SPEAKER_00 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropisms podcast with Roger Davis. 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 final of our current run uh until the summer. I think I'm going to take a break as I usually do most years because I'm going on holiday in a couple of weeks. Uh, and then obviously it's relatively quiet certainly here in the UK over August, so I'll take the opportunity for a bit of a break to focus on some other things, uh, mostly trying to recharge my batteries, which I hope you're all going to manage to do as well. And then we'll return in the autumn with a whole new slew of episodes and interviews. Um but for this final episode uh we have uh one final great interview for this uh this current run. Uh, and this one is with Pamela Wieebking. Um, those of you who religiously listen to every episode of uh this podcast may recognise Pamela's name as she was on an earlier episode um at the start of the year, uh, one of the episodes that we do in partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy, uh, or Urnop. Uh and Pamela was on that uh with uh one of her colleagues, Arlyne DeWitt, um, talking about some work that they had done looking at the theoretical benefits of unrestricted funding. Um but I mentioned at that point that I was uh quite keen at some point to get Pamela on by herself to talk about some of her wider work. She does all kinds of things, as uh you're sure you'll hear in a moment. Um, and I made good on that promise or threat, as you as you might uh think of it. Um and I sat down with Pamela a couple of weeks ago to talk with her, particularly about work that she uh has been doing for a while and is doing now, on trying to broaden our understanding of generosity at a global scale. Um so I should say, so just in terms of who Pamela is, so Pamela um she's the inaugural STED family chair in international philanthropy um at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy in Indiana in the US, which is probably most relevant to what we're talking about in the interview that you're about to hear. Um, but she's also a professor of the societal significance of charitable lotteries at Vrier University in Amsterdam in in the Netherlands. So she does all kinds of uh interesting things to do with philanthropy. Uh, and as I say, we sat down for a conversation that was mostly focused on the whole question of understanding uh generosity, I guess. Um, and you'll see why I shift towards that terminology in a moment, at a global level. Um so we talked um to start with about the whole question of whether philanthropy is actually useful as a word, or whether when you're broadening out beyond certainly the US and the UK, um it's actually quite uh problematic or kind of presents a barrier to understanding what we're talking about. Um if it is a barrier or if it's not helpful, why is that? Is it that people just don't understand it, or is it that they do understand it, but that it brings particular connotations or implications with it that aren't helpful? Um and then we talked about what do you do instead? Do you broaden the definition of philanthropy to encompass more things, or do you um sort of keep philanthropy for a subset of some wider concept such as generosity? And if you do that, what what subset of that overall uh activity are we talking about when we talk about philanthropy and is it useful to do that? Um we talked a bit about why it's we you know it's necessary, I think, at this point in time to try and broaden our understanding of generosity beyond perhaps uh what we've traditionally thought of as philanthropy or charity. Um we talked about the extent to which that forces you to confront other traditions and ideas of of giving and generosity that have focused more on concepts of mutualism, reciprocity, um, solidarity rather than perhaps charity or altruism, um, and whether that is a good thing or whether there is a need to distinguish between those two things, and that if you blur the distinctions, whether that um starts to confuse things. Um we also talked, I guess, on that note about whether, you know, in this drive to broaden our definitions of generosity, there's a danger of going too far and making those concepts nebulous so that it it's you know kind of encompasses almost everything, uh, and then it becomes difficult to determine whether or not you actually know what you're you're talking about. Um we talked uh about whether in trying to understand some of those uh sort of broader ideas of generosity and particularly how those are reflected in other cultures uh around the world outside of the US and the UK or the global north, part of what's required is to kind of decolonize philanthropy research itself so that rather than uh researchers from uh a kind of Western global north background trying to change the way that they think or perceive things in order to understand other cultures, it would be more uh helpful to encourage research from researchers that actually come from those other countries and cultures so that they can bring uh a diversity of perspectives to academic research. Um, we talked a bit on that note actually, um, about whether the role of academics when it comes to philanthropy is simply to is observe and analyse and report, or whether they can see part of their role as actively trying to encourage people to give more or to be more generous or to give in particular ways, which I thought was kind of interesting because as you'll hear, you know, Pamela talks at some points about the fact that her work, she feels, you know, is kind of part of a wider mission that that she has in her life, which I'm sure is true for for many people. And sometimes the that kind of tension between the objectivity that's demanded of academics and that desire to have an impact in the world can be quite an interesting one. Um and then we talked a bit about the question of measuring uh generosity, and we talked about whether the current measures that we use to to measure uh generosity in giving behaviour within countries, but certainly at a global level, are inadequate, and if so, why and what we should make of sort of efforts to kind of move beyond some of those measures. And related to that, we touched quite a bit on the question of how we should understand the claims that are made at the moment that there is a sort of fundamental decline in giving in some places, certainly the US and the UK, um uh the Netherlands, Canada, and others, so certainly in some countries in the global north, and whether that genuinely reflects a decline in generosity or whether it reflects the fact that generosity is continuing at the same levels or maybe even increased levels, but in ways that are not being captured by the measures that we have sort of traditionally chosen to apply. Um, so without further ado, let's get into that conversation because I've uh got overexcited in the summary and probably gone on a bit there. So you'll hear from uh Pamela and I now, um, and then I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Pamela Viebking. Hi there, Pamela.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Hey Rodri.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Uh it's really great to have a chance to talk. I know uh you were on briefly on uh an episode a little while ago um as one of the Earn Op Research Note series talking about some work you were doing on core cost funding. Um, but I was very keen to get you back on to have a chance to talk uh much more broadly because you do uh lots of really, really interesting things. Um and the what we were uh planning on talking about today is something that's been a big part of your work for a long time now, which is trying to look at the whole question of generosity and giving and understand it in a much more global sense and perhaps get away from the kind of narrow focus on on the UK and the US and the global north that we've we've maybe had historically. Maybe a good starting point would be for you just to say a bit about how your interest in that particular question came about and how it led to the work you're doing, particularly um with the the STED chair that you've got at the moment at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah, yeah, thanks so much. Um I've I've been working on global philanthropy, I think, since 2009. And the reason is why I started doing that was actually pretty instrumental. I was writing a grant proposal to the Dutch Science Foundation, and I thought, what is the thing I think we need to study in philanthropy? What do I think like may blow them away? What will they fund me to do? And I thought, well, there's great work on global uh philanthropy, civil society by Solomon Onheer and Les uh Solomon and Onhaier, and but there's so much we don't know yet. So in 2009, I wrote this grant proposal about global generosity and it got funded. So I had four years of my own time funded to study this topic, and uh then I met Famita Handy at a conference in Chicago, and I started to explain what I was trying to do because um, as often in my work, I um I envisioned pretty big projects that turn out to be more challenging than I initially anticipated. And in this case, I was trying to edit a book with people from all across the world that would write about their own global civil society in their own location, and at the time we called it non-profit sector because I was pretty ignor pretty ignorant about that. A lot of countries don't actually have a nonprofit sector. So, showing my wide western bias there already, um, which we'll probably continue to hear about a lot through this interview, because there's so much we don't know because it isn't written about. We we don't know how other people in other countries talk about generosity, philanthropy, civil society often. So I wanted to do this uh edited volume, but I struggled as a new assistant professor to get all the people to work with me voluntarily because I didn't have any funding for them to work with me. And for me to say, well, I'm I'm really interested in this project, and I'm I'm happy to work with you as a co-editor. And it turned out that that was uh a wonderful proposal because we've become a great team and we've been working ever since. But this became the the Pelgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy, and there we have 26 context areas, countries represented. And what I found really important is that people, researchers, wrote about their own context. It was not us writing about their context, but people wrote about their own context. Um, and we we've given them a pretty strict format to do so, um, which again is something I would not do again that way, um, learning what I've learned over the years. But for example, we we got quite a bit of pushback from one of the authors, Dana Doan, who later became a PhD student at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and she's just graduated, and I'm really excited to see what she will do next in the world. But she was um she was living in Vietnam and she had been living there for a long time, and she was working with a local collaborator, and she provided pushback on using this nonprofit sector terminology. She said it's not valid in Vietnam. You need to talk about these things in different ways here, and um, and that's what I'm trying to do now in my work. I'm trying to listen much better to people who have experience and knowledge about local context and try to integrate it in the research we do in a way that it is inclusive of all those voices.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Yeah, it's really interesting, and I I really want to dig into particularly something you touched on there, which is I think that challenge of broadening out our conception of generosity so that it kind of recognises and respects the fact that there are so many different rich cultures of it around the world, but also trying to kind of keep some common core so that you can compare between different places and have a kind of conceptual framework. And you know, that feels like it's the kind of key challenge. But I get I guess before we come to that, though I wanted to ask something quite specific. You you mentioned there, obviously, in terms of the handbook you worked on, it's the the handbook of global philanthropy. Obviously, the word philanthropy is is in there as it is in the title of you know this podcast and many kind of schools and academic centres um you know in the UK and elsewhere. But in when you're looking at generosity in a in a global context, is it actually helpful to use the word philanthropy? I mean, does it act as a kind of, you know, is it some sort of lingua franqua? Does it resonate, or is it something that either people in other countries don't really understand or don't recognize, or does it kind of have particular connotations for them that maybe aren't so helpful?

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah, that is an excellent question. I'm conducting research uh with some of the students at uh the PSE soons at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, including Anastasia Okume and Kitty Yassin. And we have done uh quite a lot of qualitative work now, try to understand how people across the world um how they look at philanthropy, what what they mean when when they use that word. And and the common thing we find is outside of English speaking context, especially outside of the US and UK, people don't know the world, the word. That's the predominant thing we find. But if they do know, do know the word, uh in the most positive sense, they would talk about philanthropy as something that is formalized giving to organizations to address structural, bigger issues in society. Um, I really like what one respondent in the interview study said is philanthropy is the big word for generosity. It addresses problems in a more structural and organized way. And I think that definition of philanthropy can certainly play a role. But for a lot of other people, when they did know the word philanthropy, they would talk about rich white men in the US giving lots of money. That is the way they look at philanthropy. And so it has a very negative connotation for a lot of people, and they don't see themselves as philanthropists.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

This is it's really interesting because it feels like, particularly in the US at the moment, there's quite a big debate and a push in a way to kind of reclaim the word philanthropy, you know, and its its original meaning as a love of humanity and allow a broader definition that encompasses not just giving money but giving all kinds of resources and all sorts of different levels. Do you do you think that's the right approach in a way is to try and kind of broaden the definition of philanthropy so that we all have a richer understanding? Or actually is it about accepting other terminology as well and then kind of working out how that fits around philanthropy? I sort of I sort of wonder, I can't make my own mind up about which way is best to go on that.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, I I think there's sort of two camps, at least on the academics, on this. Uh, I've had this discussion many, many times, and a lot of my academic friends say, no, we have to stick with philanthropy. That is the word we've been using. We we just need to make sure people understand what we mean by it, that it is this love of mankind. But what I would say is that for a lot of people across the world, philanthropy doesn't have that meaning, that doesn't have that connotation. Uh, but generosity does. Like when we ask people about when they think about generosity in their own local languages, translations of it, they come up with very clear definitions. They understand what that is. And I really like this definition that is of generosity that's provided by the Science of Generosity initiative. And they say generosity is giving good things to others freely and abundantly. And what exactly generosity gives can be various things: money, possessions, time, attention, aid, encouragement, emotional availability, and much more. So it's this very inclusive and broad definition of um behavior that people do to benefit others. And that's another way you can talk about it. Behavior expressed to benefit others. I think that can be very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

And and if we think about it in in that sense, would would it be fair to say that the relationship is something like you know, generosity can and maybe often is something that leads to philanthropy or drives philanthropy, although maybe it's not entirely kind of co-extensive with it, because also that you know have to be realistic that there is some philanthropy that maybe isn't driven entirely by generosity. So there's definitely a strong relationship between the two, but if you differentiate, actually they're kind of this Venn diagram, but it's not one, you know, where the two circles are entirely overlapping.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, I really like the way you you put this. And I think philanthropy is uh oftentimes much more institutionalized. It is focused at the larger registrant societies trying to address systemic change. While generosity um it is also being perceived as being more communal, being locally focused, being with the people that are around you, focused on them. And that can include, for example, family, because um one of the things we are excluding often from our definition of philanthropy when we measure it is giving to kin. But in a lot of contexts, that is what people do when they display generosity behavior because they have this local informal help networks where that is how they uh support others. There are no formal nonprofit organizations they give money to, but they have these really intricate local social systems where people support each other. And I would say, like, it whether you use generosity or philanthropy, I think we should include that in measurements because currently we're not doing that, and that is discounting the behavior of a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah, absolutely. I guess that brings us back to that point of uh, you know, when you start looking globally, and and even to be honest, I guess when you start looking within countries like the US and think more broadly than just you know philanthropy as giving to organizations within a formalised non-profit sector, actually, there's all kinds of other uh generosity behaviours that you can find. What then becomes the challenge of deciding how how far you enlarge the tent to allow all of those things in so that you have a richer understanding, but don't allow it to become so broad that it there's a danger that it becomes a bit amorphous and you've kind of included everything and it's sort of hard to have any conceptual centre to it.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah, no, I think that is a challenge, and I um I'm thinking about this a lot, uh and I know other people are thinking about it, thankfully. Um but what I think is the real challenge here is to operationalize it, to try to measure this conceptual definition of generosity. And how I see this now, but it's constantly changing. Uh, but one of the things I'm thinking, there could be dimensions of generosity behavior, and then you could measure those different dimensions across different cultural contexts. And these dimensions could, for example, be whether the behavior is targeted at formal or informal institutions or people, um, whether it is targeted at people you know or people you don't know. Um, what forms do these behavior take? Money, possessions, time, aid, encouragement, but also the things we typically don't measure in Western contexts. For example, um, my colleague Cariq Sidiki has written co-edited the book with David Campbell on philanthropy in Muslim countries. And one of the big things he mentions is that what is important in Islam is inaction, not doing anything, because it could cause harm. So, this could be something also you include in a dimension measuring or generosity. So I have to do a lot more thinking about this, and I'd love to hear from people if they have other ideas about it. But what I think this could lead to is a so-called generosity profile. For different cultures, you could like have different elements of those dimensions that are most prominent in those countries, and that could possibly move us away from those indices that measure the most generous country in the world. Like a much more nuanced understanding of in what way do people behave generously, and um and also maybe look more at the outcomes of that. So, what are the intended outcomes?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Yeah, that's that's fascinating. And particularly I hadn't had never thought of that idea of kind of inaction as a as a form of action or sort of phil philanthropy. I think that's really, really interesting. And I guess uh you bring in there the question of measurement, which I think is really interesting and important in here. I mean, to to what extent is the current state of our I say our understanding, but you know, the understanding that is centered at the moment in kind of academic institutions in the global north of generosity, to what extent has that been shaped by the things that we have decided that we want to measure? You know, is that part of the problem that that kind of previous efforts to measure generosity have have have kind of approached it with a set of tools and frameworks and metrics that have already kind of decided what the elements of generosity are and are only going out looking for those? And so they understandably have kind of missed all kinds of other activity.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah, well, and I understand why why that happened because as part of this global uh philanthropy project that I started in 2009, what I also wanted to do is bring together all different types of data sources measuring giving. So in different countries, we have the Giving in the Netherlands panel study, you have uh data in the UK and the US, but also many other countries. And what I wanted to do is synchronize those data sets so that you can actually measure, like have an understanding of what what how many people are giving in a country and how much are they giving? Because that is something we often miss, and then see what explains that. Well, I would consider that a complete failed attempt, what I did, and I learned a lot from that. But those data sets were just so different, so it was really hard to make them comparable, and and we've published some with it, but it's it's also very old data. When we started doing this, this was already data from the early 2000s, and now it's completely old. There's not something you can do with it, and I think the other global initiatives there are. To measure generosity or philanthropy are suffering from the same problems. There's just not enough funding to really in depth explore what generosity is across all those countries. And then you end up with a very simplistic measure. So, for example, the Gallup Walpole measures: did someone volunteer for a non-profit organization in the month before the question is asked? Did they donate to an organization? And did they help a stranger? So I really like that last question that it's in there because it gives some form of informal behavior, but still it's just this one incident question that doesn't tell you a lot, especially because there's a lot of difference across people whether they report these types of behaviors and whether there's opportunity for these people to display, for example, the formal giving and volunteering behavior. So it makes it really challenging to compare those statistics then. So until we have anything better, that this is what we have. But what I learned from my field attempt to gather all those data sets and combine them is that I won't embark on a project trying to measure this inclusively in a more quantitative way until I have a lot of funding. Because only if you have a few million, you will be able to do it correctly. But otherwise you will still make a lot of mistakes and assumptions, and then I think it's not worth all the efforts that we would put into it.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And is one it strikes me you mentioned there some of the kind of existing efforts to measure generosity within countries, but also then kind of comparatively across different countries and having without getting sort of too much into the the detail of it of it here. I guess one of the things from having done a little bit of this myself in the past that I think is there's a real, it feels like there's a real challenge because not just the choice of methodology. So whether you go for you know surveying people about their own behaviour, which obviously brings its own challenges, or you look at the money from the receipts of non-profit organizations themselves, but then obviously you're immediately looking at the formalised sector, or whether you go through the tax system. But all of that reflects to some extent how giving works in that particular country. So, you know, for instance, the methodology of uh giving USA, or at least part of it that relies on um information through tax returns wouldn't work at all in the UK because the tax system for giving works totally differently. Do those kind of country-specific um issues to do with the the nature of the sector and the way that tax incentives for giving work, does that present a real challenge in terms of thinking about how you might get some sort of consistent methodology across different places?

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Oh, yeah, definitely. Um, another example that I always find really interesting. My my Dutch, so I I work at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy as the Stat family chair in international philanthropy, where I do most of the research we're talking about today. But I will also hold a one-day-a-week position as a full professor of the societal significance of charity lotteries at the Frey Universiteit in Amsterdam. And there I'm part of the center that conducts Giving in the Netherlands study, um, which we just launched last year last week, which was an exciting event. But I'm I'm mentioning this because charity lotteries are a huge funder in the Netherlands. But in a lot of countries, and especially the US, for example, they have never heard of charity lotteries. They think, what was that? So when a US researcher wants to measure, for example, philanthropic contributions across the world, they will never think to measure the contributions of charity lotteries. Well, in the Netherlands, they're one of the biggest funders. So it so that that just to say, like if you're not from a local context, you you wouldn't know what is what is important and what is going on. And of course, you can study that. And one initiative I really appreciate, and I'm part of the board at the New Family School of Philanthropy is the Global Philanthropy Indices. And there we're trying to really understand, or I'm saying we, but all the wonderful researchers working on the project, I'm just uh advising at some points. They're trying to understand the philanthropic context um in which which are present in the organization. Um and also looking at, for example, the tax incentives and uh cross-border giving, which is an important aspect there. So there are definitely initiatives that are trying to increase this understanding, and there are local networks, for example, in Africa and in Asia, that are trying to do the same thing. But yeah, it's very challenging because it is so dependent on the context. But I'm a sociologist, so actually I like that a lot because I think context is everything.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yeah, and that's I mean, that's I guess for all of us, what keeps us interested in philanthropy is it? You know, it's annoyingly complex, but it's also fascinatingly complex. So I guess just one final question on this, um, which is sort of I mean related to what we've already been talking about. But in terms of deciding where, if anywhere, you would draw the boundaries around what what you would want to count as generosity or or giving, I guess part of this whole narrative at the moment is that you know, to some extent we need to not be quite as normative, not sort of turn up saying, well, these are the only categories that count, and anything else that falls outside this is, you know, doesn't count, and slightly be more descriptive or go along with what you know people within uh other countries and communities themselves consider um you know generosity and giving behaviour. Are there any places any points at which you would draw boundaries around that or say even if people themselves consider something as giving, actually, you know, as a researcher or an academic, you might want to challenge it or distinguish it between it. I mean, I'm thinking here of things like political giving, where, from the point of view of an individual, they might make no distinction between giving that they're doing towards a non-profit and giving that they're doing that is much more political in nature. But it might be useful as a researcher or an academic to have some sort of distinction between those two things.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Yeah, I think there's two things here. You make a really important point. What I would advocate is that we measure the full spectrum. We measure everything that we can think of that may be relevant for people in some cultures, but then as a researcher, you can decide what your definition is, what you want to study. But I think by limiting uh the research on just what we in advance uh normatively determine what is philanthropy or generosity, we're missing parts of the picture that you may want to include. And I think it's especially important for some something you mentioned earlier is that even in the US and the UK and the Netherlands, um, there's a lot of informal behavior going on. Um, that Tyrone Freeman, another colleague at the Lady Time School of Philanthropy, is really advocating that we also include black Americans' ideas about generosity and philanthropy in our definitions, and because they're currently not measured. And um, we have seen during the pandemic uh that a lot of informal groups stood up trying to help and support the people that need were in need. Like mutual aid became really important during the pandemic. And one of the students I work with, we have a professional PhD at the Liddy Family School of Philanthropy since a year now, and I'm the chair of uh Shadi Tegirski, and she started pandemic of love. And what is what she's trying to do is trying to formalize mutual aid groups so that they're no longer punished for helping others, giving groceries, for example, and or taxed for doing things that that they're trying to do through mutual aid. Um so that's just one of the examples of the professional PhD cohort that we have there doing amazing things. But I really think that we should be thinking more about this inclusive measurement, capturing the whole circle of what people across cultures would think is included in generosity behavior, behavior that benefits others. And then as a researcher, be very critical about it. Is do I think that is philanthropy or generosity? Or is it just to benefit someone's own agenda?

SPEAKER_00 29:46

As well, I guess, as the measures that we use or that that academics based in centers in the global north use. One of the things that I know you've written about before is that an important part of this is making more of a concerted effort to decolonize philanthropy research itself. Maybe you could say a bit about that. I mean, is what you mean by that actually, you know, as well as just being more open when seeing people as research subjects in other countries and taking into account their points of view about what generosity is, is it about supporting more researchers and academics from other countries who can themselves kind of bring to bear those those different conceptions of generosity?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah, I think for me that's a the last thing is a big, big point because there is so many scholars or students that are underfunded, uh working in contexts that we rarely study, and and funding is a huge issue there, and funding is distributed so unequally. So if those scholars and students would get better funding, better educational programs, access to those, that would mean a lot and it would change a lot in the way we would be talking about these measurements. And we we as Western people are and I like to use the term weird from Joe Henry, so Western, educated, industrialized, industrialized, democratic, and rich. People from those countries that we're a minority in the world, but we dominate academic debate and maybe a lot of other debates, but this is what I know for sure. We dominate academic debate on philanthropy. And I would really want us to help fund scholars that have different voices and that have different ideas to bring to the table.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's a really um important part of all of this. And I guess it it it one thing I wanted to ask you kind of a slightly wider question beyond that. It it feels as though certainly in your work there is an element of it where it is clearly, you know, it it's academic work. You have the point of view of an academic, of a researcher, and you're trying to kind of understand global generosity in a broader sense. But it's also feels at times as if you see part of your role as advocating beyond that. So it's not just dispassionate analysis and kind of you know cold objective um observation. You genuinely want to use that information to try and encourage more generosity or to sort of you know expand up other people's understanding of generosity. Do you feel as though those two things are part of what you're trying to do in your work?

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, I think for me, my academic work is a means towards my mission, and it's my mission to help create more generous societies, societies where people care for each other and want to contribute to the public good rather than take from it. And I'm not sure whether I'm actually making a dent into this mission. I uh I came up with this mission one when I was working at a very negative institutional environment where there was a lot of pressure on me to publish work that I did not care about that thought was meaningless. And then I thought, so I don't want to spend the rest of my career working on things that are meaningless to me and I think to a large part of the world, like those highly ranked academic journal articles that five people read, but will save your career because I've been in a very unsecure like many other academics in philanthropy, I've been in very insecure job positions for a very long period of my life. I just um only in 2018 when I joined the Lydia Family School of Philanthropy, that became more secure, and now I have this full professorship in Amsterdam. But like for 18 years of my career, I was just on temporary contracts and just trying to survive as an academic, um, which I know many, many others are, and it and I just want to tell to those people this is not about your drivenness, your talent, your aspiration, your inspiration. This is just about the academic institutions that don't fund you, and it's not about you. So um, but yeah, so I I want to change the world in a way, and I I know I'm realistic that I won't have a lot of impact, but I really want to try to have impact. And I think in my role as a as an academic, I can have most impact. So oftentimes I wonder if I really want to achieve this mission, should I not become foundation director or should I go into politics or should I but I think in this role I have most impact and uh can achieve most. But at the same time, the these roles also come with a lot of responsibilities and tasks that do not necessarily contribute to this mission, and that is where I sometimes then struggle. But I think every every job, every position comes with a lot of things that may seem less meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that that question that I mean a lot of people, lots of people I speak to in the philanthropy world, whichever point in that ecosystem you choose to be in because you feel that you know that's where you can do the most good, the reality always is then that there are lots of things that take up your time that feel like they're not doing that work. And whether that's you know, as a foundation director, it's just the the management of a an institution, or whether you're in a frontline organization and you're having to spend an enormous amount of your time on fundraising rather than operations. Um and and I think you know, as you say, for anyone who chooses to focus their efforts on research or academia, there's definitely a benefit to that. But the the difficulty with anything that that is that sort of far upstream is it can feel quite removed from the chain, you know, the change that you want to see in the world. So kind of um, as you were saying to me just before we we came on the call, sometimes actually the good thing to do is to uh you know make lists of things that you've actually done rather than lists of things that you've got to do, which I think is a great idea because it uh it does sort of remind you that you are uh having uh an impact. Uh I wanted to ask actually, because we we mentioned in uh at the start of the conversation a bit about giving in the USA, and you mentioned in the course of that your involvement in the Giving in the Netherlands um research that's just come out, and giving USA as we record this, just um was released yesterday. Um both of those pieces of research and other pieces of research about generosity, particularly in global north countries at the moment, have um consistently over the last few years suggested that there is a decline uh in giving, both in terms of overall top line levels of giving when adjusted for inflation, and in some cases in terms of levels of participation in giving. What's your sense of those findings? I guess both, you know, do you do you think there is a genuine trend there? Is it something that concerns you? How should we be interpreting it?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, no, I I also first of all I I only play a very, very small part in the Giving in the Landland study, and I want to give all the kudos to the team doing that, led by René Becker and Stephanie Maas and the Maloa Markers. But uh yeah, I I am very concerned about this declining trend, especially in giving among everyday donors. It it is the foundation for the legitimacy of philanthropy or generosity if you look at it in terms of formal giving. Um, I don't see this trend changing unless there is a different approach in the nonprofit sector. And at the same time, I also think because we measure only this small aspect, the formal aspect of what people do, I think we're missing a lot of what people actually are contributing to others and to the public good. And and I would be really interested to see if those behaviors are also declining. If uh and I'm I'm not sure about that. I think actually a lot of people are doing a lot of things to help each other and support each other. But yeah, for the decline in formal giving is is worrisome because especially because this decline is partly driven by a decline in religiosity, and in countries with weak welfare states where the religious organizations are taking care of those overlooked in societies, though the homeless people, um immigrants, uh people without documents. If they these organizations are not properly funded, this will have direct consequences for um the lives of those people and how well they'd be able to live or whether they actually will be able to live. It's it's just very worrisome if you think about it that way.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Yeah, absolutely. And I I remember a couple of years back now having a conversation on the this podcast with one of your colleagues at uh the uh Lilly Family School, actually David King, about faith and philanthropy, and we were talking precisely about this and and I guess that question of whether the problem with the decline in religiosity and its its impact on giving was about the fact that that is somewhere where people get brought up with the the relevant kind of teachings about the importance of giving, or whether it's other things like the more practical reality of going to a place of worship every week and that being somewhere that and so again, as you say, once you dig into it, it'd be really interesting to unpick what it is about these different factors um that are that are having an impact. Um on the point you made there as well, you linked it back, I think, quite neatly to what we've been talking about already about broadening that definition of generosity. Again, it's something that I've heard from from various people, and and again on the podcast, one of the earliest episodes of this podcast, I spoke to Lucy Bernholtz um about her work um in her book, How We Give Now. And you know, one of her contentions and other people's is that actually maybe this is more about the fact that giving and generosity is evolving into different forms in places like the US, and we're just failing to keep pace in terms of the way that we measure giving. Do you do you have any sense of, you know, as you've said there, do you think that is part of the story? And actually what we need to be doing here is is you know, not thinking that this is a decline in generosity as a whole, but it's maybe just that it's shifting forms from ones that we traditionally have decided to capture to other forms, and so actually it's more important than ever that we broaden out our understanding and our measures.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Yeah, I definitely agree with the last point that we need to broaden our understanding of generosity or philanthropy behavior. But I I think the problem is because we haven't been measuring those more informal ways of giving uh in the US or the Netherlands or probably also not the UK. We won't know whether it's actually an increase in that behavior or whether it's been there all because that's what Tyrone Freeman says. Like in the black community, it has been there all the time, it has it hasn't declined, it's still there. So so we would not know, but I I think we need to start somewhere and let's capture everything and see where we go from there.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Yeah, absolutely. Wanted to to come back, I guess, to the work that you're you're doing and and continuing to do on sort of um on global giving and understanding different cultures of generosity and to think a bit about what the the relevance of that and the sort of practical implications might be for people working within philanthropy, whether that's you know, foundations or fundraisers or people working in non-profits. You know, to what extent do you think beyond academic interest, there is value in understanding different cultures of generosity? Do you think that for someone working in a non-profit in the US or the UK or in Europe, that actually understanding how different types of giving work in Africa or Southeast Asia or other places, does it genuinely have value that they can bring to their work? And what kind of insights do you think they could get from it?

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Yeah, I think it's really important. And what really encouraged me was when we published the Belgart Handbook of Global Philanthropy for me, Dan and Henry and I got a lot of emails from people across the world, also the Western or Weird World, where people said that they were so interested to finally better be able to understand how the nonprofit sector worked in all those other other countries. So I think there's a genuine interest, and I think we can learn a lot from each other both ways. Um so I'm currently conducting focus groups with fundraisers in different countries, um, together with uh Akash Khutov and uh Cassandra Chapman from the University of Queensland, and uh this is in a larger project on donor motivations, but we wanted to see whether the motivations we found in the literature actually resonate with fundraisers across different contexts. And uh what is really interesting is one of the outcomes, for example, of a focus group we did earlier this week in the Arab world is that those fundraisers were very, very experienced fundraisers. And it's that we've seen this region change the past 20 years, it's become so much more formalized and so much more institutionalized, and and uh corporate giving has grown so much. And and so I I think there's all those different trends across the world. Like you see, there it becomes much more formalized. Well, we see here um we we start to pay much more attention to the informal ways that we're giving. So I I think we can all learn a lot from how civil society is organized, and if we have if people can join me in this aim to create these more generous societies, that is what we can learn from it. Like by not having policies that do not resonate with the local context. Like a lot of the policies around philanthropy, if there are any policies, they're imported from the US, or they're just like they're they're not context-specific enough. Or when we teach fundraising, we use a lot of the US literature, but it doesn't work the same across all countries, what we're also trying to show with this study. So uh yes, I think we can learn a lot from this.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

And you you mentioned there, I guess, the possibility of policies that are implemented within particular countries to incentivize philanthropy and giving. And I guess that's that is one of the levels at which you could take action on this. Um and I guess just to unpick that a bit more, I mean, you made the point there that where those uh policies just kind of import ideas directly from the US or UK or other polit places and don't kind of give enough thought to the specific context, that doesn't tend to work very well. Do you think part of that actually is that um those policy mechanisms in other places need to think about encompassing other forms of generosity or kind of social action that maybe aren't currently reflected in places like the US or the UK? And I guess conversely, if we're now talking in places like the US and the UK about broadening our understanding of what counts as generosity, should we start thinking about expanding the mechanisms that we currently have to cover other things? Like, you know, should Tax incentives cover other forms of giving that that aren't just, you know, giving as we currently understand it in a formal way to registered non-profit institutions.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I think you're more an expert on policy than I am. So probably you can say much more interesting and relevant things about this than I can. But I I do see policy as the key thing we can use to change the world. And we are not using it in any way we we could or should, I think. And I think partly that's a lack of education on what philanthropy is in a lot of contexts. So uh policymakers don't know what philanthropy is, they don't see the value, it is this interesting niche thing in society. And oh, how wonderful, people do good. Yay! And let's move on. And I think if we can educate people better, and including the policymakers, but also people in the nonprofit sector, because in a lot of countries there are just no strong educational university level programs around philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. And I I think that could make a huge difference if people better understand what the power of our sector is and what what our sector can do, and rather than just continue the way we've been working in the sector for a very long time, because I really feel that one of the things I think on higher year, so it's not just me feeling, but I think innovation is one of the key crucial things that philanthropy can do in society. Government is slow implementing changes, corporations won't do a lot of changes, but philanthropy can move fast and they can uh take risks with the money they have, and they can really implement big social changes or changes focused on environmental policies, if you don't want to talk about social changes. But it people don't really understand that that is one of the key functions that's what philanthropy could do. Um and and and I I think another really big problem, at least in um in the weird countries, is that the the organ the funding organizations are led by a very uniform group of people, mostly white older men. And there's often no one with lived experience on the issues on boards or involved in the decision making. And I really think we need to change that. I I think we need to diversify who decides on philanthropy so that the voices who it's all about are included in those decisions.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Yeah, absolutely. And and I guess the the just on the question of trying to actively sort of encourage more philanthropy and and develop cultures of philanthropy, we talked, you know, we mentioned before about policy making as a mechanism, and I guess we've been talking, you know, mostly about research and and kind of academic understanding as a way of driving that. I guess the there's another bit potentially which is just the you know direct funding from within the the non-profit world or the philanthropy world itself. And I wondered whether you had seen any good examples or thought that there was um potential for philanthropic funders and foundations who are, you know, are interested in this idea of broadening out our understanding of generosity and developing a global culture of generosity to directly fund initiatives to to build cultures of giving in in other places, I guess because it feels as though when we've talked about developing philanthropy in in you know, quote unquote emerging markets or the global south in the past, too often it feels as though what we've been talking about is how do we import money from other places? And so it's very much kind of giving from the global north to the global south. But actually, is is there more that could be done to think about developing domestic cultures of giving in lots of different places that more clearly reflect their own histories and cultures? And could, you know, funders from the global north do something meaningful there by providing the the infrastructure and the funding for that?

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Yeah, I I I think Giving Tuesday is a great example of doing this. But I think we need much more than just the Giving Tuesday movement. And and and this question I always find hard to answer what uh Philotropic funders from the global north could do, um, because I I don't have a lot of experience with this, and I think it's really important to talk to people about this that have that experience, because so much can go wrong, and it does go wrong, I think. Um but if I had to give an answer, I think it it's very tricky. Um and funders need to be aware of the power issues and power differences and and be willing to give a part of their power and to let those initiatives be local led and give the power on decision making away to the people that are actually in the context.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Yeah, I mean I think you're absolutely right. There's it feels like an area in which there would be a significant risk of well, even well-meaning funders coming in and and just because of their scale doing unintended harm. Um so it only needs to be done carefully. I'm I'm aware that we're coming up on the hour that I uh uh said I was going to take up your time, so I won't keep you for much longer. I just wanted to to ask you know whether there are any particular things that you're working on at the moment that you're excited about or things that you wanted to let people know about particularly.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Um yes, together with Famita Handy, we're um editing a new volume commissioned by Edgar Elgar, and uh we're looking for contributors who want to write a chapter. We have a flyer, please email me if you have interest in this. And this is this book is about uh philanthropy, key topics, and contending perspectives. And it can be in the broadest sense, and we're looking especially for contributors from underrepresented countries, but also contributors from the weird countries. Um, and I'm excited about this project because we will get to work with people that are working on like the key issues in philanthropy right now and learn a lot from that process. And another uh project I'm super scared about, but I really want to do this because I think it will help me contribute to my mission of creating more generous societies, is trying to develop a theory, and I'm not gonna say grand theory because I think that's also a lot of um issues with that terminology, but I want to create a theory of global generosity, and um, by working back from evolutionary biology and bringing in all these different ideas from different disciplines, trying to understand why people behave to benefit others.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Well, that sounds absolutely fascinating and definitely something that I'm gonna get you back on the podcast in future to talk in depth uh about. Just remains to say thanks ever so much, Pamela, for coming on the podcast. I will put links in the show notes to lots of things that we've talked about and places where people can uh find out about your work and get in touch with you if they're interested in contributing to the volume that you mentioned. Um but I certainly wish you all the best and hopefully speak uh in the not too distant future.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Thanks so much for having me on this podcast. It was such a pleasure to talk about this topic that is really important to me.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

Okay, brilliant. Well, uh my thanks again to Pamela for coming on the podcast. Absolutely lovely to have a chance to sit down and talk to her about all the really fascinating work that she's doing. Um, I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find more information on the work we discussed and certainly on where you can find out about the edited volume that Pamela mentioned at the end. And if you're interested in getting involved in that and submitting a proposal for a chapter, obviously that would be absolutely brilliant. And I'll put uh information about where you can do that. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, obviously always check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. There's absolutely tons of content on there now. I've just put up a pretty big article all about philanthropy and sport and activism. So if you're interested in that, uh in this summer of sport, then do check that out. You can also find all the back uh editions of the podcast there, you can find lots of news updates, you can find all of the back issues of the newsletter that I put out every month, you can sign up for that newsletter. Basically, you could just fill all of your days for most of the summer just hanging out on that website, and that would be great from an analytics point of view for me. So if you want to do that, that would be lovely. On which note, if you like the podcast, um please do uh give us a good review at iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts. I think that would really help to kind of drive us up charts, and you know, I understand from listening to other podcasts that that's a good thing. Uh, on a more human level, if you like it and you know other people that you think might like it, just tell them uh and get them to listen. Um, you know, what's what's the worst that could happen? If you want to follow me for any reason on social media, uh you can find me on LinkedIn. You can still just about find me on Twitter or X, although as I've said many times I'm not really doing very much on there anymore. But other than that, just I hope you all have a great summer. As I say, I'm taking a break for a few weeks uh over the majority of August. We'll be back in September with more great episodes. Um if you have thoughts on any topics that you think would be particularly good to cover in some of those episodes, do drop me a line. You can find the contact details at the Y Philanthropy Matters website, or if you think there are people that you'd love to hear me uh interview, again, let me know and uh will either set me up with them or I can try and sort that out for myself. Uh, other than that, uh just yeah, like, subscribe, tell all your friends about it. Have yourselves a great break over the summer, and I will see you in September.