SPEAKER_01 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropisms podcast with Roger Davis.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodery Davis, and welcome to this, our hundredth episode. They said it couldn't be done, or perhaps they said it shouldn't be done. Either way, uh we are here. So after uh plowing on with this for a number of years, now we've reached a hundred episodes. Uh, depending on whether you listen to my podcast platform, actually, technically the last episode was the hundredth, but I chose to ignore that. Uh so this is the one that I've taken as the centenary edition. Uh, for those of you who've stuck around for the whole hundred, uh, that's quite some admirable dedication, although I'm not sure that you don't need to find other things to do with your time. But I do thank you for your continued support. And if this is the first time that you're listening, uh, welcome. Um, so joining me on this episode are Lindsay McDougall and David Campbell for a conversation about whether you can teach philanthropy or use philanthropy as a teaching tool, perhaps. Um, Lindsay is associate professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University in Newark, and also the director of the Rutgers Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Development. Uh, and David is a professor in uh at the University of Binghamton in state, it's a state university uh in New York. Um, and both uh David and Lindsay are also on the board of Arnova, which is the big uh American research network for academics interested in philanthropy and nonprofit studies. And Lindsay, in fact, is the president-elect of Arnova. And so I sat down with Lindsay and David uh not long ago um to talk about their work and particularly about their interest in the idea of experiential philanthropy. Um so we talked about, well, what experiential philanthropy actually is. Um so basically it's kind of using philanthropy as a teaching tool for students studying philanthropy, but also students uh in other courses as well. So giving them a sum of money and then going through a process of deciding how to distribute that money and through that process learning all kinds of different things. Uh we talked about what some of the different ways of delivering experiential philanthropy courses are and how that reflects who the students are and also the aims of the course. So, yeah, we talked about whether experiential philanthropy is primarily a tool for learning about philanthropy, whether it's a tool for learning about other subjects, or whether it's actually more of a means of promoting active citizenship and engagement more broadly. Um, and we talked a bit about how that varies across different institutions and courses. Um, we talked a bit about whether students come to these courses with a blank canvas essentially and are not really told a lot about what philanthropy is or how it works, or whether they're given some sort of background information. We talk about some of the constraints that may be placed on what they can give to and how they can give are their particular cause areas or types of organizations, for instance. And we talked a bit about whether that causes problems if students want to give to things that fall outside of those parameters. And we also talked about the kinds of decision making that the groups use and whether that is decided for them or whether they are kind of allowed to decide how they're going to decide. We talked quite a bit about the question of whether philanthropy is actually a helpful word when you're talking about these to students who perhaps haven't engaged with it before, or whether it sort of brings unhelpful connotations that frame things in a way that isn't necessarily that productive, and whether it'd be better to frame things in a different way or use different terminology. And we talked about whether taking part in some of these experiential philanthropy courses actually changes the way students think about philanthropy, either about the word or about the practice more broadly. We talked a bit about the impact it has on whether they engage more afterwards and whether they go on to support or volunteer non-profit organizations in their local area. Um we also talked about the uh the perception of the organizations that get funded through experiential philanthropy programs. Do they know that that's where the money's come from and what difference does that make in terms of how they think about it? And we also talked about where that money does come from. So who is actually stumping up the cash for experiential philanthropy courses and why are they doing that? What is their motivation and what do those funders want to get out of it? And then finally, we talked about whether the renewed interest in civic engagement and participation in light of concerns about political polarization and division in society meant that there were more funders interested in these kinds of experiential philanthropy courses, or whether that might be the case in the future. Um so without further ado, let's go into the conversation. I really enjoyed this one. I hope you will too. Uh, and I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Lindsay McDougall and David Campbell. Hi to both of you.

SPEAKER_04 5:34

Hi, how are you? Hey, Rodri.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Hi, uh, it's great to have you on the podcast. And yeah, so we're here to talk about um an area, a really interesting area of work, not something I think we've kind of covered on the podcast before, but really the idea is about how you teach philanthropy or use philanthropy as a teaching tool and this kind of idea of experiential philanthropy. Yeah, really fascinating, loads of stuff to talk about. Maybe the best place to start is just to tell everybody what it is they're actually talking about. What do we mean by experiential philanthropy? Um, I'm sure you've both got different sort of thoughts on that because you've both written about it a lot, but maybe Lindsay, if you could go first.

SPEAKER_04 6:10

Yeah, so it is an interesting area of practice as well as research. And I think if I were to describe or to define what experiential philanthropy is, I would tell someone that it's basically learning about giving by actually doing it. So instead of having students read about philanthropy or read about nonprofits in the philanthropic sector, they're actually engaging in real grant-making processes. And so the students are the ones making the decisions about how to give away funding that they have received as a class.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Great. And and David, I don't know, kind of does that what's your sense, and can you build on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

I like the learning by doing uh idea. And one of the funders that has supported the work that Lindsay and I have done is called the Learning by Giving Um Foundation. And while I like learning by doing, I also think it's uh learning by giving. It's really giving students the opportunity to give and then reflect about what that experience is like sort of while they're doing it as part of a class.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

And and in terms of where this sits, I guess one of the key things is kind of are we primarily talking about students who are studying philanthropy or nonprofit um studies of some kind? And this is kind of you know an element of that and fits in with work that they're already doing around those topic areas, or is it something that we also see when students are studying other subjects as well? But it's kind of a tool for teaching them either about philanthropy and how that might relate to their cause area or about a cause area itself.

SPEAKER_04 7:40

Yeah, so it did really, it most visibly started in sort of nonprofit and philanthropic studies courses. But I've seen it work well across disciplines in environmental studies and social work. I've seen it in law and sociology courses. But when it's housed in sort of nonprofit management or philanthropic studies, the emphasis tends to be on more sector knowledge, governance, fundraising, principles of volunteer management. However, when we use it in other courses outside of nonprofit and philanthropic studies, we tend to focus more on things like general civic engagement. How do we get students to start seeing themselves as individuals who can participate in strengthening their communities? So it has broader application beyond just nonprofit management and philanthropic studies.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

And I see um experiential philanthropy as often sort of driven by a faculty member who um has an opportunity and takes advantage of that opportunity. Some money comes their way, um, and they say, Oh, I have an idea for a course. And that faculty member could sit in a wide range of different places. I like the second group of courses that Lindsay described more than the first, because I think that people who are in nonprofit studies or in philanthropic studies or even in public administration, they already have an orientation to public service. Um, and I like experiential philanthropy when it is getting students to sort of reflect about their purpose. How do they see themselves in the world? What role does giving sort of play in their lives? I mean, these courses have two different um goals, as sort of Lindsay was describing. I find it sort of more fun and more engaging and maybe sort of more satisfying when you're talking with students who haven't done as much sort of personal reflection on civic engagement or their role in the world, uh, because I think there's um it yields more um civic benefits, I think.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

And and for those that group of students, if we're talking about you know, people who haven't necessarily thought about philanthropy, certainly in academic terms, or haven't really kind of thought about it in terms of their own lives before, when you're designing one of these courses or delivering it, do you sort of start from a blank slate and let the students largely kind of lead things and shape how it's done? Or do you is there some kind of pre-reading, or do you kind of educate them to a certain point about philanthropy and and you know what they're going to be studying beforehand? Or are you kind of worried about you know shaping their thinking too much and it's better to kind of see where they take things?

SPEAKER_04 10:20

Yeah, so definitely in my courses I don't try to do too much pre-reading or give uh pre-notions about what philanthropy is, because philanthropy is personal, right? So we all have an ability to be a philanthropist, but somewhere along the line, the idea of philanthropy got intertwined with wealthy, um, riches, people who are of substantial means. And so my goal really is to have students to see themselves as change makers, individuals who have the ability to make change within their communities. Back to the simplest definition of philanthropy, love of humankind, which we all have the ability to exhibit and express. And so I want students to understand what philanthropy means to themselves without having my uh preconceived ideas of what philanthropy should be or could be for them.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

I also battle this perception that Lindsay describes that people see as philanthropy as not as something that other people do, not something that they can do. And I always start the class with videos that I found in which ordinary people, sort of broadly defined, describe themselves as philanthropists. Um, so that students will see people who are not Bill Gates or uh or the wealthiest in the world describing themselves as philanthropists. But for me, I I try to shift even away from the term philanthropy and just ask students what role does giving play in your life? Or I want them to reflect on that question. But the place I always sort of start the class after we talk about philanthropy is ask, you know, what are your core values? What are the things that you believe most deeply? And um, and how do those affect how you see yourself in the world? It's funny, you know, we want to talk specifically about philanthropy writ large, but I think philanthropy ultimately, when we're thinking about giving, is really about how students, what are the what are the core beliefs that students hold and how do they want to act on those beliefs in the world? And so, because that's what in the end their giving behavior is. And so for me, um, I ask them all to spend uh a lot of time reflecting on core values, and I give them examples of values, I give them ideas about where those values may come from, that they could come from religion, they could come from um uh personal experience, they could come from books that they've read, but I want them really to start with ideas about what their core values are and then how they want to realize those values in the world with respect to um giving.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, it's really interesting. And I guess given that you're saying here that the idea is very much not to shape the thinking of these students before they take part in it and they'll kind of develop through their own self-reflection. Do you find that when they do, the ideas that they have about philanthropy do kind of echo those that are there in the literature, or do they come up with things that surprise you?

SPEAKER_04 13:19

Yeah, so in the beginning of any class that I teach, any experiential philanthropy class, I always ask students, how many of you consider yourselves to be a philanthropist? And out of a class of maybe 50 students, I'll have three of them who raise their hands. And so the idea is that, and I know uh David just mentioned that his idea is to go beyond the concept of philanthropy and calling it philanthropy, but for me it's the notion of who gets to claim this identity of a philanthropist. And why is it that students don't get to see themselves as a philanthropist? And so for me, it's that if you don't see yourself in that role, then you won't practice that activity. I liken it to sort of um having students think about if they were in medical school team and they were practicing a surgeon, a practicing surgeon, a firing practicing surgeon. And no medical student would call themselves a surgeon without having practiced surgery. And so the same thing with philanthropy, right? So if you don't see yourself as a philanthropist, then you'll never actually engage in the activity of philanthropy. And so I want students to understand for themselves what does it mean for me personally to be a philanthropist? What causes do I care about in my community? Um, where I'm located meaning that university is in an urban environment. And so a lot of the students have been recipients of philanthropy. Um, so they've seen philanthropy come into their community, but they themselves have not actually engaged in the activity that they consider philanthropy. And so I want them to see the their selves as having the ability to do what they have been recipients of.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And it's funny, um, I sort of take I really like this idea of who gets to claim this idea as a philanthropist because I I have guess I've made this judgment that if students don't like the idea of philanthropy and some of them are uncomfortable with it, why not just call it giving? Or, you know, I mean, Pamela Vietking always just uh talks about sort of generosity behavior and giving and really using new terms that may be more accessible to students. And for me, meet them where they are, but get them to think about the importance of looking outward, seeing themselves as has a having a responsibility to others that in experiential philanthropy courses are about um giving money. Money as sort of one way of um of engaging and sort of giving behavior. It also can be could be giving time or it could be something else. But in the experiential class, it's always about um uh giving uh giving money.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah, and I guess that question of defining philanthropy, there's always two ways to go on there. There's either do we uh jettison the term and use something else instead, or do we redefine or reclaim the term? And I know people have kind of very differing points of view on that. Um I guess you were saying there, David, about the fact you know the a lot of these courses um kind of center around monetary giving because that's kind of how they're they're structured. Obviously, you're not trying to necessarily kind of uh influence the way that the students approach that or think about it, but as soon as they start doing it, I guess there are there are some interesting practical questions. For instance, you know, do you place constraints on what they can give to? Do you do you have to kind of limit it within a geographical area? Do you have to specify certain cause areas or organizational types, or is it kind of entirely left up to them?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

That will often depend on who's funding the course that will provide those constraints. In I I think, and uh Lindsay and I have both been funded by the Learning by Giving Foundation, and I believe that they required local giving. I can't remember now, uh, but I really liked that that they required local giving uh because the students at my university um we're in upstate New York. 70% of the students come from um Metro, New York, uh, New York City, Long Island, the suburb. And they don't necessarily see themselves as members of the Binghamton community. And they they may spend more of their time on campus than in the community. And I see one of my jobs as an instructor is to get students to reflect on what does it mean to be a member of this community? And so when um uh if they have $10,000 to give away and they can only give it within this community, they have to learn about that community. They have to learn from people in that community, what people have written about this community, um, I mean, in terms of community needs and things of of that sort. Uh I ask them at the beginning of the semester whether they see themselves as members of the Binghamton community. Um, and many of them say no. I ask them at the end of the semester whether they see themselves as members of the community after having visited local nonprofits and giving money away, and the numbers go away sort of way up. They see themselves as having real opportunities to connect with that local community, participate in that local community than before the class. So for me, that constraint of it having to be local is one that has this double benefit of encouraging students to really reflect on what does it mean to be a member of a community, even though that community may be different than the one in which they grew up.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

And I would say, in addition to the local, um, another constraint is making sure that students are giving to registered nonprofit organizations. And so, even though, especially for students who are not nonprofit or philanthropic studies majors, we do want them to understand that their giving should go to a registered, recognized nonprofit, not an entity that is a loose association of individuals, um, but something that is established. And it could be, you know, a new organization, but it's established.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

That's really interesting. And is that is that just uh kind of um a safeguard? Because obviously having a kind of formalized registered nonprofit structure means that there's, you know, you're kind of confident that that certain uh criteria have been met. And have you ever have you had any pushback from students on that? Because I'm I sort of wondering in the context where I know more broadly in the nonprofit world there's an interesting debate at the moment about whether actually some of the most interesting cutting-edge stuff is being done by unregistered groups and sort of social movements. Do you find students actually saying it seems a bit limiting to have to restrict ourselves to more formal organizations?

SPEAKER_04 19:42

Yeah, so I think this is one of the um restrictions that is probably sort of the most funder-induced or institutionally induced. So for the funder that provides the resources for the students, it makes it easier for them to provide the funding to that nonprofit organization as opposed to an unregistered nonprofit. But now this is where experiential philanthropy sort of takes the the um the reality out of the practice, right? Because in reality, students would be able to give to any type of entity that their heart desires because it is personal. But this is where experiential philanthropy sort of deviates from what would take place in in sort of the natural, quote unquote, natural world.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Yeah, absolutely. We've we've talked a few times here about the the funders, and I really want to come on to that in a in a bit, because I think the question of sort of who funds these kind of experiential philanthropy courses and and why and what they're they are expecting to get out of it is really interesting. But just still on on the just sticking on the question of sort of how the courses themselves work for a moment. I'm also really interested as well in how the decisions get made. What kinds of decision-making processes do the students have? And again, are they driven by the students or are they kind of you know set decision-making processes that they're presented with?

SPEAKER_00 20:58

I thought a lot about this. I've been teaching these classes, I guess 15 years now, and I've reflected a lot on the dynamics I've seen among the students and what my goals were in the class. When I first started teaching these classes, I would see the um really polarize. Some students would love a particular organization and want to be advocates for that organization, and maybe some of the ways in which I structured the class might facilitate that. I would say, all right, I'd want a group of students to do a site visit to this organization that they're interested in, another group to do a site visit to another organization that they're interested in. And I have structured my classes increasingly in ways that require students to be in constant conversation with each other and never doing work that gives one group of students information that other students don't have, um, so that they're always talking to each other about um about organizations. So, for example, in my class, we have to whittle down an initial group of maybe 75 applicants down to five. And then when we have those sort of five finalists, students have to present the application of each organization to the rest of the class. I put students in these groups to make recommendations about funding in different groups throughout the semester. So at the beginning of the semester, I may put students in groups of five where they have to make recommendations on which of the 75 organizations they want to be finalists. In the middle of the class, when students are trying to sort of present on these on these five finalists, I put them in new groups that have to analyze and present to the class. At the end of the semester, when they're making their recommendations about which group they want to fund, I put them in new groups of students to sort of say, here are the five, here, here is what we want to recommend. And over the course of the semester, I never let the same set of students sort of sit together or talk together because all of the students, I want the students to be in constant conversation. And then the last thing I would say is one of the most time-consuming things I've had to learn is that I make sure that I bring all 30 or 35 students to site visits that we have. I rent a bus and I bring all the students so that they all have the same experience of going to the organization, hearing from that organization, and then sitting on the bus on the ride back to campus, talking to each other about what that experience was. So for me, the decision-making process is one that really forces the students to be in conversation with each other, with everyone in the class throughout the semester, sort of to minimize that sort of polarization. Um, or to if polarization occurs, it occurs because they've interpreted the information they've gotten differently.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

And so in my class, I think we do it just a little um different, but I like the way that David has his setup. For our class, we think about a community, right? And a community consists of people of varying backgrounds, differing beliefs, differing experiences. And so I have a class of about 50 students and I break them up into groups of between five and six. Um the students have to come together in their groups to want a consensus on the social topic, the social issue that they most care about within our local region. Each group then identifies a nonprofit organization that is working to address the social issue that they have come up with. And they present to the class on all of the different nonprofit organizations and the social topics, the social issues that they've focused on. At the end, all of the class individually then votes on which group nonprofit organization they want to award the funding to. And we set it up this way, or I set it up this way, because again, a community consists of a lot of different people. And I want students to be able to talk through their differences and to think about why one group might have selected a different social topic or different social issues, or why one group might have thought that their nonprofit organization was the best to address that social issue. And so it allows students to have this deliberation back and forth, and then they ultimately settle on one nonprofit organization that will receive the funding from the class. And I think it makes the students not only aware of a number of different social issues facing the community, but it also makes them aware of a number of different nonprofit organizations that are operating within the community. And so even if their nonprofit organization did not receive the funding, they now have greater knowledge, awareness of issues, causes, and organizations that are working within their community that even after the class, they can still get involved with.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

That all of the students have experiences that are relevant to making these decisions and that sort of shape that process. And the students will say to me after the class is over, you know, after this class, when I the next semester, when I'm walking on the mall campus, I see all sorts of people from my classes, but only the students from this class will say hello to me or remember my name. And I I think in part that's because the process is designed to build community in the same way that I'm sure Lindsay's is building community. And part of what happens as a result of these processes are beyond just giving, but really about how students learn to be part of a community together.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

I think it's so interesting, particularly at a time, obviously, there was a lot of discussion about polarization and the loss of associational life, and within the philanthropy world, kind of um, you know, pluralism and the fact that that's much debated. And that idea that one of the things that we've forgotten to do is to how to disagree but do that well or in kind of productive ways. Actually, the value of these kinds of experiential philanthropy courses, it seems to me, you know, not the sole value, but a large part of it is precisely that, that it kind of teaches people those hard skills of how to engage with people who might be quite different to you and who you might not necessarily um agree with. And I I've certainly seen that when I've sat in on kind of participatory grant-making meetings, which feel similar as well. You kind of get very diverse communities of people who at the beginning agree about very little and then find a way to work through that in a in a kind of productive way and as you say, kind of form community. Um I think that's really fascinating. I'm also just really interested in um just from the perspective of the the organizations that end that the students engage with, and particularly those that sort of end up getting funded through them. What do you have any sense of what how they think about this? And are they aware that when they get a grant from from one of these programs that how it's come about? And do they sort of have a different attitude towards it as a result? Do they value it more because of you know the idea that this process has been gone through where these students have selected them, or or is it something that's sort of slightly hidden from view?

SPEAKER_04 29:07

No, so I definitely think that the recipient organizations appreciate it very much because it's from students. And so we've been doing it at my institution for I think a little over 10 years now. Um and collectively, students have distributed almost $100,000 to nonprofit organizations in the community. And by and large, students focus on nonprofit organizations that are not uh mega million, you know, huge large nonprofits with massive staff, but they by and large give to the smaller grassroots organizations that are operating within their community that are often overlooked by traditional foundation grant making. And so these organizations recognize that these are grants gifts from students that they typically would not receive had they um experiencial philanthropy not existed. And so, for a lot of the organizations, we still receive emails and updates about what they're doing, about how significant the funding, even though it's a small amount of money relative to traditional foundation grantmaking, these organizations are so appreciative of the fact that students took the time to learn about their organization and what they're doing and advocate on behalf of their organization to the class.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Lindsay's in a larger community than I am. She's really metro New York, and New York is a uh a much bigger city than Binghamton. And so within Binghamton, we don't have some of the really big nonprofits that you see in larger cities. But you do have sort of town gown issues. Um, you know, I mean we are uh in in the state university system a somewhat elite institution, and we are a uh at best, it's sort of an old manufacturing city that that um where there are some have historically been tensions between the university and the community. And so having students engage in this role and see themselves as members of the community is something that the leaders of nonprofits really value and are grateful for. Um I hear a lot about that. I mean, there are many other steps our university has taken to sort of build those relationships. Uh, one thing that um that I've started to do in the class is to um to in order to take some of the pressure off some of the nonprofit finalists, I have uh we've decided to give $500 to each of the five finalist organizations because they have to prepare a proposal and and and then host students uh at a site visit. You know, I mean, think about what it's like in the middle of the day, suddenly you have a bus pull up with 35 college students, and then you have to figure out where you're gonna sit them and how you sort of uh um introduce them to the organization. And so, in part, I think we recognize that our responsibility was uh we had a responsibility to um provide some support for organizations, even if they didn't get the sort of final grant from us. I would say as well, like Lindsay, that students are drawn to some of the smaller organizations. Many students at Binghamton University are the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. And in the um anti-immigrant climate in the US, students have uh really been drawn to supporting the immigrant services organization, particularly over the past sort of several years. Um, in recent years, they've given money to an advocacy organization that's working on issues related to incarceration, which suits students really sort of worry about. So some of the grassroots stuff uh students are really sort of drawn to. And I think the activist organizations, the immigrant organizations are sort of really sort of appreciate that. And then I would say finally that students also look then for volunteer opportunities often in those organizations or internships, and the nonprofits tend to be pretty grateful for that because they see the students as adding value, and I hope that they do.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Yeah, and and something you mentioned there actually just made me think I'm really interested in whether the students that you've had on the courses show a kind of tendency to want uh to focus more on sort of advocacy and upstream uh kind of uh ways of achieving change, or whether they're interested in kind of more direct service delivery, or whether you get a balance of of those two things across across what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Well, I would say in my classes, um, when students read the needs assessment, um, some of the needs assessment information, one of the things that stands out about our county, it's called Broome County, it's got the second or third highest level of um food insecurity uh in this in New York State. And so um students um are really drawn to sort of food assistance organizations, sometimes not really what you think of as advocacy, but they see those data and they say, this is really uh, we didn't know this, this is surprising, sort of this is terrible. Um so they are drawn to sort of those basic needs. Sometimes they have my students have never supported an arts organization. I really work hard to get to try to get them interested in an arts organization because I want them to have a conversation about what's the role of the arts in a community. And I've even though uh I have had people come in and want to make the case, that they I've never had an arts organization be a finalist because they see these sort of basic needs as sort of uh primary or something like immigration or incarceration as sort of so fundamental that they uh need to sort of spend um uh time on that. So I do think basic needs, but advocacy sometimes, but more basic needs.

SPEAKER_04 34:53

I think that's interesting that you say um your students haven't funded an arts organization. I'm trying to think in my mind whether or not our students have provided funding to an arts organization, and I don't think that we have either. Um oftentimes what is really interesting is that the topics and the social issues that the students focus on gives you insight into what the youth are most concerned about. So a lot of times our students have focused on things like LGBTQ health, um, mental health issues. Um they funded a lot of food um food issue nonprofit organizations, food advocacy nonprofits. Um again, like David said, about basic needs. And we also have a large um student population that are immigrants. And so this gives you an idea about what these students think are sort of the most important social issues facing their communities.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Yeah, I mean, as you say, it's a really fascinating way to capture people's priorities and values, not just by asking them what they are, but actually sort of seeing it demonstrated by the choices that they they make. And it's really interesting. One thing I wanted to ask actually was whether you had a sense of whether any of the students in your class kind of had prior notions about nonprofits that they came to the classes with in terms of, you know, there are all kinds of narratives out there about that is you know, often quite negative about nonprofits being inefficient or sort of having high overheads or being wasteful. Do you hear any of that sort of early on when some of the discussions are going on in the class? And do you see any of it change through the process of actually engaging with nonprofits?

SPEAKER_00 36:36

One of the things that stands out to me that now I'm working with younger students. I forget, I don't know whether Lindsay, yours are tend to be freshmen and sophomores, mine or tend to be first, second year. They the thing that I laugh about the most is they think any money that supports an individual's salary is overhead. Um and so and they will like nonprofit organizations that are completely run by volunteers, and the money that they give directly benefits the individuals in need. So if they're providing support for a social worker or someone organizing um the food in a food pantry, they call that overhead. Um and I have to explain to them often that nonprofit organizations operate with staff, and those staff expect to be paid, um, and that sometimes uh grant funding will do that. And so the assumption I often find is this the skepticism of overhead, as you described, Rodri. And and students have a very broad notion of overhead, and I think it requires a lot of education about that it is okay to have a career in nonprofit organizations and to get paid for that work, and that that work is sort of what delivers it. And that always surprises me, and it always takes several class sessions before I think that um students really sort of appreciate that it's okay to get paid and that that our grants can pay for salary.

SPEAKER_04 38:02

And I think this is probably the difference between our student populations, um, because we do have a large non-traditional age student population, and a lot of the students that we that we have have utilized the services of nonprofits. Many of them have worked in nonprofit organizations. And so oftentimes when these students are are identifying nonprofits that they want to focus on or social issues that they care about, they are really considering their experiences, their lived experience. Um, organizations that they've utilized, organizations that they know from the community, um, topics that you know they've personally experienced. And so our students have much more sort of lived experience in terms of what nonprofits do and how they can be of help to nonprofits.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah, it's really interesting. Because I'm sort of fascinated by the research, for instance, it kind of shows that when you ask people generalized questions about nonprofits in terms of things like whether they're trustworthy, you tend to get relatively low scores. But when you ask people much more specific questions about nonprofits that they have actually engaged with, they tend to be much more positive. So I think that that kind of process of actually being forced to engage with the reality of nonprofits and see the work that they do really does change people's perception on some of those issues.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

May I say one other thing about that, Roger? Yeah, please do. I no, I I shared with this with you and Lindsay earlier, but I do an activity in my class that's designed to get students to learn from each other about um uh how they've interacted with nonprofits. I mean, one of the challenges in these classes is that this the money the students have isn't their own, but they're spending someone else's money. And uh I'm encouraging students to think about the role giving plays in their lives. So I always say to the students, I want you to give $15 for the semester, $1 for each week. I will match that total, and then I have a a donor who um matches the total of my giving and their giving. And then I ask students to make a pitch to the class, three students at a time, um, once a week. And and I want those students in that pitch to talk about a charity that they know that they've had an experience with. Um, or if they don't know one, one that they care about. It doesn't have to be in our region, it can be in New York City, it can be in some other state or whatever. And then students make that pitch to the class, I leave with the three students, talk about their presentations, and the rest of the class discusses those and they vote. And the organization that gets the most get votes gets $150, and we give a smaller amount to the other two. But in doing that, students get to hear more about the lives of the students. So I had a student whose mom, uh one just quick story, a student whose mom um died of breast cancer. While she was dying, she and her dad, who, you know, were it's a small business owner, didn't have much money, and this local nonprofit used to pay for medication and drive them to and from the hospital. This was not an experience that most students had had. Uh, but hearing from this, hearing about the students' experience opened them up to sort of um uh something that could happen to them or a way in which nonprofits sort of sort of make a difference. And there are countless stories like that that students hear that they wouldn't hear just by um um meeting the sort of five nonprofits that are a finalist in my class.

SPEAKER_04 41:33

You know, I think that's another way, sort of, that experiential philanthropy definitely deviates from reality, right? So David mentioned that students aren't giving away their own money. This is someone else's money that they're giving away. Um, and so that does make you think, you know, you know, after the class, is this something that students are going to continue to engage with or participate in? Or is this sort of a one-time blip that students sort of have this experience in class and and forget about it? But for me, I guess the goal is I want the students to think about philanthropy and giving more than just financial and the money. So, like David has his class, go and and do site visits. After the class, they start volunteering or they think about other ways of giving to the community. I think that's also um I think that's also a win, right? Because we want students to sort of maintain a sort of direct connection with nonprofit organizations in the nonprofit sector in their community. Um we want them to pay attention to local issues, local organizations. And so even if they don't continue to give back in the um, you know, the financial sense, as long as they are giving something, I think that is also a win.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

And and is your sense from the the cohorts that you've had so far that that that you have had that be the case, do you find that that lots of students do maintain some kind of relationship, whether that's a volunteering one or whether they're giving to well either to the nonprofits that were up that they gave to in the experiential philanthropy course or other nonprofits that they might find out about in the local area?

SPEAKER_04 43:13

So absolutely. So we've done uh in every class we do pre- and post-course surveys. Um we've even done a um a follow-up five years later to see whether or not students are continued to be engaged in their community. And what we found is that students, even if they didn't continue being engaged in the community immediately after the class, long term in five years, students are more likely to say that they volunteer with nonprofit organizations, they're more aware of social issues in their community, they have greater intentions to participate financially, philanthropically with the sector. Um for me, those are important things to also consider.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Final assignment I give to students in the class is a brief reflection paper in which I ask them to just tell. Tell me what looks different after having taken this class. Um, tell me sort of one thing that sort of looks different based on sort of the experience you had, sort of what you read, and tell me one thing that you're gonna do differently as a result of having been in the class. And so you can pick whatever you want. What I'm struck by after having read 10 years of those papers is that often students will say things like, you know, I would see people sort of fundraising um in the student union, and I'd walk past or I'd roll my eyes or whatever. And sort of now I stop and I sort of think about it. Um, and I think maybe I can give $5, or maybe I can sort of do this thing. And we don't do uh post-surveys like Lindsay does, which is great. What a great source of data. Um, but I just do hope the sort of pro-social sentiments that students write in these papers um do sort of carry over in some amount. I once heard a podcast where someone said the goal in any class is not to move a person's thinking 360 degrees or 180 degrees, it's maybe to move one degree. And I hope that at least something that happened in the class sort of stays with students that that um in the that may make them more inclined to give or to volunteer or to participate. Yes, I do see some of that. Um, and that's gratifying, but um, I at this this point I mostly depend on uh the sentiments I hear students express in those papers at the end of the semester.

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Um I wanted to come back. We we touched quite a few times on this question of sort of where the money's coming from, and some interesting things about whether actually the you know the fact that it isn't the student's money has a sort of any psychological uh effect on on how they view it. Um but I guess I guess the you know in practical terms for these sorts of courses to work, somebody does have to be putting up the money because it's you know the students themselves are not going to be in position to. I'm really interested. You mentioned that the learning by giving initiative is one um that's that has kind of funded quite a lot of these things. Are there others? And what's your sense of what it is that's motivating them? Is there kind of primary interest in the the you know the idea of students learning about philanthropy, or is it as a means to an end towards kind of uh encouraging civic engagement? You know, which of the various different outcomes that we've already talked about from these courses are they most interested in that's kind of motivating them?

SPEAKER_04 46:28

Yeah, so there are maybe a handful of well-known um experiential philanthropy funders across the nation. The the longest-running uh experiential philanthropy or student philanthropy program is the Mayerson Student Philanthropy Program at Northern Kentucky University. And I think they've been running for um over 20 years now. There's also the philanthropy lab that is um operating through the Once Upon a Time Foundation, um, and then of course learning by giving. Outside of those organizations, there are a number of smaller entities that engage in experiential philanthropy, and overwhelmingly, with all of them large or small, the goal seems to be teaching students about philanthropy and allowing them an opportunity to engage in philanthropy. So there's no sort of um that I could find at this point, no sort of um goal or aim that is um devious in any way. But the goal is really to consider how do we how do we bring about the next generation of philanthropists? Because if you think about it, you know, generations pass away. And if you have a generation that is not familiar with philanthropy or giving, what does that mean for the nonprofit sector in 20 years, in 40 years, in 50 years? And so you want to be able to train to develop a new generation of young people that are going to go forth and want to willingly support the nonprofit sector. And so I think by and large, the main aim that these entities, organizations have is to develop young people into the next generation of philanthropists.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

What I really love about the uh Meyerson project at Northern Kentucky University is that it is about that institution's commitment to cultivating habits of giving and civic engagement. This project, I think it was created in 2001. I'm not sure if that's the right date, but around then. But for 25 years, Northern Kentucky University, a public university, um, has said we want students across the university to have an opportunity to do experiential philanthropy as part of our larger vision of civic engagement. That's a pretty impressive thing, and I think the folks at Northern Kentucky University deserve a lot of credit for that. The Learning by Giving Foundation, I played a leadership role on a faculty group with them, and I would say my what I learned was that Doris Buffett, who created that foundation, had a particular vision about cultivating habits of giving among college students nationally. Um and um uh I'm really sort of grateful for that commitment uh that uh Doris uh created and then sort of cultivate over the course of her lifetime. The foundation has sort of moved away from uh that priority uh since Doris's death about two or three years ago. Um, but um this what she had a very specific vision and uh wanted to cultivate that, and that's in part how Lindsay and I uh got involved in this field.

SPEAKER_04 49:40

Yeah, and I think it's also important to note that all of these initiatives, Northern Kentucky, the Philanthropy Lab, Learning by Giving, are taking place in higher education institutions. And I think for higher education, there's also an added benefit that you are teaching students, young people about the value and the benefit in giving back. And higher education across the board for years now has had a significant decline in alumni giving. And so I think for higher education, it's a way to also build up, you know, future base of alumni who will give back to the institutions that allow them to actually have this experience and practice this initiative.

SPEAKER_02 50:24

Yeah, yeah, it seems like there's definitely a sort of enlightened self-interest there on the part of the higher education institutions. Um, I guess one thing I wanted to ask, maybe just kind of bring things to a close, is is looking ahead to the future, what your senses of the future prospects or kind of scope for experiential philanthropy? Particularly, I guess we've already mentioned that perhaps in the context of concerns about polarization and division and the loss of associational life, that you know, things like this could be one part of the solution to it. And also, I guess, against the backdrop where there are concerns about you know the potential decline in giving, actually, is there a chance that we will see more foundations or funders see this as something that they might be interested in doing as kind of part of their overall portfolio?

SPEAKER_04 51:12

So I would hope so. Um, so one of the studies that um some colleagues and I have been working on is looking at whether or not experiential philanthropy um sort of allows foundations to extend their their grant-making reach. Um so I mentioned earlier that by and large our students give to um more grassroots, non well-established, non you know, um mega nonprofit organizations, but some of the localized nonprofit organizations in the community. But if you look at traditional big philanthropy um foundation grantmaking, their grants by and large go to large mega nonprofit organizations that have significant resources. Um so this is one way I think that foundations are able to extend the reach of their grant making and engage in the sort of um radical grant making that foundations were historically um aligned with and were created to engage in. Um but somewhere along the way, you know, foundations have become far more conservative in the type of grant making that they do. Um and so this allows foundations to to fund students, to build the next generation of philanthropists, and to also engage in this more uh grassroots radical fund grant making that um builds up community.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Lindsay's just made a great case for why um foundations should do this, and I endorse. I wonder though, my or my experience has been that um experiential philanthropy has really grown out of kind of entrepreneurial faculty who sort of see an opportunity and say, you know, wouldn't it be fun? I really see giving as a or having this money as a way to sort of teach some concepts in economics or in philosophy or in some sort of other field. And I worry that it it could be perceived as um somewhat sort of idiosyncratic, you know, here's this kind of clever thing. Lindsay and I and a handful of others who are champions of this really love it and see its potential. I do hope that foundations will sort of invest in it, but I think a lot of the energy really has to come from faculty who can persuade local foundations to sort of invest in it. I mean, the way in which I have continued to support um my class is uh through my involvement with a local private foundation in Binghamton that uh gives money only within Binghamton and Broome County and is willing to give $10,000 uh to give students the chance to do that job for them within Binghamton and Broome County. I think that's sort of the argument that Lindsay was making that students can introduce um grant makers to communities and organizations that they otherwise wouldn't. And I think it's really sort of up to faculty in programs like Lindsay's and mine to be in conversation with uh funders who might be willing to support to hand over some of their grant making to students in this way.

SPEAKER_02 54:31

Yeah, there's something really interesting that I'd not really thought about. And it it does, I guess, it's on a spectrum with participatory grant making, but in in that sense where actually there's again self-interest on the part of the foundations in making their own grant making more effective and essentially kind of outsourcing that in some way, but in but doing so in a way that's not extractive because also the students themselves are getting benefit through participating. So it's you know perhaps a sort of genuine win-win, of which there aren't that many in philanthropy. So um, but yeah, really, really fascinating. I'll be really, really interested to see where this area goes in in future. Um just remain to say thanks ever so much, David and Lindsay, for for your time. It's been really great to have a chance to talk to you about this. I'll put links in the show notes to places where people can find articles that you've both written um about this uh and places where they can find more on the on the courses um that you both run and also on experiential philanthropy more broadly. Um and yeah, just wish you all the best with all your work in the future.

SPEAKER_04 55:26

Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Yes, thank you, Rodri.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Lindsay and David for joining me on this 100th episode. Uh, not that I'm sure they knew that at the time because I didn't decide what order I was putting things out in until after the event. Um, but I was delighted that they were my guests for this one. Um I will put links in the show notes to places where you can find a bit more on some of the research that Lindsay and David have done around experiential philanthropy and the courses that they run. I'll also put some links to some things I've written that might be of interest. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. Uh, lots of articles there, also kind of shorter guides, lots of news updates, all the back episodes of this podcast and much, much more these days. So plenty there for you to get your teeth into. Uh if you want to follow me on social media, you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, you can find me a little bit on Blue Sky as well, uh, but I don't do an enormous amount there, so LinkedIn's probably the best place to look for me. If you've got ideas for people that I could talk to on the podcast or topics that we could cover, uh, do drop me a line. You can find the contact details at the website. Uh if you think the podcast is interesting and you know somebody else that you think might be interested, do uh make a recommendation in person. I think that counts for a lot. Uh, if you've got the time as well and you're so inclined, if you could leave us a nice review wherever you uh pick up your podcasts, that would also be really helpful in terms of boosting us up the algorithms. Other than that, it just remains to say thanks ever so much for listening and I will see you next time. Bye.