04

Yeah. So there were sort of a few things. Sort of one, like I suppose what piqued my interest was around that time, I think January 2018, there was a sort of a scandal associated with the um President's Club sort of uh charity gala that I won't go into the details of that. So it became quite sort of topical. Sort of were these sort of methods of fundraising still relevant. And I also then I sort of looked a bit further and there wasn't really any um research. There's lots of kind of anecdotal sort of commentary as to whether uh charity garlas were an appropriate method of fundraising, but there wasn't didn't seem to be any sort of research that really actually went out to donors and asked them, you know, what they thought about this sort of method of fundraising. So that that's sort of where it started. I mean, I just sort of point out that the research was carried out in 2018, the article was published in 2020, and then obviously COVID hit. So actually that put a complete stop to this form of fundraising, which obviously, when I did my paper and when I did my research, I hadn't anticipated that as being a factor that might halt charity garers. But now I guess we've sort of come out the other side of COVID. And you know, I don't know for sure, but just sort of conversations I've sort of had, informal conversations, it seems that charity garlers are back on and there is appetite, partly I guess because they haven't taken place for so long. So I think some charities are taking it as an opportunity.

SPEAKER_06 38:30

Yeah, absolutely. And it does, as you say, it does seem as though we're kind of returning to in-person fundraising, perhaps more than some people thought we might do during the pandemic when there was a lot of talk about how everything was gonna go virtual or digital forever, or at least kind of hybrid. And maybe you know, people's hunger for that in-person connection means that we're actually probably seeing more emphasis on in-person um events. In the the paper, you you look quite a lot at um sort of differences in perception of Gala events, and and there's some really interesting stuff, particularly kind of look at the differing attitudes between uh both kind of different um parties who might be involved, whether those sort of donors, fundraisers or others, and generational differences as well. Um perhaps you could just say a bit about what some of the things you found there.

SPEAKER_05 39:17

Yeah, I mean, I was really interested in whether there was a sort of generational difference in attitude towards um charity garers, sort of partly because of kind of the literature at that time, that you know, emerging donors. So, you know, I categorise them as emerging donors born post-1965 and established donors born pre-1965. And there was this sort of feeling that emerging donors were more interested in impact philanthropy, and this sort of method of fundraising is potentially a bit out of date and old-fashioned. So that's that's kind of what what that's sort of why I I wanted to compare attitudes. I thought that was a useful, kind of a useful way of um looking at attitudes towards galas. However, like what I found there actually wasn't much difference in attitude. The main thing that I the main sort of difference was that emerging donors attended or reported um attending more galas per year than the established donors. And established donors that I sort of interviewed sort of said when they were younger they attended much more galas.

SPEAKER_06 40:23

That's interesting. It's sort of something that actually there's a point in your life where you're more likely to be invited to these things or to want to attend them. And then actually, even if you're still a pretty major donor, actually you get to a point where you kind of you might go to a few, but you've probably had your fill of them to some extent.

SPEAKER_05 40:38

Yeah, I think even actually one of my established donors referred to sort of gala fatigue. And you know, she had grown up going to gala's and had seen her parents go to gala's. So she'd gone through that sort of journey and she said now she preferred smaller, more intimate, intimate events, but in her heyday she'd probably gone to three or four or up, you know, five a year. And then for my emerging donors, so these are people of I guess, you know, more sort of working age, the different like you know, circumstances. So that reflected why they went. You know, they were potentially asked by people they worked with, you know, my findings very much about the sort of social networks and who asks. And then there's a sort of obligation. If somebody at work asks you to go to an event, there's a sort of yeah, an obligation to accept that invitation. So, yeah, there's definitely a sort of a life cycle kind of narrative as to why people um go to garlas or when they go to garlas or the frequency with which they receive the number of invitations they receive and the frequency with which they attend such events.

SPEAKER_06 41:49

And did you get any sense um from talking, particularly to the younger donors? Because we often hear that there's a uh you know a particular emphasis amongst that that new generation on um on wanting to know about the impact of their philanthropy. And you know, there's all kinds of question marks about whether that's genuinely a new phenomenon or not, but that it does seem to be something that is front of mind. When it comes to to charity to fundraising galas, they seem almost like the kind of archetype of putting the the sort of the interest of the donor first or kind of the the experience of the donor and the social connections rather than necessarily impact or or the cause. Did you see any sense from those younger donors that they were skeptical at all of charity galas for that reason because they didn't really match up with their expectations about impact?

SPEAKER_05 42:37

Yeah, I mean, there were I mean, I'm just I can think of you know, just I think the interviews that I did with um donors kind of yielded more of that sort of information. And there was a sense of donors feeling uncomfortable with the concept of a gala, in that you know, it's potentially wasteful use of resources. However, at the same time, they recognize that actually this probably was an important method of not only kind of fundraising, but also raising the profile of organizations. So it's I think they go in knowing that there are, you know, it's probably it could be perceived as being problematic, but actually the benefits outweigh. So ultimately, if the charity is raising its profile, raising its supporter base, and raising funds, that's a good thing. And it's funds and profile and supporters they perhaps otherwise wouldn't have sort of garnered through other methods. So I think it there is a recognition amongst I guess the more engaged philanthropists who are giving for those sort of reasons, I guess for this sort of impact given, the sort of more evolved philanthropists they kind of recognize the value of these events, but know that they're not the Only way of addressing the issues that they're trying to sort of support. Did that make sense?

SPEAKER_06 44:07

No, absolutely, it does. And one other thing I wanted to ask you as well. You mentioned in passing before that the kind of context for how the paper came about was the scandal around the president's club, which was a fundraising scandal about a particular uh black tie event at which there was lots of kind of inappropriate behaviour. Um and it subsequently became a scandal because there were undercover journalists from the Financial Times there. Was there, did you get any sense, and maybe it's difficult to say given the timing of when you were doing the research, about whether that particular scandal, or indeed a kind of wider sense that this kind of thing might go on at these big black tie uh gala events, was making anyone uncomfortable or kind of questioning this as an appropriate form of fundraising?

SPEAKER_05 44:52

Um I asked, I did actually ask people about that, whether that scandal had impact their perception. Most of them, not most of them, many of them hadn't had passed them by that story if they hadn't kind of engaged with it. So, you know, I think it was quite a populist sort of story. And and no, it didn't affect affect their attitude towards these events. But there was a sense, and this was a sort of difference between the established and emerging donors. There was amongst the emerging donors, there was they were less keen on the sort of more public uh displays of wealth and donation. So you know, the kind of open cry auctions they preferred to be more if they were donate, you know, the donations they made on the night, they didn't want them to be paraded out or published. So I think that was a difference in something like the President's Club, it's it was very much about open cry auctions, who can give the most, and that more, I guess. I mean, I'm making an assumption because I wasn't there, but the sort of bravado outbidding one another. And certainly the people that I interviewed, that's that's not their scene.

SPEAKER_06 46:01

No, that's really interesting. And I just wanted to zoom out at this point and sort of ask um, you know, more broadly, uh, in the context of what we're talking about, um, you know, the these are not research papers which try to bring academic research on philanthropy and kind of produce um summarised versions of it that are of use then to uh to practitioners. What's your sense of what the current state is of the links between academia and practice in philanthropy? Do you think you know the the two do work well together or are there kind of barriers in the way that make it difficult sometimes for academic insight to make its way into practice?

SPEAKER_05 46:37

If I give a shout out for the um MA and Philanthropic Studies at the University of Kent, I think that course as a whole, it provides opportunity to sort of make those connections between practice and uh you know the academic theory and research that's going on within the sector. And then certainly these notes, I think you know, journal articles being sort of summarized or condensed or organized would be is a helpful step in the right direction.

SPEAKER_06 47:05

And then it'd be really interesting to know as well, obviously, because as you say, this um paper is something that you were working on actually a few years ago. And thanks to the uh leisurely pace of academic publishing, um it's obviously taken a while first to be published and then to make it into these research notes. So I'm assuming you've kind of moved on and have other things that you're interested in. So it'd be really interesting to know just what you're working on now and what your kind of particular areas of focus are in terms of philanthropy.

SPEAKER_05 47:30

Sure. I mean, I'm I'm generally sort of interested in generational sort of differences in attitudes and experiences to philanthropy. And I've just just completed um my PhD in philanthropy, and I looked in that, I looked at the context of that was the intergenerational transfer of wealth that's predicted to take place over the sort of coming years, which is about 5.5 trillion pounds. So I looked at the ways in which uh nine to eleven-year-old children from wealthy households are learning about and acquiring philanthropic knowledge and behaviours.

SPEAKER_06 48:03

Fascinating. Yeah, I think that I mean that area of uh how children, particularly you know, those who might be in a position to be major donors themselves in future years, get taught about charity and philanthropy and how to do it and the necessity of doing it, is is really fascinating. There's some really interesting stuff going on there at the moment. So, yeah, it'd be great to hear more about that in the future.

SPEAKER_05 48:23

Yeah, hopefully there will be some papers that come out of that thesis.

SPEAKER_06 48:27

Yeah, I'm sure we'll keep an eye out for those. Just remains to say thanks ever so much for coming on the podcast. Um, great to have a chance to talk about this. I'll put links obviously to uh in the show notes to places where people can find the research notes and and the paper. Um and yeah, we'll keep uh an eye out for that, that uh other really interesting sounding work in future.

SPEAKER_05 48:45

Oh, thanks very much. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_06 48:56

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Claire, to Tobias and Tifiona for finding the time to come on the podcast. Uh, as I said before, there are links in the show notes to places where you can find all of the Earn Op research notes, uh, and particularly where you can find uh links to those specific research notes and the papers that they refer to. Um I'll also put links in there to some other things that you might be interested in on related topics. If you're interested more broadly in philanthropy and civil society issues, uh do check out back issues of this podcast. Check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com where you can find those and also lots of articles and news updates and that kind of thing. Uh, if you've got ideas for people that we could talk to on the podcast in future or topics you'd like to see us cover, do drop me an email. You can find my contact details on the website. Other than that, just like, subscribe, tell all your friends about it, leave a nice review on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.