Evolving Philanthropic Forms: A Typology for the Continuum of Giving

• In Event: Rethinking how we Talk About Philanthropy

Abstract

Philanthropy is in a flux. Over the last decade, many innovative, technology-enabled philanthropic forms have come up such as crowdfunding, microgrants, social-startups, and societal platforms. These new forms are ushering a strategic inflection point for philanthropy (Hecht, 2008), alongside existent forms such as household giving, workplace giving, volunteering, social enterprises, and foundations.

Typically, philanthropic forms have been characterized by personal action (Wilson & Musick, 1997) (Barman, The Social Bases of Philanthropy, 2017) or by systematic effort (Anheier & Leat, 2002). We define philanthropic forms as private and voluntary (formal or informal) initiatives involving personally valuable resources devoted for public good, focused on sustained social impact and improved quality of life.

To understand philanthropic forms better, several researchers have analyzed (Salamon & Anheier, 1992) (Barman, An Institutional Approach to Donor Control: From Dyadic Ties to a Field-Level Analysis, 2007) (Moody & Payton, 2008) and classified them, using criteria such as mission and resources or instrumental and expressive outcomes (Frumkin, 2006), locus (developed and developing countries centric (Pandey, Coninck, & Sagar, 2021), and approach (customary and entrepreneurial) (Maclean, Harvey, Yang, & Mueller, 2021). Though these typologies provide important insights into all potential forms and the impact of technology (McCully, 2019) (Gupta, Kumar, & Karam, 2020), they do not yet integrate the factors of technology and funding into anticipating new forms. Such a typology can provide philanthropic form choices to stakeholders thereby enable more profound philanthropic goals and commitment (Bandura, 1991).

Some of the newer philanthropic forms are combinations made possible by technologies; e.g., informal giving and microgrants (Özdemir, et al., 2013), giving circles and crowdfunding (Butticè, Franzoni, Rossi-Lamastra, & Rovelli, 2018), and privately-owned proprietary standards and public societal platforms.

Societal platforms are an interesting development in philanthropic countries like India. They are ‘digital-public-goods’ that use a shared digital infrastructure to enable diverse players to come together to create a network of engagement, agency and inclusion at scale (Purohit, 2021). Such platforms have uplifted more than a billion people in India. We can find examples of variations of societal platforms globally: Suomi.fi, Altinn (Norwegian sovereign digital platform), and the SPID project of Italy (Choudhary, Kaushik, & Bharadwaj, 2021).

To classify such forms and develop a new typology we propose three axes corresponding to three main stakeholders (Chapman, Louis, & Masser, 2022): donors, beneficiaries, and philanthropic organizations. For donors, technology has enabled philanthropists to form collectives with shared goals and resources. For beneficiaries, technology has made access easier, provided a platform to express requirements and, crucially to co-evolve better solutions (Ostrander, 2007). Finally, for organizations, technology has helped uncover new business models.

We will use a conceptual literature research methodology and exploratory interviews with Indian technology-driven philanthropists to define a new typology synthesizing the relationship between the three stakeholders and technology. We will define a research agenda to exploring how relationships between the donors and beneficiaries are evolving as a result of technology and newer business models towards a flatter world.

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Authors

• Divya Sethi, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Lucas Meijs, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Marius Van Dijke, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University