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 seventh of our partnership series with the European Research Network on Philanthropy, or ERNOP, where I talk to academics whose work has been featured in the latest release of Earnop Research Notes, which are kind of short practitioner-focused summaries of recent work that's come out in the academic field around philanthropy and civil society, to give you a sense of what's going on out there in the wide world of philanthropy academia. So we've got three uh mini interviews with academics talking about uh kind of a wide variety of work that they've done. First up, we have Georg von Schnurbein. And now Georg is the founding director of the Center for Philanthropy Studies at the University of Basel in uh Switzerland. And he's talking about a paper that he co-authored with Berenica Wiener, and that's titled Foundation Investment Funds for Grant Making Foundations in Germany. Do they facilitate sustainable investing? So this is looking at a particular kind of fund that has been made specially available for foundations and focusing on investment in Germany and seeing what impact that's had, if any, on uh levels of sustainable investing uh among foundations. Uh next up, after that, we have uh Joris Schroeder. Uh, Joris is a PhD candidate at Vrie uh University in Amsterdam, who keen listeners will know we featured a number of people from uh before on the Earn Off episodes of the podcast, because obviously a hotbed of research around uh philanthropy. And Joris is talking uh about a paper that he co-authored with uh Eva Maria Mertz, Bianca Swanet, and Pamela Wieebking, who again is previous guests on the podcast. And that paper's titled Did You Donate? Talking about donations predicts compliance with solicitations for donations. So it's about the impact that talking about donations and where solicitations for donations have come from on people's propensity to uh comply with requests to give, particularly in the context of blood donations. So it's uh an interesting one there. Uh and then last uh but not least, we have uh Professor Jürg Lindenmeier from the University of Freiburg. Uh and uh Jürg was talking about a paper that he co-authored with Marcella Müller, and that's titled Exploring the Role of Charitable Ethnocentrism and Donation Motives in International Giving, Empirical Evidence from Germany. So we'll hear from each of those uh in a minute. I'll just kind of uh give you a short intro before each one so you know who I'm talking to. Uh, and then I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. So without further ado, let's hear from our interviewees. Uh, and first up we have Georg von Schnurbein. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Georg von Schnurbein. Hi there, Georg.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Hello. Hi, Gorgon.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Hi there. Well, it's great to have you on the podcast. Great to have a chance to talk. Uh, and obviously, we're here to talk about some work um that you've got featured in the latest release of Earnop Research Notes. Um, and the paper in question is um looking at foundations in Germany and their investments, and particularly at these things called foundation investment funds um that exist in Germany. So maybe the best place to start is if you could sort of say a bit about what the research is about, how it came about, and what some of the key findings were.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Okay, thank you. Um, yeah, so in Germany we have a kind of a peculiar situation. Uh so foundations can invest in everything, so they are quite open in the way what they want to invest in. But on the other hand, there's also a very uh restrictive regulation. So the preservation of the uh capital uh has a very high relevance, and that leads to a high risk aversity of the foundation boards, naturally, because if you fail, you have to step in with your private money. So um, and that leads to a situation where foundations can do investments, and due to the developments in the at the fine on the financial markets, they have to be more risk-taking, so probably not only invest in in obligations, but also in uh in uh shares and something like that, and uh as a connection to shares also in in funds, and but they want to do it with some security. And so fund providers found this as a kind of a market niche, and they come up with these kind of specific investment funds for foundations, and these are investment funds that are um somehow investing into shares of companies, but at the same time have some security aspects in it, so you can never lose everything. Um, so and and now we were specifically interested if these um foundation investment funds, as they are directly oriented towards these uh charitable foundations, if they have uh probably more aspects of sustainability in it, because this is something you could have expected, because it's it's for charitable foundations, and they probably are also interested in uh aspects of sustainability. And and that's uh how we started this research. And there are not too many of these foundation investment funds, so the total number is 52, and so we took them all and um made some, got some information, it took figures from MSCI on the development of these uh foundation investment funds, and um and then we did an analysis which is called uh multi- multidimensional scaling, which helps you to connect different types of information uh in one analysis and uh offers you an uh a form of yeah, creating clusters, so finding differentiation. And in the end, we came up with two clusters, and and then afterwards you try to interpret the result. And uh so we we gave the two clusters a name and one cluster we call it a distinct cluster. Um, it contains funds that are rather small, are more local or national oriented, and uh are also probably more um attracting smaller or mid-sized foundations as investors. And the other um uh cluster, there were not too many uh funds in this cluster, we call the attached cluster, because this was often kind of a subgroup or a subfund of a larger fund, which was only just named in a type uh to be attractive for foundation. And there, these these funds usually were larger, were more internationally, more diverse uh in their investment strategies. But altogether, for all the clusters and for all the investments, we can say that socially responsible investing aspects were not very well covered. And that was kind of disappointing for us also as researchers, because we we kind of think this is would be a good thing. Um, so uh, and so to say, as an as a final uh conclusion, we we find that um for foundations, um it is not very helpful to use these foundation investment funds for their investment strategies. So they don't gain anything, it's rather more expensive than other funds. And so just choose a general fund would be much more uh effective. And for the fund providers, we suggest that they should, instead of just making some attached fund and call it an Foundation Investment Fund, they should rather develop funds, for example, directed towards social issues or cultural issues or so, which would be interested for foundations with this specific purpose. Um, and then this probably could make a difference and also could be a more target-oriented uh strategy.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, it was it was really interesting. And I know when I started reading the paper, my initial reaction was, oh, this is you know, I didn't know that there were such things as foundation investment funds, how exciting! And this this is, you know, it seems like a really kind of positive development. And I got to the end, and and you know, obviously say the finding there is that actually it's more about meeting the kind of minimal requirements on accountability and risk profile rather than than the social aspect of things is is disappointing. I guess just one practical question is um how long have these kinds of specialized funds been around in Germany? Is it a relatively recent development or is it as they they've been there for a little while now?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Um they're not too old because so I would say probably 15 years, probably the oldest 20 years. Um because before that uh the investment strategies for foundations were even more restricted. So they probably only would take loans and uh or or did borrowing, but they would not invest into the financial markets on due to the regulation. And this has uh improved after yeah, after uh a legal um new legal regulation in 2004, I think, and then afterwards slowly this kind of developed also these offer.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

And I wanted to ask on the on that question around the the regulation and particularly the sort of barriers to foundations um adopting an approach which is based on, you know, at the very least, kind of socially responsible investment or screening or having ethical principles and you know, at the further end, maybe kind of mission-related investment. Are is it the case at the moment that there are still actual technical legal barriers or practical barriers in the way of foundations doing that in Germany? Or is it more the case that it's a problem of perception and that people involved in foundations feel as though their responsibility is to invest in kind of mainstream funds?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

I I think it's difficult to talk for all the foundations, so there might be different cases, but in in general, I would rather say it's the the latter. So it's more a question of perception, it's also a question of the people involved. So many of the foundation board members are doing this work voluntarily, and um they are not experts in financial markets, and so they are really they are really risk-averse. And also, if you do it voluntarily, you don't want to get into trouble with the authorities and so on. So you are rather uh conservative in uh and doing that what you have always done because you know that's okay. And um also I think there has to there has to be a change in perception also and uh on the side of the authorities, because they usually they don't force or uh motivate foundations to invest in more, let's say, sustainable or even impact investings, because for them it's also more work. So they rather want to have the foundations be invested very conservatively, and uh because then for them they know what to do. So I think it's it's on both ends. Uh there are limitations in in knowledge, there are limitations in in attitudes, um, which are more the problem than the than the legal regulation. Because basically you can do it, yeah, but you have to take the risk.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Yeah. Which would certainly echo because that you know is is very much the situation in the UK. I mean, there are barriers, but they're not as significant as I think a lot of uh foundation trustees think they are, and actually it's partly about making people aware of that.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And and you say in the end, sorry. Um I also think um the financial market has developed a lot during the past five years. So our our data is probably not uh it's always with the financial uh with the scientific publications until they are out, it takes some time. But um, so there has been some development, and I hope, really hope that uh it it gets even more attractive to invest in these kinds of.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

And I I just had two other quick questions on that before I want to sort of zoom out and ask a bit more about the sort of wider context. Um, one was you know, you mentioned in the paper, and and just at the start when we were talking there, that there there is kind of a wider awareness and a debate about foundation assets and endowments. And I think an acknowledgement that grant making is only ever a small part of the potential of what foundations can do. So if we ignore this much larger potential bit, we're we're missing something. Is that debate relatively well advanced in Germany? And I guess is there any pressure coming on foundations, either from their grantees or sort of civil society organizations or from the public to think more about investing in ways that are aligned with their missions?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

I would say the the debate is still very much on a level of experts and the bubble, kind of the foundation bubble, uh, that it's happening. Because from the perspective on beneficiaries, if you tell them, well, yes, we can do that, um, but probably then we have less to spend, then they probably won't be so happy about that. So it's a there's there's the the pros and cons are difficult for them. But um generally I think there is some uh movement towards more impact investing also among foundations in in Germany as well as here in Switzerland. More and more foundations are thinking about what they can do. And um, there just has been a released uh a report on investment strategies of Swiss foundations where 75% of the foundations say they follow at least some aspects of sustainable investing. So I think this has become mainstream now, yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

And I guess the final question on it was at that further end of the spectrum where you have foundations that are thinking beyond something as straightforward as screening towards actually using their assets to invest in line with their mission. Is there much of that going on within the samples that you looked at? Or was it something that kind of was left out almost as a result of the fact that they wouldn't be investing in these kinds of funds anyway?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So in our study, we only looked at the investment fund. So we didn't look at the specific foundation because uh as in in Germany, as in in Switzerland, uh there is no publication, uh publication obligation, so we don't know how the foundations invest. Um, I would say for the larger part of the foundation world, in both countries, um they don't think about these kinds of investments uh in terms of impact investing or um more direction of private equity and things like that. Um also because they they lack the knowledge, they they lack the risk, and so on. Um so so I think that's a small part, but nevertheless, I still convinced that this could be an interesting part because if some larger foundations really take on these aspects, and we have examples in Switzerland of foundations that really go this direction, um they can be kind of paved uh path makers for others and beyond the foundation sector. So, for example, for pension funds. Um, this for me, this is this is one aspect that is often overseen that there are some similarities between the two types of uh investors, and um, but pension funds are usually also not very risk-taking. So if they kind of can learn and see how these cases can be approached and realize that could have a higher impact.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

And yeah, and as some people often point out, if you manage to affect even a tiny change in the way that pension funds invest, the effect of that would be would be significantly larger than even the biggest foundation. So, yeah, that's really interesting. Um, I just I just wanted to finish on the paper bike. You mentioned it in passing, but just to ask a bit about you know, from your point of view, what you think the benefits or the insights, particularly for practitioners or policymakers, are of this work. Because obviously, one of the things that the Earn OP uh series is intended to do is to try and bring this kind of research more um to the attention of practitioners. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

So I actually I hope uh for first that that foundation uh board members um become more aware of their investment strategies and really think about these kinds of investments and what they can do. And I think even if your risk are worse, you still can do a lot and you can make a difference for your own investments. Um and second, I also hope that uh fund providers, so banks or or other investment uh companies, um, also become more aware of this uh this target group or or yeah, target group of uh foundations uh and what their needs are, and that they are not just another type or or a single type uh uh subgroup of something, but that they have specific needs and that you should address these specific needs. Or if not, then just leave it. And for politics, I think it's not so much for politics in there for uh policy makers, um, but generally I think for policymakers it's it's important that they understand that um foundations need some is either you allow them to be more risk taking, and then they can do things. Um also in this larger debate about uh philanthropy and and the role of philanthropy in society, if you want to say or allow foundations to be more risk-taking, we also have to allow them to fail.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

And at the moment the law doesn't in Germany at least, doesn't allow foundations to fail, and so they don't take risks. And you can't you cannot expect foundations to become innovative if if you don't allow them to fail. So that's uh I think these are two points sides of one point, and and this is something uh that uh I would be happy if this would become more uh publicly viewed.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. I think it relates it to some of those wider debates. I guess I just wanted to zoom out and ask kind of about the broader question of, you know, in general, what's your perception of the links between academia and practice when it comes to philanthropy? I mean, do you find that it's easy to get input for your research from practice? And conversely, do you find it easy to sort of disseminate the findings of what you're doing to practitioners, or do you think there are kind of barriers in the way?

SPEAKER_00 18:35

I mean, I'm I'm I do empiric research, so I always lack data. I would be very happy to have more data on uh philanthropic uh organizations and philanthropy in general. I mean, that's that's a huge issue. Um so uh my call for transparency and philanthropy is not totally unselfish, but uh beyond that, I think the exchange with foundation and uh or representatives of philanthropic organizations in general is very good for us. So we have we have good access to these kinds of organizations, and in terms of case studies and uh additional material and so on, I think this works very well, and there is a high interest also in the sector, at least here for Switzerland, I can say that, um, to also learn and to improve. But as I said, the for doing decent research compared also, for example, to the UK or or the US, uh, we would need much better data uh foundations.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, absolutely. And and then just finally, because you mentioned before, one of the things about academic work, and and I guess that proves a barrier sometimes in the relationship with practice is the timescales are often a lot longer. And I know with these research notes, they often relate to research and papers that were done a number of years ago. So I just wanted to ask what it is that you are working on now, whether it's anything that sort of builds on this work or whether there are other areas that you're working on at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

The one topic I'm working on now is something totally different, and we call it nanophilanthropy. So it's you all these micro tiny, tiny pieces of uh cyber volunteering, clicktivism, um small donations at the cashier and your supermarket, uh, roundup things like that. Yeah. Um, where we are interested in understanding whether this has a crowding in or crowding out effect on philanthropy in general.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

If it has a crowding in effect, it would be great because then we probably can attract more people to engage in philanthropy uh in whatever kind donations, volunteering, whatever. Uh, if it has a crowding out effect, that would cause probably a reduction of uh philanthropic capital in the future, and that would be not so good. So then we would have to think about how we can attract these people or keep these people attached to philanthropy. And um, yeah, so that's and something we are looking into uh at the moment and where where we want to do some experiments in order to better understand the relations.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, oh but sounds fascinating. I think a really, really important question, as you say, at the moment, and certainly for the for the future. So I'll look forward to hearing more about that. Um just remain to say thanks ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's great to hear about your work. And yeah, hopefully we'll get a chance to catch up again uh before too long.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, and thank you for your work as well. And thank you for inviting me. It was great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Great. So next we're gonna hear from Joris Schroeder about his work uh looking at the impact of talking about donations on people's likelihood to comply with uh solicitations. So let's hear from Joris. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Joris Schroeder. Hi there, Joris. Hi there. Well, great to have you on the podcast. And yeah, we're here to talk about some uh research in a paper that you have featured in the most recent release of the Earner Re uh Research Notes series. Um probably the best place to start if you could just tell us a bit about what the research in question was about and what some of the key things that you found in the paper were Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Um so the the basic question of the paper is pretty simple. And the the question is: so if people get requests for donations, how is their decision about whether to comply with these requests related to social influences? For example, being recruited by word of mouth, so by other people basically, and by the extent to which they generally talk about donations with other people. Um, and the headline finding is basically that donors that that talk about donations also have much higher compliance rates with these uh solicitations for donations.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Yeah, maybe I can say a little bit more about the background of the project and then get back to the Yeah, that would be great because I know the framing, the project itself and the particular um uh context is around blood donations. So you maybe you could say a bit about how that came about and how the research was done.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

Yeah, so so this paper is really part of a larger project that is also funded by the European Research Council and led by my PhD thesis supervisor Eva Maria Merz, which really aims to understand blood donation behavior. And we think this is a form of giving that can also teach us a lot about human cooperation and pro-social behavior in general. And this paper is part of that effort that kind of tries to understand some of the social network uh aspects and the social influences that are at work for uh uh for blood donation behavior. And the basic premise for this paper then was to um not look at giving as kind of a spontaneous thing, but to acknowledge that it's highly institutionalized at that many donations are actually made in response to these solicitations for donations. Um, so I think most of the listeners have probably received such requests via either email or letters or on the street, or in in the Netherlands, we have door-to-door collections, which are which are quite common. So there's many forms uh in which you might receive such requests. And yeah, they're really a common tool by that are commonly a tool that is really commonly used by organizations. And we really wanted to understand better how social influences operate uh to influence these um these decisions about compliance or not. So, what we uh what we study is basically communication being recruited by somebody else and also talking about donations because communication has been really shown to be effective in more experimental studies of uh pro-social behavior, but not so far in kind of more real-world manifestations of pro-social behavior, such as uh blood donation and also charitable charitable giving or volunteering.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

You meant you mentioned that I think there's an important distinction in the paper, isn't there, between sort of word of mouth solicitations, so those that come directly from people that that you know or kind of another human being, or they might not they might be a stranger or they might be someone that you have a previous acquaintance with, and just the wider context of having talked about donations or you know, blood donations specifically. Did you have different findings according to how relevant both of those things were as factors?

SPEAKER_03 25:27

Okay, so the uh the two things that we look at is uh first of all being recruited via word of mouth, which is being recruited by just another person as compared to being recruited via blood bank uh recruitment materials, so brochures or social media or some online information. And the other thing is uh whether a donor just generally talks about donations with people in their social network. And yeah, you're right there, there are some differences in what we find. So I already mentioned the kind of the headline findings. So talking about donations seems to be really relevant. So if we compare people that never really talk about donations to those that somewhat regularly talk about donation, we see that there's about a five percentage point difference in their compliance rate, which we think is quite substantial over an average of about 50% compliance in this case. And then for being recruited via word of mouth, we don't really find any differences uh between donors that were recruited via word of mouth and those that were recruited via other channels. We we weren't really able to track down the explanation of why that that might not work like we thought it would work. So why there's there's not this embedding in a social network that comes with being recruited via social uh via word of mouth, with then which then uh increases your compliance rate. But our our hypothesis is that being recruited via word of mouth is just for many donors quite far in the past. So being initially recruited could have happened five or ten years ago, and that doesn't necessarily tell us much about the current state of your social network as opposed to talking about donations, which measured their kind of embedding at that point in time and which also seems to matter much more.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Okay, yeah. And and with with thinking about that, the impact of sort of talking about donations, did you get any sense within the research about what the causal mechanism was that that meant that it had that positive impact? I mean, is because you could guess is it it's either potentially a sort of upward thing about it being something that encourages people to do it if they hear other people talking about it, or it could be the opposite. It's that people are worried that you know that there will be uh subject to sort of peer pressure or that censure if they don't do it. Did you get a sense of which of those it was?

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Empirically, we don't really get a get a better understanding of which of these mechanisms it might be. But I think you're yeah, you mentioned two important ones, and there are many that that could be at work here. So one is, for example, that it just reveals information about need. So if you hear from other people that they donate, then you might think, okay, this is something that I should probably also do. Maybe they tell you that it's really important. It also conveys norms and expectation about behavior, so social norms. They maybe they can be perceived negatively as you as you describe it. If there's social pressure, that might also end up not working so well. But uh generally, norms can also positively affect behavior. It might also just um increase your like feeling of connectedness with the blood donor uh community and foster a blood donor identity. So there's many mechanisms that we weren't really able to test with this study, and that we're hopefully also going to be able to test in future studies.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, that'll be really interesting to see if that has an impact. And I wondered as well, in terms of talking, whether it's possible to dig into the question of whether it's just talking in the broad sense that has the impact or whether it makes a difference who specifically they're you know they're talking about these things with. Is it is it that if it's close family or existing acquaintances as opposed to sort of less strong acquaintances that has a different uh scale of effect?

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Yeah, I mean, from this study, again, we don't really have the information to to yeah, to give a lot of detail about who they're talking to. We just have basically the extent of talking. But what we know from some other studies in general is that social proximity really matters for social influences. So the closer the people that that you're socially influenced by, usually typically the stronger the social, the social influence. And from another study that we've also collected conducted in the Netherlands, we also we also looked at more direct social contagions. So, kind of how does it affect your behavior if people in your social surroundings uh also donate blood? And what we found there is that the the neighborhood in itself seems to matter, but to a fairly small degree. And it seems to matter because basically the people that you that you live with and your partners particularly, those are really strong influences on your behavior. And that's also in line with the social proximity finding in general. And I think it would be similar for talking about donations, but we don't really have the information in this paper to say anything about that.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Yeah. And the the the other thing that I want to ask, you mentioned before about this being in the particular context of blood donations, but you know, it's sort of generally being thought that that then has uh relevance, you know, sort of sort of wider findings about altruistic behavior and charitable giving. I wonder you you mentioned in the paper a couple of potential places where there are things that are specific to the context of blood donations, like the fact that blood is a commodity with a short shelf life, presumably sort of unlike um money. Um I know, or you know, maybe there are sort of psychological differences because the nature of the sacrifice being made. Where do you think there are kind of contextual factors that we need to be aware of that might be more specific to blood donations and maybe not quite as directly applicable?

SPEAKER_03 31:06

I mean, one of the obvious big differences that you already got at a little bit is that blood donation is a health behavior. So we have many different considerations that are at play here that are not really at play with volunteering or charitable giving to that extent. So, for example, many people are just not eligible to donate blood based on health restrictions. So it can be either based on age, on weight, or their hemoglobin levels, and also the perceived cost of donating. So the inconveniences are of course not distributed evenly across people. For some, it's just a really a minor inconvenience, and for some it can be really unpleasant. Um, and also the other thing that you mentioned that more blood is not always better in this case, because we kind of need a constant flow, so to say, of blood donations because they have a fairly limited shelf life. So I think there are definitely interesting differences in between like blood donation and volunteering and charitable giving, which I think are the three most commonly studied institutionalized forms of pro-social behavior. And there have been some studies that that dig into these differences. So I remember that specifically in the in the context of social influences, it seems that volunteering might be more strongly influenced than, for example, blood donation or pro-social or uh blood donation, because volunteering is kind of the most public out of these behaviors. So that that could be um yeah, that that seems to be suggested by prior research. And on the other hand, it seems that familiar influences, for example, are more um important for blood donation. So if somebody in your family is already a blood donor, that seems to transmit more so for blood donation than for other forms of volunteering. But I think that's an area that's yeah, where not a lot of research has been done. And I also think that even within these big buckets of blood donation, charitable giving, and volunteering, there are such big differences within these behaviors that I'm not super sure how how useful it would even be to even get at the differences between charitable giving and blood donation in general. For example, because for blood donation, there are so many different systems. In Europe, it's largely voluntary and non-remunerated, but there are also countries where it's paid, which of course is another dimension that motivates people. And then um there are systems where people are kind of reciprocating the donations of other people uh that have received the donations. And already there we can see there's so many different things at work that I'm not sure that comparing just between these broad buckets of behavior is really is really most useful. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

That's yeah, really interesting. I never thought of that. That actually there, you know, there are within each of those supposedly clear fields, actually, there's so many differences that it's probably not that helpful. Um I just wanted to ask, I mean, assuming that you can get uh some lessons from these contexts that read across to the other contexts, what what in your view are the kind of the insights that this research can offer for practitioners, particularly? Because I guess the the focus of these ERNOP papers is sort of bringing the research findings to practitioners.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

I think so. One of the main uh things that I think uh Andrea Giosin, who from from Salesforce, who wrote this ERNOP research note, what what she took away was also the headline finding. So communication is important, and also particularly for novice donors. So, what we also found in the paper is that it seems to be more influential for novice blood donors who've not that made that many donations because they have not yet formed a habit of donating likely. So I think the kind of the key insight was really like let's say well received and potentially also somewhat already known in the world of practitioners, because she also mentioned that this is something that many organizations also do. And we know from blood banks that that uh some organizations use patient stories and donor stories uh to kind of communicate the behavior of others. And uh yeah, so I think generally interventions that go in the direction of communicating more about the pro-social behavior, those are really straightforward. Another, I to me interesting suggestion from Andrea was that she suggested to particularly make use of generative AI now to make it really easy for donors to share their donation experiences online. So this is not really something that's yeah, directly connected to the findings of the paper because we don't really say anything about the about um this specific intervention. But I think it's interesting to see what kind of ideas the results inspire. And I also hope that we get to test some of these uh interventions that people come up with in collaboration between practice and and academia in the future.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Yeah, it'd be absolutely fascinating. And and just on that, to sort of zoom out a bit, um, what's your sense, based on your experience so far, of what the links are like between practice and academia and philanthropy? Do you do you think that actually it's relatively easy for academics to engage with practitioners when they're doing research? And conversely, when you're trying to convey research findings, do you find it easy to get an audience for them?

SPEAKER_03 36:30

So I think I I can mostly talk about my experience, like from the field of blood donation, where you have many also different actors, you have the researchers and then blood banks. Sometimes those are nationally national institutions, sometimes there's many different institutions within one country. And and in that field, I think there's still a lot of unused potential for collaboration. So we do see, for example, in the Netherlands, we have this really unique arrangement where the blood bank itself has a research facility where we do research that is, yeah, that tries to explain how blood donation behavior works, try to find out what might work. But then still within the organization, it's sometimes difficult to translate from okay, we found this to this is what the communication uh department then does, or what the kind of the marketing department does. And on the in the other direction as well, we don't really know all too well what they're thinking about implementing and whether that might work or not. So there's still a lot of room for collaboration. I think that's also uh true more generally in the field. We we actually did a workshop at a conference last year, one of the conferences that brings together um practitioners and researchers, specifically on this topic, where we ask people so what are the challenges to collaboration between practitioners and researchers? And I think the the most common challenges that were voiced is just uh not clear communication. So, lack of clear communication and maybe the use of jargon that makes it difficult to collaborate sometimes. Also, lack of shared goals and an understanding of shared goals, because I do think, particularly in blood donation, we have really aligned kind of goals and attemptives. We all want to try to kind of improve blood collection, have happy and healthy donors and a sufficient blood supply and safe blood supply. And we're all working towards that goal, but there's there's many challenges, also just related to time and research resource constraints on both sides again, and then IT challenges and so forth. So there's there's many things that that can be challenging, but I also think that at that workshop, for example, we noticed a lot of enthusiasm because there is recognition of these shared goals, and there are some ways that people think about how to potentially improve that. So, for example, just more collaboration where each side is involved from the start, because we we sometimes have it that then one party jumps in halfway through the process, and then it's not not really a good way of doing of doing research or doing practice and doesn't really uh doesn't really go anywhere, and clarifying mutual expectations and responsibilities and the goals of collaboration. So I think these can be really important steps to to improve collaboration between practice and research.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Yeah, great. And I think yeah, I think things that we've heard from many other people who've who've come on the the podcast uh as part of this earn-up series. And uh just just finally, I wanted to ask what it is that you're working on at the moment, because obviously I know sometimes the work that's featured in these research notes has actually been done a few years before, given the time lags in in academia. Um you mentioned that you're involved in sort of a wider project around blood donations. Is it is it still mostly that that you're working on, or are there other areas that you're involved in as well?

SPEAKER_03 39:52

So at the moment it's it's mostly that. So one of the things that that we've been working on following up on this paper actually is to try to figure out what strategies might be that work to make use of these social mechanisms in the field. So, more specifically, one uh intervention that we have been working on evaluating is a group membership program that the Australian uh Red Cross Lifeblood, so the Australian Blood Bank, has implemented for quite some time now, where donors can form groups together with other donors and then uh yeah sign up as a team and also donate together and communicate about it and also make it more fun, hopefully, for them as a process. That also seems to be really effective. So we think that could be one way for blood banks to make use of these social interactive mechanisms that we have identified, for example, in this paper. And then in the future, um We also want to get more at the mechanisms basically behind this. You already hinted at them uh in the beginning. So it could be shared identity or it could be just knowledge about need or others' behavior, which kind of triggers the effectiveness of these um of these uh social influences. So that's also something that we want to find out in the future, hopefully also through field experiments and collaboration with uh organizations active in the field.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Great. That all sounds fascinating. We're really interested to see what the findings that come out of that research are. Just um just remains to say, Yoris, thanks ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's great to hear about the the work you've been doing. Uh, and yeah, look forward to hearing more in the future.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Okay, and now we're gonna hear from Jörg Lindenmeyer about the paper that he co-authored on charitable ethnocentrism and the impact that it has on international donations. So let's hear from Jürg. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Jürg Lindenmeyer. Uh it's great to have you on the podcast. And we're here to talk about uh a paper that you have featured in the latest Earnop research notes series. Um so maybe the best place to start is if you could uh tell people listening what the research in question is about and what some of the key findings in the paper were.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

The the paper is about charitable ethnocentrism, um, which is a concept that is based on a concept from consumer behavior research, which is called consumer ethnocentrism. Consumer ethnocentrism construct is uh looking at the beliefs uh of consumers that are purchasing domestic goods is more or less superior to buying foreign-made goods, and uh that for example German consumers according to this concept are more or should be more loyal to German companies or UK consumers should be more loyal to UK companies. We wondered whether we could use this concept or the idea behind that concept to explain uh donations to causes abroad. And we looked at literature and we saw that other um authors' colleagues have already published a paper and introduced a construct called charitable ethnocentrism to the literature. And uh these uh one of these authors is uh Hart, and um he has published a paper in Voluntas, and we we connected this um paper. And we did a survey studying study, and um we tried to explain the inclination of German donors um to donate to um to uh causes abroad, and uh we tried to explain whether and how um ethnocentrism um impacts this inclination or the willingness to donate uh to uh causes abroad. One main um uh result of the study is that uh um this general ethnocentrism construct has a negative effect on the donation inclination of the respondents in our study.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Yeah, absolutely. And and in terms of the uh research survey itself, how how exactly did you determine the degree of uh Ethnocentrism of the participants involved.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

Yes, uh here we've referred to um Schimp and Sharma. They and they they developed a uh a measurement scale for this consumer ethnocentrism construct called set scale. I hope I have pronounced it correct correctly. And uh we adopted this the scale also based on the previous work of uh Hart and Voluntas, and then we measured um this uh uh charitable ethnocentrism with uh three question items uh in the questionnaire on based on rating scales. Uh it's an approach which practitioners can also easily apply if they uh want to. That's that's the way we measured it in in our survey, yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Absolutely. Um and I wondered because in in the paper you talk um quite a bit about the relationship between this idea of charitable ethnocentrism and the idea of in-group membership and out-group membership and how that influences people giving. Um do the findings in the paper sort sort of back up the the idea that empathy by itself is perhaps not a good basis for expecting people to give equitably um to those in in outgroups, and that actually there's a tendency for many people to look within their own in-group first.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

First of all, when we look at the mean value of this uh charitable ethnocentrism, which was measured on a seven-point scale, we see that uh the mean value is 2.72. So this charitable ethnocentrism, um, when we look at all of the uh um respondents in in our survey is not very pronounced. But um definitely there is um some variance in this variable. So probably there are a lot of German donors who are are not ethercentr centristic, um, but there's also um uh quite a group of of uh potential donors who who hold this um this belief. And um that's that's the first thing uh that we have to keep in mind. And then with regard to your question to empathy, I I believe empathy still is a driver um of uh the donation intention of these uh ethnotentrisic um donors. When we look at the I probably you know this uh hypothesis or the theory, the uh the empathy or um um altruism hypothesis. When we look at at this this theory or hypothesis, we we see that empathy is important to motivate donors to donate uh in cases when there are high costs of donating or helping. So we can classify the uh the this ethnocentrisic tendency as as uh as a cost. And um uh we can if if if the these ethnocentrisc uh donors when they feel empathy for the uh people abroad and they have a pronounced level of empathy, then I believe that um this can um diminish the effects of ethnocentrism among these custom uh among these donors.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

That's that's interesting. And because I I had wondered actually, one one question I had was about whether when there are in-group relationships which actually go across national borders because people are members of religious groups or diaspora communities, how that that interacted. I guess maybe they're two separate groupings, but are those in terms of identifying potential donors, are those the sorts of things that nonprofits and fundraisers would need to be able to identify to understand how people might be inclined to give in an international context?

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Well, our our sample size was rather low. Uh some some hundred respondents, so we did not look into this topic topic more precisely. There are some research, I'm not so into it, for example, that looks at at whether American Jews give to uh uh causes in Israel, for example. I saw a paper uh yesterday uh before an interview um that stated that these uh donations declined, but it's an a paper from 2001, I I believe. They especially the donations to umbrella organizations declined, and uh then there are some some papers uh that uh show that um American Jews also give to Arab NGOs in Israel. So that's that's that's a that's a that has changed a little bit, but I believe that of course when there's a natural disaster uh in a country in the global south, the the the the migrants here in uh in Germany, UK or in the US, for example, they they have a very high motivation to uh to to donate and to help their relatives and friends um in their uh in their uh country of origin is.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Absolutely. Um and I just wanted to ask, obviously, the focus, the particular focus of the research notes series from ERNOP is about connecting academia and academic findings to practitioners. What's your sense of what the kind of key insights that your paper can offer for practitioners in particular?

SPEAKER_02 49:27

Okay, for practitioners, I believe that a segmentation strategy could be interesting. So, like in consumer goods uh goods markets, uh the the the market for donations or the donor market can be can be separated. For example, uh we could do further research and and uh see okay, um, is there a large ethnocentrist donor uh market um segment? Is there uh a segment of donors or uh which is uh which with uh which holds uh very low uh ethnocentris uh beliefs? And how can I describe these segments? For example, in terms of gender, age, income, um, educational achievements, etc. And then when I have uh different causes, maybe causes uh um uh domestic tosses and causes abroad, I uh could try to target these different donor segments. For example, if I have a uh an important cause in uh which which with the problem lies abroad, then I I can uh target uh the uh low ethnocentrism um segment and and put my uh my fundraising uh budget there and the other way around. So that that's an uh uh recommendation for practitioners and in NGOs and nonprofit organizations. Uh I can also give uh recommendations for policymakers when when pol uh politicians see that um there is a high uh tendency, ethnocentric tendency tendency in in their country or uh regarding a specific cost abroad, then they could try to shift uh development aid programs. So when they say okay, uh there are no donations from the private sectors, from the from the general public, then they they should shift um money and development programs to to this uh costs abroad. Of course, they have to pay attention to public acceptance of these national stuff.

SPEAKER_01 51:23

Yeah, yeah, interesting. And I just want to ask sort of more broadly on that. Um what your sense is of the current state of links between academia and practice in philanthropy. Do you find it easy to engage with practitioners when doing research and and conversely when you're trying to disseminate findings? Do you do you find it easy to get those to a practitioner audience?

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Short answer uh no. And uh we have to work on this topic um hardly. Uh it's it's very important to work on this on this on this uh uh pro uh problem. So I I really like these research notes from from Erno because it's it's uh a vehic vehicle uh to transfer the uh empirical evidence from the academia to uh to the practitioners, it's it's very important, and uh I really uh like these research uh notes and the series.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

Great. And and I just wanted to ask finally, um obviously often the work that's been done that's featured in the research notes is actually done uh a few years ago, and it you know, because of academic um timescales. So what is it that you're focusing on in your work particularly now? Is it linked to this question of ethnocentrism or are there other areas that you're looking at at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 52:42

I publish a paper with a PhD student, uh Marcella Müller, and um uh she's not finished yet. Uh she's working on another topic with me, uh, which is also interesting, probably for the the research notes. It's about the effects of a emotion, um, the emotion of envy on not on uh donation behavior but on uh volunteering behavior.

SPEAKER_01 53:06

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

That's that's uh a research pro uh um a research uh project. I have I have another one with another uh PhD student, which uh analyzes the effects of unethical um broad behavior in in nonprofit organizations on the the support of of volunteers. Um that's another project um I have right now, yes. And some some of the the the some of the work is already uh submitted to journals and uh some is ongoing.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Excellent. Well they both sound very interesting, so we'll keep uh an eye out for those. Um just remains to say thank you ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast and tell us about the research, and certainly look forward to hearing more in the future.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

Yeah. Looking forward to this too, and uh, thank you very much for having me in the podcast. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to all three guests for coming on the podcast, uh to Georg, um, to Joris and to Jorg. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find the relevant research notes and also links to the actual papers themselves if you want to sort of dig into some of the detail. If you enjoyed this episode and you want to listen to the previous episodes we've done in partnership with Earn Opp and hear more about academic research on philanthropy in Europe, then do check those out. You can find them at the podcast uh website page, which is philanthropisms.org or philanthropisms.com, or you can also find all of those on the why philanthropy matters website, where you can also find all kinds of great articles uh about things uh in philanthropy, both current and sort of longer term trends and issues. Also a lot of stuff about the history of philanthropy, the potential future of philanthropy, guides to all sorts of interesting aspects of philanthropy, basically just loads of philanthropy stuff. So go and spend a couple of days digging through that if that sounds like your bag. Uh if you want to follow me on social media, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can probably find me in some other places as well, but you might get less of a response because I don't tend to spend very much time on those anymore. If you've got ideas for things we could talk about on the podcast or people that I could interview, do get in touch. Um I do get quite a lot of suggestions these days, and I follow up on as many of them as I possibly can, and many of them have led to interviewees and to some great episodes. Other than that, just like, uh, please follow the podcast, subscribe to it, whatever it is people are supposed to tell you to do these days. Uh if you're so minded, uh, please do go on to wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a nice five-star review, because I think that helps bump us up the rankings and will hopefully help more people find the podcast you might be interested. If you know some actual humans in your life that you think might be interested, please do tell them about it, because word of mouth, as we've heard, is important when it comes to donations. But talking about uh charitable podcasts is also a very important way of getting people to comply with those solicitations, so please do do that. Other than that, I will see you next time. Bye.