SPEAKER_01 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, Rodri Davis, and this is the fourth of our partnership with Earnop, the European Research Network on Philanthropy, where I do some mini interviews with academics whose work has been featured in one of the Earn Op Research Notes series, which is a series that they publish where they get practitioners to summarize uh recent papers uh that in the field of philanthropy uh in academia as a way of trying to kind of bridge that gap between academia and practice. Um so for this edition of the partnership, I again uh did three interviews. The first is with Pamela Wieebking and Ayen DeWitt, both of whom work at Vrier University in the Netherlands, although Pamela's also uh at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy um at uh the University of Indiana, uh Purdue, uh as well in the US. And that's a really interesting paper looking at the idea of core funding and trying to sort of put some conceptual framework around the idea that we all sort of broadly uh, you know, the gut feeling we have in the in the charity and non-profit world that core funding is a good thing, trying to sort of explain why it is that it's actually a good thing for the organizations that that receive it. And then the second interview is with my colleague at the University of Kent, where I teach one day a week, Ali Body, and that's a really interesting paper about a project that she has run at Kent where they get students to take part in a sort of philanthropy project. So they get given some money and they have to go through a process of deciding how to distribute that that money. Uh, not necessarily students who are studying philanthropy, as you'll hear, they're in other areas, and that in itself is kind of really interesting. Um, and then the third interview is with Rita Cotas, who is an academic at Kingston University here in the UK. Um, and I spoke to Rita actually about two things. I spoke to her about uh a paper that she has on disintermediation uh in the charity and nonprofit world, trying to sort of give a typology of what disintermediation actually means. So I spoke to her a little bit about that, but then I probably spoke to her a bit more about another paper that she had looking at who it is that gives to food bank and uh what the influences are that kind of affect people's willingness to donate to food banks as well. I did that partly because she had sort of two papers uh involved in the research notes, but also the the first of those uh on disintermediation. Uh, I'm planning on speaking to one of the other authors, Ian McQuillan, uh, later on this year, so I might go into it in a bit more detail then. Okay, without further ado, let's get into the interviews. So the first one you'll hear will be with Pamela and Arjen, and then I will pop up at intervals just to introduce the other interviewees, and then we'll be back at the end of the episode just for the usual bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Pamela Viebking and I end of it. Hi to both of you.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Hi, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Hi, Derek. Hi there. Well, it's yeah, no, great to have a chance to talk to you on the on the podcast. Um, and so yeah, we're here to discuss um uh a research note off the back of a paper that both of you co-authored that's in the most recent uh release of the Earnarp Research Notes series. Um and it's all about core funding, which is obviously a topic I'm sure lots of people listening to the podcast will be well aware of, but you've sort of dug into that in a bit more detail and rigor about what it actually means and what the benefits of core funding are for organizations. So it'd be really interesting to kind of hear a bit about that. Um so Arjen, perhaps you could start just by telling us a bit about what the research is all about, how it came about, and what the sort of key findings from it are.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Um yeah, I think we've the motivation for the for the project started with the observation that many funders in the philanthropic sector fund um uh projects with you know requirements on the duration of the grant and the project, uh the maximum amount of overhead that organizations can spend and uh things like that. Uh whereas other uh funders also try to uh try other funding models. Indeed, you mentioned core funding, which is like a model in which you fund um core organizational costs. Um we look at unrestricted funding, which is even more uh flexible, right? Um meaning type of funding that organizations can spend on anything they want, basically. Um and that you know has uh um got increased attention in the in the last years, uh a number of you know large American foundations uh starting to experiment with this type of funding. And uh the organization that we study um in the case study in the in the paper is the uh Dutch Postcode Lottery, which also has been funding organizations uh with unrestricted funding for for years now. So basically, we wanted to kind of develop a theoretical model about what that could do to uh receiving organizations. Um, we don't have a definite answer yet. So it's like a theoretical model in which we propose different mechanisms that could um um in which unrestricted funding could affect uh different organizational capacities, as we would say. So uh we often speak of nonprofit capacity, uh within the literature it's suggested that you know this is so multidimensional that we should better speak of different nonprofit capacities.

unknown 5:52

Great.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And I don't know if you have anything you want to add to that, Pamela, in terms of uh the paper and the findings.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, it was such an uh interesting topic to dive into because both of us are not really, or Arne is a little bit more an expert on nonprofit finance, but for me, this was a completely new topic. So I typically study donor motivation or global philanthropy, but through this project, which was funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery with unrestricted funding, so we ourselves could decide what we wanted to study. Um, and it was so interesting to see how different funders are are using different strategies. And I think one of the key things we took away from this project is that as a funder, it is really important to think about whether your funding strategy aligns with your mission or your theory of change. So you may have this really, really big mission or theory of change, but if you're just giving small time project funding, um, you may not achieve that mission. So that's really the thing that I took away from this project to as a suggestion to funders to think more about whether your funding strategy aligns with your theory of change.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah, absolutely. There were a couple of things. I mean, there was loads of stuff in the paper I found really interesting and definitely resonated, I think, with things that I've heard before about the capacity for innovation and the value to organizations, particularly that focus on advocacy. Um, one thing that that that I was really interested in, and I wondered if you came out of the paper at all, was whether you got a sense of organizations that were receiving unrestricted funding, whether they always spent that funding on things that they couldn't have raised the money for in other ways, or whether actually in some cases they end up almost kind of cannibalizing money that they could have got through restricted funding just because they had more immediate needs. Did you see whether they kind of had a clear demarcation in their minds of thinking, right, this is the stuff that we can only fund through unrestricted funding? So let's use that money for this, or was it more complicated than that?

SPEAKER_02 7:50

I think it really depends on the organization. It it it um I'm not sure it's complicated, but it it really depends on the capacities that the organization really think they should invest this unrestricted funding in. And one of the things we came across, for example, is that organizations use this unrestricted funding to bridge um project funding because based on the project funding they, for example, get from governments, that doesn't allow for enough overhead costs to cover their core costs. So they needed the unrestricted funding to actually run the projects that were funded, for example, by government. And Arjen, do you also have other examples?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, I think one specific example of something that organizations mentioned as being something that that um is difficult to fund otherwise is the lobby, uh, right, towards governments or corporations. And this is kind of a double-edged sword because it's also um the the unrestrictedness of it makes also the organization less dependent on what the funder wants. So in terms of like mission orientation, um, some organizations, uh, for example, in our in our sample that we interviewed say, like, yeah, I I uh receive also government subsidies, but you know, at the same time, we have to be critical of that same government. And if you also have like from another like private source, uh some unrestricted funding, like this organization did, um, it allows us to be more critical and to also do the lobby. Um, so I think that's also a nice example of what you can do.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah. And it's I mean, certainly, I mean, very pertinent. I mean, here in the UK, it's been, I know, a problem the other way where there's been concerns over the last five or ten years that government contracts for delivering services have had clauses inserted saying specifically you can't use any of this money to subsidize lobbying activities and you're not actually even allowed to get money from elsewhere to lobby. So I think you know it is it is very much a live issue. Um, one of the other things I wanted to ask as well was whether the the sort of focus on impact measurement amongst funders that we've seen certainly, you know, over the last decade, if not quite a bit more than that, whether that has played a part in making it even more um commonplace for restricted funding models to be applied because people want to be able to measure the impact of their specific funding. Does that kind of drive funders towards restricted rather than underrestricted models?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, I truly think so. I mean, um, and um to be a bit more critical, which is you know a bit outside of the paper that we wrote, but a bit more personal um uh view, um, is that I think it is also the um imagined impact, right, that funders want to see. I mean, the impact reporting that they ask for, I sometimes wonder, you know, if that's really impact that we are seeing. They do some kind of you know, um uh surveys among users and then they say, yeah, we reach so many people and they are satisfied to this extent, which is great. Um, but is that really impact? I mean, there's no like counterfactual or no like um um uh real measurement of you know what the the the uh causal effect was of the intervention that that you made. So I think all the attention for impact is great. Um uh but indeed it leads to you know this kind of restricted project funds in which there's a lot of reporting, um, from which you can also question you know the the actual um whether it actually measures what it what it wants to measure.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add on that, Pamela, or whether I mean I'd be interested in how this crosses over the work you've done on sort of individual donors and their motivations and whether you've seen anything you know similar, or they're kind of you feel as though institutional funders and individual funders are different when it comes towards their attitudes and practices around um uh unrestricted rather than restricted funding.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Well, I think people remain people, whether they're an institutional funder or whether they're an individual donor or a major donor. So a lot of the motivations uh remain the same. And I think a lot of uh lot of funders, uh including uh individual donors, have a fear when they're giving large sums of money that this money will not be spent well. And especially uh if you're on the board of an organization or an advisory board, you feel this responsibility that the money your organization is is fund using to fund other organizations will be spent well in line with your own mission. So this leads to a very restrictive approach where uh people are just trying to get as much grasp on those uh gifts as possible. But that can work really uh counter effective because those gifts will not be spent most effectively, likely. And there's a lot of talk about and written about all the reporting requirements that, as one of our respondents said, drive me nuts. He said they have to just report everything, and they sometimes have to hire hire a full-time staff person just to report everything back that they're doing, and that money could be spent uh on the cause as well, of course. Um, one thing that I I really liked when I spoke um with um UK uh CEO of a nonprofit organization, Spadeswork, recently, uh Chris Healy, and what he shared was that he used unrestricted funding uh also to fund projects within the organization so that he could communicate to the donors, giving unrestricted funding exactly where the money went, and in that way actually build on the relationship between with the donor. And I think that that was a really smart way to use this unrestricted funding rather than use it for salaries that people don't really care about funding, but you even though it's unrestricted funding, match it with a project within the organization. So donors are um are engaged with the organization and know where their money went.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

That's really interesting. So I have heard from similarly from organizations that give unrestricted funding that they believe in it and they're happy to do it, but it can be a challenge because particularly when the organization they're giving to maybe is getting restricted funding and project-based funding, where the the impact of that's very clear, and it's often, you know, there's there's a lot of attribution to the funders, whereas the the core funding or the unrestricted funders sometimes get a little bit forgotten because their money just dissipates throughout the organization. So um that's really interesting. Um, I we probably need to move on because it's unfortunately not a full-length episode, but I just I wanted to ask one other thing about the paper, which was you, we we hear a lot about the the benefits of unrestricted funding for recipient organizations. And most organizations I think would say they would be delighted to have entirely unrestricted funding. Did you get any sense of whether there are occasionally actually sort of downsides to restricted funding from the point of view of recipients? Is it sometimes better for them to get restricted funding? Is that ever the case?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

I'm so happy you asked that question. You know, I was all the time thinking, yeah, we should say something about, you know, we are kind of advocating here unrestricted funding as something very good, but of course there are possible downsides. Um, indeed, we interviewed uh in this for this paper uh grantees of unrestricted funding, and like you say, of course, they are overall super happy with it. Um we did um uh observe a few possible downsides. One is that if you receive multi-year unrestricted funding for years, you might become too dependent of that funding stream. You also kind of count on that, you know, that it continues, but you know, that might disappear one day. Um one other thing that one respond respondent uh mentioned is that uh it is possible that you within the organization become less critical about how you spend the money, right? And I think that is something that also funders are are afraid of, right? And that is a fear that you know that should be addressed. Um so there should be some kind of accountability, of course, um in place and relationship uh between the funder and the grantee. And I think that's crucial in you know, also pursuing this, um organizations like foundations or other funders that want to um experiment with this should really uh be aware of because I think that is that is some motivation for many funders to not do it, um, but can be overcome maybe.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Um I just want to to zoom out now before I let you both go, just to ask kind of this paper. I think it's obviously about an issue where the practical relevance is is very clear and practitioners will get a lot out of it. What's your sort of experience and perception of the links between academia and practice more broadly in terms of studying kind of philanthropy? Do you think that that that works well at the moment? Do you think it's a challenge to engage practitioners and that there, you know, there's perhaps a lot more that they could be learning from from uh the academic field? Um, and if so, kind of you know, what do you think we need to be doing more of?

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah, I also love this question. You ask great questions. I think it's not going well, but I I I don't want to ask the question uh what practitioners practitioners can learn from academics, but I want to ask the question what academics can learn from practitioners, because I think large part of the issue is that academics um rare rarely engage with practice, and um because the incentive structure at universities is not very uh conducive to engaging with practitioners because you as an academic you don't get rewarded for the the collaborations with practice, you get rewarded for this one paper that is published in an academic journal that no one reads, or uh how much funding you use your manage to get. So I I think that should really change the what is um rewarded and appreciated in what academics do. And um, I I think it is really important to involve people from practice if you study a topic that is so concretely related to practice, like we do, that you involve people from practice uh in a meaningful way at the start of a project and not just at the end, but really involve them in designing your research questions, how you're gonna answer these research questions. And that's what we try to do at the Center for Grant Making Research, but we can certainly keep continue to improve on that.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

And I don't know, yeah, if you have any thoughts, Ayan on this sort of practice academia connection.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

No, I mean I totally agree with with Pamela, and I think Erinop is doing a great great job in trying to bring those fields together with the research notes and also in the in the conference where practitioners are invited. And um, yeah, this this is a great example, I think, and also this podcast actually, um, of ways to bridge the the practice and and academia because sometimes it's also about the language that you speak, right? I also tried to set up a field experiment once with fundraisers, and it was so hard because they just didn't understand what a what an experiment, what I meant with an experiment, right? We all all know we all know the word experiment, but what do you what do you mean with it is for for academics is something different maybe than than someone who's not into academic research. So I think understanding each other's language, yeah, is is important and also takes a long time.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Yeah, I think so. And and certainly the conversations I've had through this podcast, I mean, it's reassuring that that actually there's there is an appetite to learn about what's going on in academia and actually a sense that what is being produced in an academia is genuinely of interest. It's just that we need to do a lot more to kind of connect those the dots between the two. Um, the before I let you both go, the other thing I just wanted to ask, because I'm aware often the work that's done on these papers, given the timescales in academia, which is another challenge, I think, uh, in terms of connection with uh with practice, you know, the work is often a few years um you're kind of in the past. So what is it that you're both working on now? Is there anything that's kind of connected to this paper or building on it, or are there other areas that you're particularly focusing on at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah, we really want to test this model. Um, so this is a conceptual theoretical model based on our interviews and existing literature, but now it is really important that we start to really understand what how does unrestricted funding really enhance nonprofit capabilities with specific capabilities and how does that then lead to nonprofit effectiveness, how effective the organizations are in achieving their mission. So that is a really big task, but we're really excited to keep going with it and uh and encourage anyone else who's interested in in studying this to also um dive in because I think we need to learn much more about how this works to make philanthropy more meaningful and more effective.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

And I know I will allow you the final word if you've got any follow-up on this. This was the perfect final word.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

It was a great last statement. I would just get brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Well, my thanks to both of you for finding time to come on the podcast. It's great to hear about it, and I'm only sorry I haven't got time to talk about more, but perhaps as the work goes along, we can kind of pick it up and discuss in more detail. Because I think it's a really fascinating area. But um wish you, yeah, both the best with all of that future work. Um and yeah, hopefully have another chance to speak soon.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

I would love that. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, thanks so much for hosting this.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

The next interview that you're going to hear is with Ali Boddy, and that's about her paper uh Teaching Student Philanthropy: Possibilities for Practice within the UK higher education sector, which she co-authored with Emily Lau, another colleague of mine. Uh so hope you enjoy this one. Okay, great. So I'm here with Ali Body. Hi there, Ali.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

Hi, Audrey. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I'm great, thank you. And yeah, as I said in the intro, people might be aware that we are um sometime colleagues at the University of Kent, although, as I was clear to say, they've had no involvement whatsoever in the work that we're here to talk about. Um, so yeah, the the paper that we're discussing and the research note off the back of it is about some really interesting work you've been doing at the University of Kent, um, a project around getting students to engage with philanthropy through sort of experiential learning. So maybe you could just say a bit about what that project is, what this paper's about, and what the kind of key findings are.

SPEAKER_04 21:29

Yeah, absolutely. So this was really based upon observing quite a lot of um activity in the US around student philanthropy modules and these being quite a popular thing, um, with some really interesting results. And then looking across at the higher education sector um in the UK, realizing that we didn't have anything like this in the UK. Um and so it really the paper is just exploring our kind of highlight exploration of delivering this module. Um it's a module now that we're we're just about to go into the fourth year of delivery. where the students are essentially become they essentially become the grant makers. So we work in partnership with our local community foundation to deliver this. And the students have a pot of funding of two and a half thousand pounds to allocate out to local causes. And what we've done is tried to bring in a really kind of reflective evaluation study that runs alongside the module as well. And this paper is basically responding to that about actually what did we think were the really important parts of the learning and part of the student experience that kind of really make this module stand out as something different. And we really wanted to put it out there is to kind of share with other universities and other organisations working with young people that they might be able to pick up and do something different.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah it's really interesting and and um looking at the paper I mean quite a lot of the the similar initiatives that I'm aware of where there's kind of classroom-based philanthropy are in the context of people doing courses that try to teach them about philanthropy. Is that the case here or is it also something where you are taking people who aren't studying philanthropy and using philanthropy essentially as a kind of learning tool to help them develop other bits of knowledge?

SPEAKER_04 23:15

Yes absolutely so this module is targeted at undergraduate students who normally come to the first session without any sense of what philanthropy even is and or come with quite a skepticism of philanthropy as well. And so it's very much kind of focused on both about learning what philanthropy is but using the philanthropic process as well to learn about the wider community, the voluntary sector, local organisations that are out there working and also a kind of self-reflection on our own level of citizenship. So whilst I spoke about the US and the US models being quite kind of motivator for this, a lot of my own research focuses on how children and young people are socialized into ideas of giving. So not just the idea of let's get more people donating or more people volunteering but also let's think pedagogically in terms of well how are we framing that? What is it that we're learning through these processes? So we do take quite a critical look at philanthropy at the voluntary sector at charity and the relationship between charity and the state all as part of this module but in a very student-led way. So we run two hour workshops each week. The students we we never do a lecture so we're never standing at the front of the class lecturing to our students but instead we raise critical questions about the topic that we're exploring at that point. And together as a group we go away and explore well what does that look like so for example students might come in with a stereotypical idea that CEOs are paid too much. That might be a kind of typical one and so we actually go in and we dive into the data and we explore that and we explore how do charities actually function and where is that funding coming from and and how does that kind of compare to what's happening across the wider kind of social sector. So it really is about sort of trying to unpick a lot of those ideas as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yeah and do you get a sense that those students come away with a fundamentally different view of what philanthropy is and an opinion about you know whether or not they think it's it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 25:19

Absolutely so I think I think there's two sides to that I think they have a much better understanding of we quite often talk about the philanthropic ecosystem I think when they first walk into the room their nearest understanding of philanthropy will be something like Bill Gates and actually we talk about much wider understanding and we do use the widest understanding of philanthropy. So they also then walk away with an understanding of themselves as a philanthropist. So we as I say we have quite a focus on well what is my own engagement in this what is my own kind of sense of citizenship within these processes and and how can I engage with the philanthropic ecosystem and sort of what's my own power in that as well. And so I do think we try to make it quite a disruptive learning process on purpose quite challenging and reflecting on our own ideas. So one of the first sessions that we run so before we've even introduced the idea of philanthropy before we even introduce any of the sort of learning the students have basically 10 charities that they have a kind of framework of and a fictitious example of there's £10 about who you're going to give to and why and that's such a great um that's such a great exercise to start with because the students then start thinking first of all it it talks it starts making them think about their own personal connections to different causes and what it is they're interested in. But also it starts to sort of bring out their own unconscious bias about certain things. So it so you start getting conversations about well what do we consider worthy what do we consider unworthy and actually do we need to unpick that and do we need to reflect on that so there's a lot of self-reflection that goes on throughout the module as well because then obviously the students by the end are having to make that decision in real life and and so we do see quite a kind of a transformational impact on the students and the students certainly report that back to us.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah and do you do you ever find that in those conversations because it's a kind of collective model of decision making and it'd be kind of interested actually to know how how they decide on the sort of specifics of that as well. But I guess the thing that occurred to me having been in the room when there's been similar processes going on is that they actually can quite often get relatively heated it probably in in you know hopefully in a positive way because it sort of reminds you that fundamentally these are very values driven conversations.

SPEAKER_04 27:41

Have you seen that in the groups you're working with and kind of how do you manage that that challenge yes it definitely does uh get quite heated at the very beginning we do set out certain ground rules about uh obviously sort of respecting each other's views lived experiences etc um and the students are normally very good um at doing that and you do get some quite challenging lived experiences coming into the room as well so for example last year one of our students um was a refugee currently going through the asylum seeking process and was sharing their experiences of that um and that really kind of opened up the conversation to everyone else in the room and kind of brought a new kind of realisation into into what was kind of going on. But overall I would say the students deal with that kind of discussion and debate in a really ethical and respectful way of one another. And in terms of how we get to that decision making it's actually the students decide for themselves as we talk about different models, we talk about voting systems we talk about kind of different ways that we could come to the end decision. But the students go through that deliberation process and decide themselves how they will come to that final decision. So far it's normally worked on the voting process in terms of that their top choice gets two votes the second choice gets one vote for example but there's lots of other decisions they have to make along the way. So for example two and a half thousand pounds isn't a huge amount by any means but sometimes they're deciding whether they're going to split that into two whether they're going to give it out as one lump sum and so we start talking about all of those um all of those parts of it. So as we go through the module just to give a kind of quick run through of the structure so as I say we work with the community foundation but that's more than anything so they can carry out the due diligence on organisations. So the first decision the students have to decide is what is it they're going to focus on. So they have to think about the size of organisation maybe geographical focus um the cause focus um and so they they put the parameters on on that grant. The community foundation then sends out a call to organisations saying we have this funding available we've they um we've developed each year we develop the application form but we really do make them keep it very very short because there's an ethical essence here in terms of you don't want organisations spending a long time having to fill out a form for a very small amount of money. So it's literally three very quick questions. The organisations then apply via the community foundation all of those applications come to the students and the students then make the decision making process. So at that point they then have to go through well this organisation is only asking for a thousand whilst this is asking for two thousand and I suppose the essence has always been that we're having discussions that all the time are good versus good. And actually the the discussion comes down to where can their funding can do the most good at this point in time. And which in itself brings an interesting kind of focus um to the conversation as well for them.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yeah I think that's that point you make there about it being choices between good versus good is really interesting because I the thing I'm sort of sealing these processes is is maybe a a slightly greater appreciation of the fact that you fundamentally you're always making decisions in philanthropy and you can't get away from the fact that it's not necessarily the right there's no necessarily necessarily right decision. There's kind of there's one decision and another decision you know and each might be equally valid but at some point sooner or later you have to kind of own that that choice um the I was just going to ask as well because obviously like the focus of these research notes is trying to kind of join the dots between um academia and practice. It feels like this is a very you know obviously practice focused piece of work and you know the kind of the lessons for practitioners are fairly clear. What's your hope in terms of where this work might go next where do you see it having kind of wider application?

SPEAKER_04 31:39

So I think it plays a really important part for me in the whole kind of agenda around the civic university and the role of the civic university and how we can kind of engender those conversations with students who are so the students we're currently working with are studying social policy but for example but social policy is always going to be impacted by philanthropy in the voluntary and community sector and so it's really important that when they leave the university that they have that understanding. So for me it's about how can we now take these conversations into different spaces um so for example if you're a medical student philanthropy still massively impacts what you're going to go out into the world and do and and and the opportunities that are available. The same if you work in conservation if you work in um anthropology all of these different or psychology all of these different areas so so for me this is about us kind of joining up those dots about how multidisciplinary philanthropy is and that philanthropy isn't this kind of area of study that is distinct that of course I do think it's a distinct area of study but it actually it impacts every area of our lives um so for example to bring that um as a real kind of concrete thing for the students we track we do a life course mapping exercise with the students where we track where their life has been impacted by philanthropy. And so we even go down to kind of well what primary school did you go to let's look at the background of that primary school what secondary school did you go to what sports are you involved in and so we actually make all of those links from well actually local football clubs wouldn't run without philanthropy. The theatre that you really intend you you really enjoyed um attending wouldn't be here without philanthropy. So we both do a mapping exercise about how their life has been impacted by philanthropy but where also then they are connected to philanthropy where they are either volunteering or they're giving and in ways that they haven't really thought about before and so we actually want to kind of and that's why I come back to that idea of citizenship that actually that our our philanthropic citizenship is something that is is kind of is it's not something we just do it's an embodied part of ourselves and our lives and our lived experiences. And I think that starts changing the conversation and students' perceptions as well.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Yeah it's really really really interesting. I think that link between philanthropy and the the whole idea of it as a nursery of democracy and kind of active citizenship is you know is so important but but often kind of as you say maybe the word philanthropy it takes a while for people to to make the links between that and that idea of kind of citizenship and participation but um really fascinating and I just wanted to ask before I let you go as well um what it is that you're currently working on at the moment. I mean is it stuff I think I mean I certainly know that you've got a book coming out that is linked to this and focusing on on kind of children and philanthropy maybe you could just say a bit about that and any other kind of work that you've got that you're particularly interested in.

SPEAKER_04 34:33

Yes absolutely so we're running this module um again um I'm not sure when your podcast comes out but this will be running in the spring term and so I'm already preparing for my next cohort students that are coming through on that so I'm really looking forward to that we have a big um economic uh so economic social research council grant sorry that's hard to remember the acronyms then that's looking at how philanthropic so we talk a lot about philanthropic citizenship um so how philanthropic citizenship is taught within primary schools so we've done a big mapping exercise of primary education um and we're now working in participatory action research programmes with children about how they understand their own philanthropic citizenship um and then yes as you say I have a book coming out um I probably think it'll be about summer when it's actually when it comes out called Children as Changemakers Unleashing children's real philanthropic power and that very much focuses on that idea of that so much and I think this doesn't impact the module so much of what we teach and talk about philanthropy in children young people's early experiences is framed in an idea of benevolence and individualistic private action. And so this book is sort of focusing so that says actually what if we shift that narrative what if we shift the narrative to focusing more on justice orientated ideas and shift of citizenship on collective action collective power and look at it through a different lens. And I think that's what we try to embody in this module that we're teaching as well but that book very much talks about it in well actually what if we reframed children's experiences instead of teaching them to give to the food bank say yes it's great to give to the food bank but let's also question why food poverty exists at the same time and where else we can use our voice and power to challenge some of those ideas.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

And yeah certainly my experience of talking to my own kids is that they're more than capable understanding those kinds of ideas and it's really interesting when you do get into them. That's absolutely great and I should mark your card now that I definitely will be asking you to come back and do a full length podcast when the book's out because I'd love to talk about that in detail. But for now yeah it remains to say um just thanks ever so much for coming on really interesting to hear about the the work and yeah certainly look forward to the book when that comes out. Brilliant thanks Rodrigo okay and then the final interview you're going to hear now is with Rita Cottaz from Kingston University. And this as I mentioned at the start of the podcast is about two papers. So we talk briefly about the paper on uh disintermediated giving so that paper's called A Typology of Disintermediated giving and asking in the nonprofit sector which Rita co-authored with Ian McQuillan and with Juniper Losolento and neil Gelliford and then the other paper that we talk in a little bit more detail about is uh titled Who Gives to Food Banks a study of influences affecting donations to food banks by individuals and Rita co-authored that with uh Roger Bennett and Rohini uh VJ Gopal. So without further ado let's go into that one. I hope you enjoy that and then I'll just be back briefly at the end of the episode. Okay great well I'm here with Rita Cottaz. Hi there Rita. Hi Roger well great to have you on the podcast. And yeah I think we're here to talk uh in a little bit of detail about two papers that you're involved in actually that are both out in this latest um uh release of Earnot Research Notes. There's one that's about the question of disintermediation and sort of how that plays out in in the charity sector and how we could understand it better. So we'll talk about that one a little bit first. And then also a really interesting paper on food banks and the people who donate to them which we'll dig into a little bit. So maybe you could start by just saying a bit about the the disintermediation paper. I think maybe kind of what it's actually about what you mean by disintermediation and what the paper focuses on.

SPEAKER_05 38:28

Yeah so thanks very much for inviting me. Yes I mean the disintermediation project is actually really very interesting because um it started out as a uh Rogare uh project uh rogare is a think tank um run by Ian McFillian and he um asked me to participate um in the paper. So initially we started uh I think five or six people uh but it kind of soon became uh quite evident that everybody had a different idea about what this intermediation means in the um in the charity context and we had many deliberations and some people actually dropped out of the project because it was very difficult to kind of unpick what we actually mean by and you know that's kind of words which um you know when you look at the disintermediation um literature in the for-profit area you know it's kind of a bit more clear because there's a process of exchange where you have a customer and an organization and then um the customer may choose to um buy or uh purchase something um directly so for example trouble agency is a really good um way to kind of understand it that you go and buy um and purchase an airplane ticket and a hotel without the use of the trouble agent. So obviously in the in the nonprofit context that's really very different because you've got the donor you've got the charity and you've got the beneficiary so we're looking at um allocation of resources but also the acquisition of resources um but that's kind of um kind of exchange um you know from the in in the same way that you would have with the travel agency so we were kind of throwing up lots of different ideas and words came up um things like disruption is it disruption is it this intermediation is it replacement is it displacement is it bypassing certain areas of of giving and of course then we had difficulties kind of even kind of defining you know what is charity because we've got the legal status of different entities which can all kind of be categorized as charities but then we decided that we actually are focusing on the traditional giving and um receiving within you know kind of traditional charitable organizations like Oxfam or NSBCC rather than looking at schools or kind of local government type organizations or even social enterprises which might be set up as a charity. So once we've kind of got to grips with uh what we're understanding by it and I think and I've got it down here that we kind of I guess we kind of try to understand this intermediation in relation to the kind of supply chain in inverted commerce steps in the supply chain uh and then the elimination of particular functions and processes so we really try to focus on the functions and the processes rather than the idea which some of our colleagues who initially started out with us they wanted to focus specifically on this donor relationship and the direct giving between a donor and a beneficiary which in the real side if you think about it that's kind of the cleanest most black and white way of looking at uh this intermediation so example is crowdfunding so I could um set up a campaign where I am funding you Rodrigues on uh a site such as GoFundMe uh so I'm giving the money directly to you to pay for your medical expenses so that's probably the cleanest way to understand this intermediation between the donor the charity and the beneficiary but as I said it's quite complicated when you actually get to the nitty gritty.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Yeah and I think that's one of the things that comes out in the paper. And as you say I mean you know haven't haven't really got the the time to dig into it in detail here but I will put links in the show notes to places where people can find both the research note and the paper and I'd recommend reading it because it's a fascinating topic and certainly something I plan to I've well I've done bits of work on before and I plan to to come back to hopefully in more detail on the podcast. And just the one thing I think in what you're saying this pickup on is even when we talk about disintermediation, as you note in the paper, often actually what's happening is not genuine disintermediation, it's just the nature of the intermediary is changing because you're using a platform rather than a charity but there's still intermediation and it's what are then the roles and responsibilities of that intermediary. So I think that there are all kinds of fascinating questions. I just wanted to move on so that we've got a bit of time to talk about the food bank question although I think um there are actually some interesting links there which maybe we'll touch on as well. And maybe you could just say a bit about what this piece of research was because I'm sure people are sort of were already aware of food banks but obviously I think during the pandemic they became very much more a part of people's lives and the public consciousness. And there's some really interesting stuff in this paper looking at kind of the people who donate to food banks and what drives that.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

Yeah it was really interesting because actually this project started uh before the pandemic actually uh because the data was collected mostly in 2019 uh but Baby just aware that um uh uh there was a lot of research and understanding who the beneficiaries are of food banks, and that's kind of interesting in the kind of Western perspective nowadays because many people don't realize that um in wealthy countries like the UK, um there's a there's a big increase in um food bank uh use and people don't realize that there's a lot of people in uh poverty in in wealthy countries. So the literature suggested that we understand who the beneficiaries are quite well, and we also kind of look many people, many academics have looked at um you know the kind of social sociopolitical kind of reasons and uh consequences of uh the use of food banks. But there was hardly any studies. I think we found one in uh in the US that was published in 2003 that looked at um focus groups looking at um how people, how donors perceived uh the the beneficiaries of these food banks. Uh well that study was um very much focused on kind of wide middle class uh kind of regular donor donors, religious donors, um which is kind of the typical uh donor profile of um giving in general. Uh so we just wanted to kind of I think add to the literature to try and see how people actually perceived the um food bank uh beneficiaries and who these people were, what kind of uh social demographic background they were from. Now it was quite a kind of a quick, quick and dirty study, I would say, because it's a relatively small sample, uh, and the data was collected um in and around Kingston upon Thames, which is a kind of a wealthy area. But we tried to kind of differentiate between um poorer areas of Kingston upon Thames, which would kind of you know be kind of parts within uh Chessington, and then um kind of collecting data also from people leaving supermarkets um in wealthier um parts in Surbiton and Kingston. Uh we actually found that possibly because it's not a great variation, so we should have maybe gone to kind of properly deprived areas um in and around London to get a better feel for what's going on. We found that the people shopping in Chessington and uh Kingston and Surbiton are actually pretty similar uh in many instances in terms of um their socioeconomic um uh profile. Um, but um yes, so one interesting thing um from the uh interviews uh coming from the people uh that we interviewed um was the difference in perception of how how they perceived uh food bank beneficiaries, uh and especially in relation to people who gave to the food bank and the people who decided not to give to the food bank. So we tried to kind of get a relatively equal sample of people who were donating to the food bank. So we asked them straight after they came out of the supermarket had you given to the um food bank basket that was available at the checkout. Um and so we I think roughly got about 300 um uh individuals from each of those uh groups. Uh and what was interesting, we we kind of asked them kind of open-ended liver how do you perceive people that received these donations? And um the people who donated um tended to be more positive about the way they felt about these beneficiaries, that they were kind of almost kind of um victims of an unfair society, that they were deserving people, um, those sorts of kind of words kind of uh propped up. Uh, but the people who didn't give were either kind of apathetic and didn't even probably really notice that there was a food bank uh uh like a point, um, or they would kind of have disparaging comments to say about the beneficiaries, um, whether you know that they were maybe not deserving, lazy or not able to manage their money, and therefore they should be um looking to uh kind of budget better, um etc. etc. But of course we know uh that um especially during the pandemic after the study was conducted, that there were people who wouldn't normally be using food banks like uh healthcare workers, um uh single mothers with children, and maybe groups that wouldn't normally be associated with um kind of charity beneficiaries.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Yeah, I did absolutely fascinating stuff, I think, in there on those things around motivations. I mean, reading it, it struck me that those kind of deep currents of distinguishing between sort of deserving and undeserving poor that have always been there throughout charity, you know, it gave a sense that that's very much kind of alive and and well. And that was somewhere where it struck me there was potentially a crossover with the disintermediation work. Because I know one of the things that's said about crowdfunding is that you know the danger that you see is that actually you get more of that because the more that you take charities out of the picture and they're not able to you know smooth those effects and make sure that resources are allocated, then individuals do bring those biases in terms of who they decide to give to. So I thought that was fascinating. Um one thing I wanted to ask actually is kind of that it seems intuitive that people who hold a relatively negative view of poverty as a sort of moral failing of the individual might justify not giving to food banks on on that side. Um but but almost at the other end of the spectrum, did you get any sense that there were people who who kind of viewed poverty as a structural problem, but almost were reluctant to give to a food bank because that that's a kind of symptomatic way of addressing it. Because we do hear that sometimes that people kind of think it's the government's fault, but they don't want to support a food bank because that's almost not addressing the problem or letting the government off the hook.

SPEAKER_05 50:20

Yeah, so kind of interestingly, um what we found in the uh in the data was that I think probably because the amounts that they're talking about are relatively uh kind of low uh levels. So I think we saw that people were donating um maybe you know between one and three pounds um uh on on a weekly basis to these food rants. So um actually whether you believed uh kind of had negative or positive beliefs about how you perceived poverty and whether the government should step in and it's the government's responsibility to uh to look after the poor, it didn't really matter because I guess you know, this mentality of every little help, um you might think yes, it's the government's responsibility, but you know, I can kind of buy a packet of pasta and just put it in that uh uh food bank and just perhaps make yourself feel a bit better about it. But um interestingly, there wasn't really this. Uh perhaps if they were if we're talking about kind of bigger amounts of money, uh people would have been more inclined to kind of think a bit more deeply about what they were going to be doing. But uh what yeah, one of the things that we did uh look at was this idea of you know whose responsibility is it uh to look after the poor and whether it's down to the poor poor person to kind of um sort themselves out in in some way, or the governments, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

And that's yeah, and it's an interesting point you made there. Actually, if if you expanded to look at monetary donations of increasing sizes to food banks, you suspect maybe there would become a point at which some people would say, actually, I'm not comfortable with that because that becomes an endorsement of the you know the kind of the structural.

SPEAKER_05 52:14

Yes, I think so. I think that's the point. It's it's relatively low amount.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

Yeah. Um, one thing I wanted to ask as well, you sort of mentioned there about the the context in the the pandemic and the way in which you know people who weren't normal recipients of uh of food banks might have become that and whether that sort of changed behaviors. And one thing that that struck me reading it was whether you had got any sense of the the balance of views among people who were giving between those who kind of were seeing it empathetically. So, you know, their their driver was, I could imagine that being me, and you know, that that therefore I will give, and those for whom it was more about sort of pity for someone who they couldn't really empathize with, but you know, essentially they couldn't imagine being in such a terrible situation. Did you see those two different types of responses coming out?

SPEAKER_05 53:02

There were those responses, but um, I think both of those, uh as you mentioned, were actually kind of two types of people were present in in that group. Both types.

SPEAKER_01 53:12

Yeah, so it's so so you can kind of have quite two quite different motivations or views of poverty and they actually end up.

SPEAKER_05 53:18

Yeah, so there were kind of varying motivations there. Um, but definitely both of those um uh set of motivations would have been evident in the data.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

Um and the the one thing that I wanted to ask as well, you there was one point in the paper where you noted that there were people who held relatively negative views of poverty as an individual failing, but still gave to food banks. And I wonder if there was any sense of, you know, was that again because essentially it was just seen that it wasn't much of a big deal, so I might as well still do it, or was there something else? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:47

No, I think, well, um I don't think we look, well, we didn't have too much deeper insight, but I think we we kind of concluded that it it was just because of the kind of low low monetary value, as you said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Yeah, really interesting. Um I just wanted to sort of zoom out um at this point, just kind of you know, ask a bit. I think with both of these papers, it's kind of clear that there is relevance for practitioners in all sorts of ways, um, you know, and lessons, and it's good, you know, good to see them kind of as part of the this Earn-Ops series. Well, I wondered what your experience was or your perception of the kind of what the links are like between academia and practice around philanthropy and the voluntary sector at the moment. I mean, do you think that uh practitioners are aware of what's going on in academia and able to learn from it, and kind of vice versa, do academics look to what's happening in practice and are able to draw from that?

SPEAKER_05 54:38

Well, I think in general, in academia, there's a big push, um, not just within the philanthropy uh sector, but there's a big push to uh work with practice, uh academics to work with practice because um, you know, the government and the funding bodies uh do want to see uh impact and whether the research that's being conducted is good value for money, it's good whether it's uh good uh research for society. Um and I think within philanthropy specifically, I mean I've always uh personally, I've always been interested in research that is practice driven. So I've always tried to kind of focus on research questions myself that I thought were worthwhile to help the charity sector. That's me personally. But I think organizations like Ernold, like the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, uh Nova, uh I can see that definitely there's a, you know, every time you go to a session or a conference, uh, there's a big emphasis on uh trying to engage with practice, and more and more practitioners are coming to the conferences, and they've got initiatives like at the Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing, Ram Editor, they've got initiatives specifically looking at um bridging this link between academia and practice. And one of my associate editors is really very good at um kind of disseminating the key practical points um that come out from the latest research on social media where there's more and more practitioners kind of reading and engaging with that work.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Yeah. Well, that's that's great to hear. And then the the final thing I just wanted to ask because I'm a I'm aware that often the research that we're talking about here, the research note is out now, but the actual work, as you say, you know, for the food bank paper was done in 2019, so it's a little while ago, you know, just to hear a bit about what you're focusing on at the moment and what kind of areas of work you're most interested in right now.

SPEAKER_05 56:32

Yeah, so actually, yes, it's really interesting. And one of the reasons why we've kind of put the typology, this intermediation paper out so quickly, even though it's kind of work in progress. Uh, we could have worked on it for an extra couple of years, probably. But you know, uh it's it's with this in mind that everything just takes so long to publish. Um, and sometimes it's just better to put something out there which is a good idea or work in progress, but it's kind of trending and interesting for people in practice. And then, you know, if it's maybe problematic or if uh there could be uh improvements to the work that somebody else can put, pick up on it, work on it, or collaborate in partnership with the um author. So I think it's really important to have things out and um and maybe in kind of even in opinion format and things like that. Um at the moment, I'm actually kind of uh trying to apply the typology for this intermediation uh with a co-author, looking specifically at crowdfunding and looking specifically at uh what we described as type B1 um disintermediation. So looking at the initiation of crowdfunding projects. Uh, because again, if you look at the literature, there's a lot of focus on which are the crowdfunding uh projects that work, which are the crowdfunding projects that people want to support. Uh, but we're looking at why people initiate uh crowdfunding projects. So I'm really interested in this idea of agency control, uh, why people think that they are better equipped to um um kind of start a campaign and then possibly donate that money to a specific charity of their choice, but not really actually engaging that particular charity in the fundraising process. So I kind of find that quite um uh fascinating. And we are again kind of trying to, I guess, characterize uh uh people into whether they're kind of activists um looking to crowdfund, or whether they're altruists, or whether they um are somehow maybe believe that they're more effective in the way they uh and responsible in the way they manage or kind of acquire those funds. And we're looking into this idea of effective altruism as well, and whether people are kind of meddling with those kind of ideas. So it's so it's it's really uh so that's that's what I'm focusing on on at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yeah, it sounds fascinating and certainly something I mean, I think that idea of supporter-driven fundraising that happens outside of the traditional institution and what traditional charities' response to that is is is really interesting and topical. So, yeah, I'll be really interested to hear more about that as the work progresses. Um, just for me to say thanks ever so much for for coming on the podcast. Great to hear about the the work and yeah, wish you all the best with uh all of the that future work.

SPEAKER_05 59:26

Okay, thanks very much.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Pamela and to Arjen uh and to Ali and to Rita uh for giving up some of their time to talk to me. It's really interesting to hear about all of their work. Um I'll put links in the show notes to all of the research notes in question and also to the actual papers so that you can dig into those if you want to. Um, if you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com where you can find lots of articles, news updates about things that I've been doing, guest articles increasingly, uh, and all the back episodes of this podcast, including all of the previous three uh partnership episodes we've done with Urnop, so you can hear about more research there if you like. Uh if you want uh slightly shorter more bite-sized updates, do check me out on social media. Uh I'm mostly on LinkedIn these days is my main thing. Uh I'm barely on Twitter or X anymore because I find it so depressing, but I am just about still there. Uh I'm also still trying to experiment with various other things like Mastodon and Threads and Blue Sky. Uh so if you have any particular desire to make those work and want to kind of enlist me as a partner in crime, please feel free. Um if you like the podcast and uh you want to say something nice about it, please do leave us a nice review on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts, which probably isn't iTunes these days. Um and other than that, just in real life, uh tell all your friends about it. If you know somebody, a colleague, or someone else that you think might be interested, please do uh recommend the podcast to them because word of mouth certainly goes a long way. And if you've got ideas for things we could talk about on the podcast or people I could talk to, please do feel free to drop me an email. Um my contact details are on the Y Philanthropy Matters website, and actually had some great uh episodes come about that way. Other than that, uh just like, subscribe, uh, and I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:30

Bye, I'm gonna go to the book.