SPEAKER_05 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropists podcast with us. Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis. And first of all, I want to wish you all a happy new year. I hope you've managed to get some break over the festive period and that you've had a good start to 2026. And let's at least just all hope together that 2026 proves to be slightly less of a roller coaster than 2025. I think that's about the sort of bare minimum that we should be starting from. And after a short break over the festive period, we're back on the podcast. And this episode is the 12th in our partnership series with Earnop, the European Research Network on Philanthropy, where I talk to philanthropy academics from around Europe about research that they've had featured in the Earnop Research Notes series, which are kind of practitioner-focused summaries of academic research. And this time we've got another three great mini interviews. So first up we have Peter Van Door from Vienna University of Economics and Business. And he's talking about a paper that he co-authored with Fabian Dober, Michael Mayer, and Reinhard Milner. And the title of that is Evaluating Impact Potential in Early Stage Impact Investing, Investment Criteria and Cognitive Processes of Investors. So it's essentially about how impact investors actually make decisions about what to fund or what not to fund. So it's really interesting. Next up we have Joe Bacon and Claire Routley, both of whom are affiliated to the University of Kent, Centre for Philanthropy, there, which obviously I have worked at in the past. And that paper is titled, What influence do death, dying, and bereavement have on philanthropic giving within hospice care? So looking a bit at the psychology that donors exhibit around a particularly kind of emotionally fraught form of giving. And then last but not least, we have Michaela Neumair, who is talking about a paper that she co-authored with Hannah Schneider. And that's titled How Nonprofits Make Sense of Corporate Volunteering, Explaining Different Forms of Nonprofit Business Collaboration. And I should say Michaela is also from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, like Peter Van Door. And her paper, as the title uh suggests, is all about how nonprofits interpret and make and understand and go through sense-making processes about engagement with corporates around volunteering initiatives and what are some of the sort of conceptual frames that are used for that are so it's really interesting. So without further ado, let's go into the interviews. Uh I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. So first up, we have Peter Van Door. Okay, great. I'm here with Peter Van Door. Hi, Peter. Hi, Rodney. Oh, well, great to have you on the podcast. Uh, and we're here to talk about a paper of yours that's um featured in the latest uh release of Earnot Research Notes. And the paper in question is titled Evaluating Impact Potential in Early Stage Impact Investing, uh, Investment Criteria and Cognitive Processes of Investors. Um, I found this one really, really fascinating. Um so I've got some questions I'd love to ask, but maybe the best place to start if you can just tell everyone a bit about what the research was all about, how it came about, and what some of the key findings were.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah, thank you very much. Uh so this is this is a paper I did together for quite a while uh with uh Fabian Dober, um Michael Meyer, and Ryan Beno. So it's a collective effort. The starting point is somewhat of a contradiction, which I'm sure you have you have uh experienced yourself. Um you have impact assessment, which is a very demanding task. So it takes years or at least months if done properly, it takes proper training, um, it takes a lot of evidence. And uh on the other hand, you have impact investors, uh especially in the early stage, who have to make a decision on whether they think a certain proposal is impactful or not. And they usually do so without evidence um and with uh without any time, really. So um usually the first steps of the screening process they they are done within minutes. So that seems to be puzzling. What what are they doing? So the starting point for this process was uh for this research was really to uh try to get an understanding of what are they doing? It's probably not impact assessment as we typically know it. So if they're not doing that, what are they doing instead? We we set out on this journey um trying to figure out these cognitive processes, um, also with a method that um that makes sense for this, which is uh uh verbal protocol analysis or think aloud protocols as they're often called, um which is an attempt to get people as close as possible to verbalize any thought that they have. So you give them a task and then they start thinking aloud. Um, and so this works surprisingly well. So once you get started into the process, uh there is fairly uh little filtering on that. And we uh presented uh 20 impact investors from Germany and Austria um with three cases and asked them to make the the first decision of a screening process um where they would in the end either invite uh these these founders uh for uh for uh for a session uh and or start due diligence. And we used real-world cases. So it was uh cases from Germany, we made sure that uh they were not known to the to the investors uh uh previously, and we presented them as as a slide deck, like 10, 10, 11 um pages. And they would go through them. And while going through them, they would articulate articulate okay, uh what is interesting, what is not interesting, this looks weird, this doesn't look weird. So we had raw, unfiltered uh thoughts to the degree you can have them this way, and then we we analyzed them and tried to pull out the processes that had been used. And um yeah, we found many different processes, we clustered them in 18 different uh uh groups of processes, which some of them are uh fairly straightforward, others are a bit more complicated, and a few of them are are um raising eyebrows, I would say I would say. Uh so it was really fascinating to get a glimpse of what's going on in investors' minds.

SPEAKER_05 6:53

Yeah, absolutely. And there's lots of really interesting stuff in the paper as well. And as you say, it's not not an area that I've really seen kind of explored before. Um there's a couple of things I want to ask. I mean, I guess the first thing is before it even gets to the question of how they go assessing about assessing the impact potential of the organizations, how important was the perception of impact potential as a factor in the overall decision, or were there kind of other factors that they were taking into account when they were looking at the the cases that were put before them?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

So we have two indicators for this. Um, one is how much time they spent, or how many thought segments, uh, we called this in in uh really small segments of thought, they spent on it. And uh the good news is for the field uh in Germany and Austria is that they spent quite some time on impact. So they are not only claiming to be impact investors, but uh right after finance uh spending thought on on considering impact was the second uh most frequent activity. So they spent more time on this than say thinking about the team or the product uh uh devoid of the impact dimension. Um and the second one was that we also asked them, but that is less uh that is less raw, that is more filtered. We asked them at the end how important was impact in your decision, and in almost uh uh all cases, uh they said, yeah, that this was part of why we made the decision. So impact seems to be important.

SPEAKER_05 8:12

Yeah, but interestingly, yeah, is you've got the sort of stated behavior and then some some degree of kind of actual behavior as well. And you made the point um before you touched on it, that I thought was really interesting in the paper as well, that you compare the the sort of um what you're looking at in terms of the ex ante processes of people assessing potential impact and what we tend to look at, the sort of ex post-processes of impact measurement, um, and make the point that they're not actually that comparable. There's not a huge amount of overlap. Did you did you find, just to sort of clarify that, that actually there's a real distinction between what is expected when it comes to measuring impact after the fact and what impact investors actually do when it comes to assessing things up front?

SPEAKER_01 8:53

I would say that in in almost every case, this is something completely different. So we had only one one out of the 18 processes that that looked somewhat familiar to someone who is from the impact investing field. So we had one group of processes, but they were only used by a few of the investors, um, where they would start really building a chain of an impact logic, if you may. So would would try to to, in a very abstract thought process, say, well, if they do this and this leads to that, what does it mean about the boundary conditions of this process? So some of them engaged in a type of abstract thinking that you would expect, but the vast majority did something else. Um they first try to understand what is it that they're looking at, they try to imagine it. And often these processes were also linked to to heuristics, at least it seemed to us. For example, if I can imagine it, it's probably good. If I can't imagine it, well, that's not ideal. And we had we had some uh so so one of the frames of this paper that that really came out of the material was bounded rationality. So they're trying to do their best, but they're using these heuristics with very little time. And um some of them seem to be more rational than others, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

Yes, absolutely. And in that heuristic bit, so essentially, I mean, uh for people listening to to sort of pick up on that, there's an extent to which it's sort of gut feeling plays quite a key role in investment decisions, which I think is really interesting because you make the point in the paper that often the perception of impact investing or the way it's presented is as an entirely rational process, often in contrast to philanthropic giving and grant making, which is seen as more uh kind of based on gut feeling. And you're actually making the point that that distinction maybe isn't as clear as we think it is.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Uh no, no, I wouldn't I wouldn't see that distinction so much. Uh I think it's uh there is this there is somewhat of a pot Yemkinkin village, I think, in in uh early stage impact investing, in the sense that everybody tries to do their best to be as rigorous as possible, but but uh there is no way to be particularly rigorous at this point, um, at least when it comes to the actual impact, because it's impact potential. It's uh we're trying to assess the the impact of ventures that hadn't had had the chance to implement what they're doing based on very limited material. So um they do what most humans would do in this situation, they uh try to make sense of uh of it based on little information. So it's about imagining, it's about uh what comes to mind. One of the heuristics often used is simply matching with prior prior knowledge. Uh does this look familiar? And there um the sometimes the familiarity was drawn between this case and cases they had invested before, which I would argue can make sense. But in some cases, uh these familiarities were also drawn with fairly arbitrary uh information. So in one case we had a investor uh who was asked to assess uh a volunteering platform.

unknown 11:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

And he would uh he he remembered his wife having volunteered 20 years ago and and tried to make connections with that experience, which uh arguably doesn't make all that much sense. So it's a combination of of uh heuristics which I think are very smart and and really save time. So especially when it comes to to um matching processes between problem and solution. There we saw some expertise at play. Uh but some of the heuristics I think they they are fairly risky um for the investors to use.

SPEAKER_05 12:04

Yes, absolutely. And and you at one point in the paper you sort of group um things together in terms of these four different cognitive styles. So the kind of imagining dominated, prior knowledge dominated, this fit assessment and impact modeling. Maybe you could sort of say a little bit more about how those um different styles emerged.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah, we we try to use uh the little data that we have. Um it's quite a lot of data for the type of process we use, but it's very little data to the groupings. So um uh the the caveat is that this is very exploratory, especially in the groupings. But we try to see whether there are any styles emerging. And there were four four um types emerging which had some some distinctive qualities, one more focusing on imagining the problem. So these these uh investors spend a lot of time trying to imagine what it is that you're trying to solve in the first place. Uh another one more focusing on the on the solution. And maybe the most interesting one was was one of the one of the groups that actually um tried to engage in this impromptu theories of change, as we call them. So they were the ones who uh use this, use the data that they've been presented to try to build a theory of change in their minds. Um and they tended to be a little bit different uh investors, um, also in terms of their characteristics. It was more like so they were more likely to be angel investors, not institutional ones, more likely to be those who who have their own uh skin in the game, so they who invest their own money and uh who uh based on these uh these two characteristics are probably more accustomed to have a process where they interact with the founders. So for them it felt more natural to dive deep, and they were also more likely to then um suggest uh later talking to these founders or what uh or mentioning what they would then discuss with them or how they would modify the solution. So it was really more hands-on investing. They seem to have a bit of a different uh cognitive style.

SPEAKER_05 13:52

Yeah, absolutely. Um and in terms of I'm thinking about the sort of practical uh applications of some of your findings, do you think that kind of segmentation of different investor types potentially could be useful for organizations seeking investment to understand so that they can then tailor the approach that they take when they're looking to find investment?

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Um I think so. I think so. The problem is it's hard to hard to read people's minds usually. So you will have a tough time figuring out who has which thinking style. But one thing that that uh I found particularly interesting was the the uh preferences in terms of information presentation. So um our sample had very diverse and very strong opinions on how a deck should look like. So we everybody got the same decks. Some were were complaining uh about the amount of information, say they would never invest in something that is looking like this. Others said, wow, this is amazing. The the order of the slides suggests that they really care about impact. So they were they were deriving all sorts of information um from the mere presentation of facts. So um one thing I think you can learn from this is try to figure out in whatever way possible the the visual style and and structural style of of the investors that you're that you're pitching to. Um or if you're an investor, uh be kind and maybe share templates or uh provide examples of things you have invested in, then at least uh people have a sense of understanding how you think and how you want to digest information.

SPEAKER_05 15:17

Which presumably is something that there is is research on and understanding in the commercial sphere when people are seeking investment. Again, I would imagine that personal style of the investor plays uh an enormous role and understanding what that style is. Um, so there are probably things to be learned. Um, I was also interested in in obviously noting the paper that there are kind of limitations to the study itself, as there always are in terms of the particular sample and the size and the geographic and uh kind of focus. How would you like to see the research expanded upon? Because it feels as though the kind of core ideas, you know, are really interesting and actually, you know, could have potentially much wider application. Could you see kind of other studies picking up and running with this further?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, I mean, in this particular study, we we only looked at the impact dimensions. So we coded all the data and and the these investors they were looking at different aspects, including the team, for example. So I would I would definitely see a next step to look at well, how are teams assessed in this kind of situation? Um, and of course, I don't think that this heuristic sort of thinking um is limited to impact investors in the early stage. I I would be very curious in how these the same impact investors or philanthropists broader uh more broadly look at uh impact data in later stages. Um again, I would expect that it may not be always as rational um as as you would expect it. Yes. So um I think yeah, I think there is a there's a lot of bounded rationality in the whole impact measurement space. Um and currently I'm having a uh a somewhat different project uh looking at the other side, which is sort of the bounded rationality uh of uh startups when they when they measure impact. Oh, interesting. Um finding that uh also they are not everything that that uh glitches is gold.

SPEAKER_05 16:58

No, no, absolutely. Um and I just just to zoom out a little bit, because obviously the focus of this uh not research note series is trying to kind of connect um academia and practice more effectively when it comes to philanthropy. Your paper obviously draws on interaction with practitioners and actually you know quite an intensive uh interaction in that they're kind of doing quite a lot of work, and I think it's quite impressive that you managed to get people to do that. What's your experience so far of the links between academia and practice? Do you find it easy to engage with practitioners for the purposes of your research? And conversely, when you've got findings to share, do you think they're a receptive audience?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Well, I think we're in a pretty lucky position here at the Vienna University of Economics because we we started a center, a center for social enterprise and social innovation, where this is our mission. So we try to connect practice and research by doing capacity building programs in 14 countries. We try to do also a lot of applied research, uh such as social entrepreneurship monitors or philanthropy monitors. So we always try to engage with practice because uh frankly that's where some of the most inspiring uh observations come from and conversations come from. Um at the same time, uh, we also try to bring their insights and the insights we gain together with practice in into academic research by publishing papers such as this. So far, this this Humboldt university approach uh worked quite well for us.

SPEAKER_05 18:20

Great. And and yeah, just finally as well, because I know again the research often that that's been done, we're talking about has happened a little bit in the past given the timescales of academic publishing. You mentioned a little bit about some other areas that you're working on now. What other things are you working on that either kind of build on this paper or are you looking at um other areas around philanthropy and social investment?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

So, right now, one one aspect that we are we are working on, and it's a study that's still in preparation, so I think the findings might might only be shared in in a year or two, but we are looking at uh civil society and philanthropy across Central and Eastern Europe. So we really want to understand, in particular, what happened in the last 10 years. Um these have been very eventful 10 years uh in in Central and Eastern Europe, from pandemics, uh political shifts, um, and also uh funding and foreign funding plays a role. And we uh we did a similar exercise 10 years ago when we saw that the the influx and outflux of foreign funders played a really big role in in civil society. So, for example, in in Kosovo, you have a very strong civil society if you look at the number of people employed in the sector, but this had at that point almost entirely been funded by by uh foreign aid. And yeah, I mean we all know what's happening, especially to US-based foreign aid these days. So I'm I'm quite curious to see what happened. Um and also the the overall resilience of the institutional environment in these countries to to be less dependent on foreign aid. Yeah, so there there's there's a lot I'm looking forward to learn from there, including the fact on how um the notion of civil society is being negotiated. Because in many countries, tied together with uh their history, uh their history of having foreign influence, there is this sort of skepticism towards the entire idea of civil society. As we are now also in many Western countries experiencing. Um so I'm yeah, I'm very much looking forward to see how this is being negotiated and also what we can learn um from uh Central Eastern Europe in this regard.

SPEAKER_05 20:17

Yeah, that sounds absolutely fascinating. I'll really be interested to see that when it does come out. Um just remain to say thanks ever so much, Peter, for finding some time to come on the podcast and tell us about your research. Um really interesting paper. I'll put links in the show notes to places where people can find that and the research note. And yeah, be very interested to hear more about the research on Central Eastern Europe when that comes out.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Thank you, Ruby. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_05 20:47

Next on the podcast, we have the interview with Joe Bacon and Claire Routley. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Joe Bacon and Claire Routley. Hi to both of you.

SPEAKER_04 20:57

Hi. Hello, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_05 20:59

Oh, and it's great to have you both on. And yeah, we're here to talk about uh your paper and the research note that an opera produced that's based on it. And the paper is called What Influence Do Death, Dying, and Bereavement Have on Philanthropic Giving Within Hospice Care? Um, which is a very you know explanatory title, but maybe the best place still is to start is if you uh are able to say a bit about how this research came about, what it's all about, and what some of the key findings are.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Yeah, sure. So I'm happy to start. So this paper came about uh because I was lucky enough to be one of the master's students at the University of Kent studying philanthropic studies, and uh this was actually my dissertation project, and I was lucky enough uh to have Clint as my dissertation supervisor, and then equally as lucky to have um both Claire and Beth as the co-authors for this research paper. So thanks very much to both of you. Um so yes, as you said, the title's great as a country, um, it was um. The experiences of deaf, dying, and bereavement within the hospice setting and philanthropy. And I actually had the had a huge privilege of working at this particular hospice for around five years. So hence the fairly niche research area. So I think it's safe to say that hospice fundraising is uniquely challenging in a lot of ways because it kind of sits at a bit at a bit of an intersection of kind of emotional loss, the hesitancy to talk about death and dying. There's a lot of misconceptions around hospice care and the services that they offer. And of course, the kind of reliance that they have on voluntary donations to kind of support their rising costs in order to deliver those services. So to kind of help navigate some of the complexities, the research kind of presents insights on the donor motivations, the stewardship expectations at this particular hospice. And I was lucky enough to interview 10 very kind donors who have experienced bereavement at the hospice and who opened up about their journeys. And I will hand over to Claire because she is the in-memory expert. So I will get her to talk a little bit about the kind of in-memory giving findings that we found.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

Yeah. Oh thank you, Joe. You'll very kindly position me as the MM research expert, but uh I think you know this this piece of work was very much uh it was very much your baby. And I think Beth and I helped to sort of shape it up for publication. But you know, Joe did the the very hardy odds in actually uh doing all the research and and doing that sort of uh initial sort of a pretty enormous piece of work to turn it into a dissertation. We just kind of helped to narrow it down a little bit. But I suppose in terms of um some of the things that uh came out of the the paper, I think probably for for me the the biggest point really was the the role that's uh philanthropy plays for people as they go through that uh uh that bereavement uh journey. And I suppose I mean it sounds uh it almost sounds an odd thing to say in the context of of bereavement, which is you know, for many people one of the hardest experiences uh of their their entire lives, really. But actually, I think uh really thinking about uh philanthropy or the positive role that that philanthropy plays for people. So just to sort of highlight a couple of key things, I suppose it uh it provided people with a way of giving back for the care that they'd uh they'd received, which I think is a really sort of core human motivation, isn't it? Really? We know that need to reciprocate, but uh I've seen other research that talks about that being almost a sort of universal human motivation that you see across cultures. So actually sort of giving back for for the benefits that they and their loved one had uh had received. But perhaps even more profoundly than that, I think the idea that uh philanthropy essentially can help you to um maintain your connection to that that person that you you really love. It helps you to keep their identity alive. So I think one of the things you found, wasn't it, Joe, was that uh people were raising money often in a way that reflected that person, you know, their their interests, their passions. And and also how it's really sort of, I suppose, keeping that relationship between those two people or those multiple people very often alive. So it's playing, I think, a really important, almost sort of therapeutic role uh in people's lives. So that that was, I think, a really sort of profound finding of the of the research.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Yeah, most definitely. And I think kind of what what kind of stood out for me as part of that as well is that we know that bereavement journeys are so different from person to person. And I think what kind of came out of the interviews was that that kind of motivation and the connection that you just talked about, Claire, is that in some cases that their kind of motivation to support the hospice in this case um can sometimes diminish over time as they um kind of adjust to life after their bereavement. There might be something else that happens in their life. And I think that's quite nuanced and something that uh I think uh is really quite key to kind of hospice fundraising. You know, it's not a linear journey, and there's not a kind of one size fits all in this scenario, but I think it's definitely something in terms of kind of a practical recommendation that we pulled out of this was to kind of appreciate the sensitivity around those bereavement journeys and adapting appropriately to make sure that you know the donors are being looked after and they're in you know, with within their both philanthropic journey, but also their bereavement journeys as well.

SPEAKER_05 26:49

Yeah, I wanted to ask about that particularly, because you talked there about you know um the bereavement being a journey and often sort of philanthropy itself is is seen as something of a journey. And I wondered with that bereavement journey, whether I mean you've kind of touched on it already there, but whether that idea that people wanted to maintain a connection with a lost loved one or to honour their memory, over time in some cases, that can kind of shift to the point where actually the the involvement with the hospice becomes a slightly less welcome reminder of something that they're at that point sort of trying to move beyond.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Yeah, exactly that, Rodri. And and you know, some of the uh quotes that we pulled out from those interviews very much kind of aligned with that, with that um thinking, because you know, there were some people that will remain loyal supporters of of the hospice no matter what, um, and that's that's amazing. But there are some people that say, you know, I'm actually ready to take a step back now, and you know, I might give a donation at Christmas just as a gesture, but actually, you know, that there are so there were some donors that had got remarried, and there are, you know, like I said before, like there's you know, moments in people's lives that you know that there's also the time uh element as well. So as time goes on, they feel kind of less connected to that hospice. And there was even a donor that that said that they received the appeals from the hospice, and he said, you know, I don't need reminding of kind of that that moment and and that kind of challenge that that person's going through because I went through that myself and I I don't need that reminder. So I think again it's kind of that nuance in that stewardship and all of those comms that go to these bereaved donors that maybe just need adapting and refining based on their experiences.

SPEAKER_05 28:35

Um and one of the other things that you mentioned I thought was really interesting was as well as the sort of the donor's own experience in terms of wanting to maintain that connection with the loved one or show some form of gratitude for the care that they've got, the the human relationships that the donor forms with hospice staff as a result of the process they've been through seem to be really important as well.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some of the stories that um that that I heard within those interviews were genuinely so beautiful because they talk so highly of the hospice staff, and you know, there were some people that, you know, their loved ones were in, were in the inpatient unit at the hospice for several weeks, so you get to know all of the staff, and you know, they was they talk so highly of the care, um, not just for um their loved one, but also for themselves and their families. It's such a holistic service, and I don't think people quite realise that until they're experiencing hospice care. There's so much uh kind of stuff that that people don't realise happens until they're around themselves.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

I think there's also this idea that um, and and you've already touched on it, Joe, haven't you, that's once you've got those very deep personal human relationships, then being communicated to in a more sort of mass market way can perhaps then feel like uh there's a bit of a sort of uh disparity there in terms of uh in terms of the relationships. I think that's a that's a a really important takeaway as well. Um and it speaks into what you've already talked about, Joe, around sort of personalization.

SPEAKER_05 30:08

And I'm just interested, Claire, because I know you do a lot of work around uh legacy fundraising, legacy giving as well. Obviously, there's kind of a crossover in the sense that we're talking about end of life and death in some ways, and that some of the challenges are the same. Do you are there kind of other things that you've noticed in terms of hospice fundraising from donors who in this case are sort of still alive and the sort of fundraising that you're doing when talking to people about their own uh death and what they want to do afterwards?

SPEAKER_04 30:33

Yeah, so I think the the two are intrinsically linked, really. So uh not specific to this paper, but we know from other research that people that give uh in memory gifts during their lives are about three times as likely to leave a legacy. Um often people that have already got gifts in their wills, when they're describing their motivations, they're often um there is often an immemory motivation there that you know at least one of their gifts will uh very commonly be honouring uh somebody else. Um and then interestingly, in some some research that I've done myself, it was um it was fascinating in the uh when when some of these sort of dedicated in memory fundraisers that I was talking to um if you really kind of boil down what what was at the very core of their their motivation there, it was it was often to create a legacy in the broadest sense of the word for the person that they'd lost. So for whatever reason, very very often these people had uh sort of died before their time and they hadn't been able to create a legacy in the sense of maybe having kids of their own or sort of uh really been able to fulfil their own potential. And their loved ones were almost stepping into that and creating that lasting legacy, which again is is a beautiful thing when you think about it. You know, they were rather than spending time on creating their own individual legacies, they were actually trying to do that for somebody else, which I think is a is a really beautiful thing to do for someone actually. So it does feel that on lots of levels these two forms of uh of giving are are really linked, I think.

SPEAKER_05 32:07

Um I just want to zoom out a little bit and ask because obviously the focus of these Earn-Op um the research notes is to try and bridge the gap that there seems to be a little bit still between academia and practice and philanthropy. And often in these interviews, I'm kind of asking people who are firmly in the academic world about their perceptions of that. What's really interesting in this case is both of you very much have your feet in the practitioner camp and also sort of uh in the academic camp. What's your sense of you know where there are still gaps or how well that relationship works? Do you think, do you find it sort of easy to find academic insights that are relatable to your work? Um, and kind of do you find when you're doing academic work that it's easy to engage other practitioners in that work?

SPEAKER_04 32:52

Yeah, so I suppose on a personal level, being the nerd that I am, I uh wherever my feet have been camped, I've tried to sort of uh uh pull in elements from the academic world. Um I guess there's a very sort of practical divide at the moment, though, in that so much academic work is is still behind paywalls. I mean it's getting better. We all know, I'm sure, that uh but there's a there's a lot of uh really great thinking from academia that is just at the moment sort of inaccessible to uh practitioners. So that's that's a bit of an issue. Um and I think the other sort of big barrier that is uh sadly almost sort of increasingly developing at the moment is just time for practitioners. So again, we've probably all seen the headlines, especially in the UK, it might be different in in wider Europe, but uh there's a lot of redundancies happening in the charity sector right now. Uh practitioners are being asked to do more with less. And so just having the time to go and dive into a finding the research in the first place and b reading the research in the second place uh is uh is really tricky for people. And I suppose this is the joy of something like this Earn Ops series is actually it's uh it's about making it a bit more accessible, because uh actually um again, if you've you've not had the academic training, it can be quite difficult to I'm a qualitative girl and so some of the papers that I pick up that have got a lot of uh sort of statistical analysis in, you know, I find it difficult to to to sort of fully engage with those. So I think some sort of uh uh efforts like these I think are really fantastic in making uh a lot of this much more um accessible to people, really.

SPEAKER_05 34:26

Yeah, I feel the same way about papers that have got a lot of economics in them. I tend to just skim over it and assume it's broadly right. And that's about it. Joe, yeah, I'd be interested as well in your your perspective, obviously, as somebody who's kind of been through uh an academic course, um, done a master's on on philanthropic studies and then is kind of working back in practice now. Do you do you sort of think, oh, it's you do you still look to academia for as a source of insights, or do some of the challenges that Claire mentioned there prevent you from making full use of them?

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Yeah, so yeah, I I completely agree with Claire. I think there's there's definitely some barriers that that need to that need to be broken down, but I think because from where I was um kind of in that academia world and I was working full-time throughout that as well, so it was it was easier for me to kind of incorporate the two. And I've been very lucky um in the sense that a lot of people that I've worked with, um both in my immediate teams and wider, um, within kind of philanthropy and uh major gifts, is that they have that willingness to learn. And obviously, you know, we have philanthropy and fundraising trainers um out there who are brilliant, but you know, there are some people that have asked me because they know that I've done that master's degree and done this research, that you know, what what what else is out there that I can get my teeth stuck into and what else can I learn about? So I've been very lucky that I've had those people um kind of wanting to learn more um of the kind of academic side of things. And you know, I I lead a brilliant team, and I do, you know, when we're talking about things uh that we could try or do, I do try and weave in some of this stuff as well. And I think it's important to say that you know, even though this particular research paper is uh kind of hospice specific in a way, there's a lot of kind of um, there's a lot that we can pull out from that in terms of bereavement journeys in general as well. So like I work for a Parkinson's charity now, and a lot of the donors that that that we um work with are bereaved. Um, and I feel like it's been a real kind of education piece for for our teams in particular to kind of bring some of this research in. So it's even though it says that it's for hospices, I think it can be applied to a much kind of wider um cause area as well.

SPEAKER_05 36:50

Yeah, for sure. Um I think it's really interesting to hear that from your perspective. I think, as you say, there are challenges, but where it can be made to work and those findings from academia can be made relatable and kind of relevant to the work of practitioners. There's an enormous amount of value to be got out of them. Um just remains to say thanks ever so much to both of you for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's really great to hear about the research and wish you all the best in the future.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Great. Thanks so much, Rodri.

SPEAKER_05 37:24

And finally, uh on the podcast, we have the interview with Michaela Neumair. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Michaela Neumair. Hi, Michaela.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Hi, happy to be here.

SPEAKER_05 37:33

Yeah, well, great to have you on the podcast. Um, and we're here to talk about uh a paper that has been featured in the latest release of Earnart Research Notes, or a research note based on it at least. Uh and the paper in question uh is titled How Nonprofits Make Sense of Corporate Volunteering, uh, explaining different forms of nonprofit business collaboration. Um so maybe the best place to start is if you could tell us all a bit about what the research is about and what some of the key findings in this paper were.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

What the research is about. Um corporate volunteering is a type of cross-sector collaboration. And we started with the project uh when we had uh when we uh in the course of a class, uh I was teaching at university and we collaborated with nonprofit organizations, and they were very interested in the topic because nonprofit organizations uh got a get got a lot of requests uh from business partners. And uh the question was uh, well, should they enter? Um and how yeah, how these uh partnerships evolve.

SPEAKER_05 38:38

So, yeah, obviously it's kind of about corporate volunteering and why particularly nonprofits enter into that. Um yeah, so it would just be useful to know and and why the kind of the idea of looking at um frames and sense making was the approach she thought would would um help to elaborate this.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Okay, the paper is about a collaboration between main nonprofit organizations and corporation. And the question is why these two partners enter in such a collaboration. And we know a lot from the business side. We know why they uh what are the benefits and the advantages they gain from such a partnership, but there was hardly any literature and any knowledge of why the nonprofit enter. So what is their perspective? And we wanted to know how they make sense of such a collaboration, why they say yes when they receive a request, and yeah, what how does these collaborations look like?

SPEAKER_05 39:33

And and you you identify in the paper these the sort of three frames from the nonprofits that you spoke to that kind of dictate how they view corporate volunteering um relationships or opportunities. Maybe you could say a bit about what those three frames were.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Well, we identified that depending on the cognitive frame, that depending on the interpretation of the partnership that nonprofit organizations have, this determines how their partnership then really looks like. And the three frames we identified is the first is a market-based frame. Meaning that organizations uh that see uh this collaboration as a service to the business partner um act in a very different way. So uh they um have clear boundaries, they act in a very professionalized form, and they see it as a service. So they say, this is a project, your volunteers can come, for instance, on 5th of March in the afternoon. This is the task, and this is what we can offer. And there is not much negotiation about it. Um, and this is a very efficient way of nonprofits to organize it. The second frame uh we identified is called the resource-dependent frame. Here uh the nonprofit partner sees uh corporate volunteering as a source of a much-needed support. So they hope for getting some resources they really urgently need. These organizations accept almost all offers. They don't say no is not an option. Uh they even if there is not a benefit visible in the short run and if there have a lot of costs involved, they hope for getting a benefit in the long term. So, for instance, they hope that the organization and that the other individual volunteers might donate money for the Christmas time or such that. And these uh these partnerships and these partnerships, it's often that uh that the projects are very much tailored to the needs of the profit uh partner. So it takes a lot of time to define uh a task where the what the volunteers could do. Um the third frame we call it an idealistic frame. Here, corporate volunteering is seen uh as a shared mission for societal change. Uh it's a partnership, um, it's trust-based on an equal footing. And here in the it's not just the organizational benefit of for the nonprofit in the in the foreground, but also benefits on a societal level, such as raising awareness. And yeah, I already said it, depending on which which interpretation of the partnerships the organization has determines how it then works or what is the result of it.

SPEAKER_05 42:16

Yeah, and and it's interesting because you uh you mentioned in the paper that often when corporate volunteering or cross-sector partnerships are spoken about in in other research, the the sort of idealized version is one in which it is very much a kind of highly integrated partnership. But you kind of question in this paper whether that's actually true from the point of view of nonprofits and whether actually, in many cases, slightly more transactional relationships are seen as better as long as the power dynamics are right. Is that is that the case?

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Our starting point was uh this assumption of a win-win situation and that uh um for both partners is beneficial. And uh we we question that. And the other um with regard to cross-sector collaborations, there is always an assumption that the deeper this collaboration, the more intense this collaboration, the better it is for all parties involved. And we found that for some organizations, for some nonprofits, it might be much better just to have a transactional partnership. That means each part gives something, each part receives something, it has a limited duration, it has a defined end, and this is fine. And the organizations uh yeah, uh it's protect their autonomy and their mission integrity with such partnerships. And it doesn't need to be a very long, integrative, transformative, whatever partnership. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

This is what Yeah, it's really interesting. And you you mentioned as well before that the often the non profits v tend to value sort of longer term potential benefits in terms of Additional funding they might get or networks. D did you find that any of the nonprofits actually seemed to value the corporate volunteering that they were getting, or was it always seen as a means to an end?

SPEAKER_02 44:12

I uh think that we need to differentiate between hands-on volunteering and skill-based volunteering. Hands-on volunteering is when the time of the stuff of the business partner is used, they just come and do very simple things like painting a wall. This is a typical example, or when there is a sports event just being there and doing some helping work there. And these are usually the collaborations that just from the from the corporate volunteering activity, not that beneficial. The more beneficial ones from the corporate activity itself are the skill-based partnerships where uh they use uh where uh public relations advoices are sometimes of consulting, legal consulting. Uh this is from the activity itself very helpful, helpful for the nonprofit partner.

SPEAKER_05 45:12

So, yeah, there's a distinction between just that the traditional version of corporate volunteering, as you say, is just people from a company come along and do some manual work and more considered work where they're using their professional skills that might have more value for the nonprofit.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Exactly, exactly. But I also want to say that some uh nonprofit organization uh even had a catalogue of uh corporate uh volunteering projects, and these also were uh hands-on projects, and to say we have this project to offer, uh we have this project to offer, we have this project to offer. And these are then really tasks they need that are useful for them. And uh for those uh definitely also the activity uh of the volunteers is beneficial, and interestingly, um they also charged the organization uh money for this task because they have expenses uh for catering, for um a person who who organizes uh this event and decide, okay, if you want to come with your volunteers for one day and you do that, that's fine with us, you can do that, but you have to pay 500 euros in addition, so we can organize that for you. And this never was a problem for the corporate partner.

SPEAKER_05 46:32

No, no, absolutely. And I think that's really interesting because it goes to one of the other points in the paper, um, which is about the power dynamics in the relationships. Because you you note that certainly in among organizations that take this market-based framing, they're quite clear about the value that they bring to the relationship. So they they see themselves almost as having the power, whereas in other cases the resource-dependent framing, they don't. What is it do you think that determines that power dynamic? Because you note in the paper it's not necessarily about the size of the non-profit, it's not just that bigger non-profits are more likely to be confident. So, what do you know, have any sense of what the factors might be that that allow nonprofits to have equal or even kind of beneficial power dynamics?

SPEAKER_02 47:22

I think that is uh actually the main finding, this power balance topic. And we framed it as the perceived power, so the perce perception of the nonprofit partner of their power in the relationship. And it was not just the huge organizations we did interviews with that said, okay, we have the power uh to determine the rules of the game, and we have the power to say what we do and what we don't say do. It were also some very small organizations that acted in that way. Uh, and they also called it we act in a way as if we were a paying partner. And it has a lot to do with their uh self, uh with the awareness that they know they have something valuable to give. And the business partner receives a lot, they receive the reputation, uh, they receive a team-building event in many cases, and just being aware that uh they have something valuable to give and to act in this way, um, yeah, then shapes uh the way the uh the partnership finally looks like. So the main uh the main issue is this the crucial point is the self-awareness, that they are not a passive partner who is thankful of getting anything, but to also uh act um yeah in a strategic way.

SPEAKER_05 48:50

Yeah, absolutely. Um I just want to to move outward a bit because obviously this Earn OP series, the um one of the purposes is to try and build better links between academia and practice around philanthropy. Based on your experience in this paper and other research, do you think those links are good currently? Do you find it easy to work with non-profit partners in your research? And also when you're sharing findings, do you find that uh non-profit practitioners are receptive to them?

SPEAKER_02 49:22

What uh uh particularly in this collaboration for the earn of research notes, where uh where you got in a discussion with a practitioner who uh who interpretes your findings. To me, this was great because they uh they have the other perspective and they make out here it worked wonderfully how they made sense of these findings for them. And this is not my main perspective, but uh it is so beneficial for for for us as researchers to then see uh see this in their language again.

SPEAKER_05 49:56

Yes, absolutely. Um, and I'm just interested uh in what you are working on currently. Have you uh developed further the research around corporate volunteering or are there other areas that you're now focusing on?

SPEAKER_02 50:09

Um with the topic of volunteering, I'm interested in there. Um well, corporate volunteering is a type of uh we call it three-party volunteering. Uh so there is an organization sending, this is the business partner, uh the volunteers and the receiving organization or the hosting organization. Um I'm interested in in other in in similar types of volunteering arrangements for in in uh for instance uh volunteerism or service learning, where there is also a sending organization like a university or uh a volunteer uh um um a tourist organization that seems and also to look in these it is the assumption of a win-win-win. And to uh to to look who agains what from this collaboration. Uh this is uh I'm interested in that.

SPEAKER_05 51:03

Yeah, I think that would be fascinating, and particularly in the case you mentioned voluntarism, to to do a similar analysis about the perceptions of the non-profits themselves and why they engage in in those relationships would be really interesting. So I'd be very interested to when that that research is done. Um just to remain to say thank you ever so much, Michaela, for coming on the podcast. Really interesting to hear about this research. And as I say, I'll definitely keep an eye out for uh sort of future iterations and all the best with the rest of your research.

SPEAKER_02 51:29

Uh thank you for invitation.

SPEAKER_05 51:39

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Peter and to Claire and Joe and Michaela for finding time to come on the podcast. Uh, really interesting to hear about all of their work. I will put links in the show notes to places where you can find uh the papers that we discussed and also the Earn research notes based on them. Um I'll also put links to any things that I can think of that I might have written that might also be of interest. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. You can find all the back issues of this podcast, you can find lots of articles there. Um, most recently, one we're giving some predictions about trends to look out for in uh 2026 in philanthropy and civil society, which might be of interest. Uh, also the last episode of this podcast was obviously about the the same thing. Um, if you want to follow me on social media, you can do that on LinkedIn or Blue Sky. Um, if you want to get in touch, if you've got ideas for topics we could cover on the podcast or people I could talk to this year, do drop me a line. The contact tutorials are all there on the website. Um, and if you uh feel uh so motivated, please do leave us a nice review uh wherever you get your podcasts. Give us a five-star review, it helps bump up the algorithm. Um, or if you feel if you think that the uh podcast is of interest and you know somebody that you think might benefit from it, do give them a word of mouth recommendation. I think that goes a long way too. Other than that, uh just remains to say that I will see you next time. Bye.