Not Just Business: Understanding the Ethical Presumptions and Implications of Strategic Philanthropy in India

• In Event: Funding for the common good?

Abstract

Recognising the discursive institutionalisation of philanthrocapitalism (Bishop, 2006)—or the market-turn in philanthropic thought and practice—this study seeks to examine the ethical considerations that continue to determine the practice of philanthropic giving in India. It centres practitioner perspectives in understanding the ethical premises of philanthropic decision-making. Practice in that, is itself viewed as an intervention into discourse, mediated by the ethical sensibilities borne by practitioners or philanthropoids (Whitaker, 1974), and as such, as a site of critique that can redefine the ethical and political possibilities of strategic philanthropy.

While strategic philanthropy may be analytically delinked from marketised models of giving (Jenkins, 2011; Kramer, 2019), in practice and discourse, it has been largely understood in its association with the business-turn in nonprofit and philanthropic organising. The imbuing of market principles into the nonprofit sector has been widely discussed, particularly in the context of the transformations in philanthropy. Studies have inquired into the conceptual (Jenkins, 2011; McGoey, 2012), functional (Lambin & Surender, 2021; Schnurbein, 2016), and discursive (Bosworth, 2011; Wilson, 2014) implications of what has been regarded as a growing marketisation of philanthropy (Nickel & Eikenberry, 2009). There has also been a conspicuous recognition of limits of this model of philanthropic giving (Haydon et al., 2021), and critical perspectives have pointed to the ethical paucity of philanthrocapitalism—attributed to the inevitable instrumentalism of its ‘business mindset’ or to its presumed complicity in the status-quo. Rigorous research and inquiry into its ethical presumptions and implications however have been sparse. Inquiries into the articulations of philanthrocapitalism outside of the Global North have also been limited, and existing scholarship has continued to be predominated by the experiences of North America and Europe. Scholarship has now begun to recognise this epistemic bias (Srivastava & Oh, 2010), urging a contestation of the marginalisation of the Global South in the academic discourse on philanthropy.

It is in this context that this research seeks to understand the perceptions, sites, and articulations of ethics in the practice of strategic philanthropy in India. It draws from interviews with the representatives of nine philanthropic foundations operating in India, along with qualitative content analysis of digital communication materials from the foundations. The findings of the study provide rich insights into philanthropic practice in India as it adopts the logics of the market in its self-definition and organising. The ethical presumptions and implications of strategic philanthropy, the research argues, are situated in perceptions of its telos, principles, and methods—increasingly articulated in a vocabulary of business and management. It emphasises the need for further inquiry and for an analytical shift in the academic discourse on strategic philanthropy to centre considerations of ethical responsibility. It recasts philanthropy as inevitably also a political act, with profound ethical implications.

This research was undertaken as a part of the 2022 Philanthropy Research Fellowship at the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP), Ashoka University, India. A working paper draft is available at: https://csip.ashoka.edu.in/reports-from-research-fellowship/

References

- Bishop, M. (2006, February 25). The birth of philanthrocapitalism. The Economist. http://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/02/25/the-birth-of-philanthrocapitalism
- Bosworth, D. (2011). The Cultural Contradictions of Philanthrocapitalism. Society, 48(5), 382–388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-011-9466-z
- Haydon, S., Jung, T., & Russell, S. (2021). ‘You’ve Been Framed’: A critical review of academic discourse on philanthrocapitalism. International Journal of Management Reviews, 23(3), 353–375. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12255
- Jenkins, G. W. (2011). Who’s Afraid of Philanthrocapitalism ? Case Western Reserve Law Review, 61(3), 1–70.
- Kramer, L. (2019, October 31). Making philanthropy more business-like is a big mistake. India Development Review. https://idronline.org/making-philanthropy-more-business-like-is-a-big-mistake/
- Lambin, R., & Surender, R. (2021). The rise of big philanthropy in global social policy: Implications for policy transfer and analysis. Journal of Social Policy, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279421000775
- McGoey, L. (2012). Philanthrocapitalism and its critics. Poetics, 40(2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2012.02.006
- Nickel, P. M., & Eikenberry, A. M. (2009). A Critique of the Discourse of Marketized Philanthropy. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(7), 974–989. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764208327670
- Schnurbein, G. von. (2016). Measuring Impact and Recognizing Success. In T. Jung, S. D. Phillips, & J. Harrow (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philanthropy (pp. 468–481). Routledge.
- Srivastava, P., & Oh, S.-A. (2010). Private foundations, philanthropy, and partnership in education and development: Mapping the terrain. International Journal of Educational Development, 30(5), 460–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2010.04.002
- Whitaker, B. (1974). The philanthropoids: Foundations and society. Morrow.
- Wilson, J. (2014). Fantasy machine: Philanthrocapitalism as an ideological formation. Third World Quarterly, 35(7), 1144–1161.

Author

• Bhakti Patil, University of St Andrews