Band 11, Heft 2 - Special Issue: Philanthropy and Social Impact, Guest Edited by James Ferris and Elizabeth Graddy

Instrumental philanthropy has gained attention and popularity in recent decades as an approach to maximizing the impact of giving. This article evaluates the suitability of the nonprofit institutional form, specifically the US public charity, as a vehicle for instrumental philanthropy. The analysis identifies an incongruity between the informational requirements of instrumental philanthropy and the form and theory of the nonprofit. An alternative theory of licensure is proposed to illustrate the difficulty of the information problem. Analysis suggests that the viability of instrumental philanthropy hinges upon information costs. Several public policy options are considered as means of better supporting instrumental philanthropy, presuming that allocative efficiency in the production of public benefits is a desirable public policy objective.

Governments in some of the world’s richest nations appear to be caught in a double challenge of declining social budgets even as social needs are increasing. In this context, Outcomes Based Commissioning (OBC), has been suggested as one way in which ‘more’ social services can be provided for ‘less’ public resources. This form of commissioning is often linked with a new financing tool for social services, referred to in the US as ‘Pay for Success and Payment by Results in the UK or as a ‘Social Impact Bond’ (SIB). However, to date, this approach is under-theorised and this is a limiting factor both for shaping a research and evaluation agenda around SIBs and in understanding how such instruments might develop in future. Without a theoretical rationale for SIBs, it is not straightforward to assess whether, and how well, they have achieved their goals, and how they might be developed further. In this paper we consider two broad approaches to theorising SIBs. One draws on public administration theories, the other on innovation theories. To date, SIBs have often been theorised as the logical next step in the New Public Management (NPM). But NPM itself is a contested theory and recent theoretical innovations in public administration, particularly the concept of New Public Governance might provide a more useful theoretical framework. A second broad approach through which to understand SIBs is their potential to improve the rate and dissemination of innovation. There are many different innovation models that might be applied to better understanding of SIBs. We look first at the concept of Open Innovation with its focus on distributed innovation processes in which knowledge flows across organisational boundaries and more recent articulations – Open Innovation 2.0 – which place greater emphasis on mixed economy collabarations involving: industry; government; universities; and communities and users (the so-called ‘quadruple helix’) to solve societal challenges. We go on to consider social innovation, with its clearer focus on using social means to deliver social outcomes and whether SIBs can be theorised through this lens. No one model is entirely satisfactory as an explanatory framework for SIBs and we conclude by suggesting that a supporting theory combining NPG with elements of Open Innovation 2.0 and social innovation might be a productive approach for shaping future research and, in addition, might suggest some future directions for the next generation of SIBs.

This study fills a gap in research on the philanthropic outcomes of political events. More specifically, it provides empirical evidence to supplement anecdotal reports that nonprofit organizations experienced a substantial increase in donations following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Based on daily transaction data from an online giving platform, the study uses random-effect panel Ordinary Least Squares models to examine whether and how charitable giving patterns changed after Election Day 2016. Overall, our analyses show no evidence of increased giving due to the election; however, gender differences are apparent. Women donated in greater amounts than men following Election Day, and they appear to have targeted relevant progressive charities with their giving.

Research on foundations public policy influence, traditionally, focuses on policy reform. Largely unexplored is the influence that philanthropic funding has on recipient communities. Unlike previous research, this study uses a newly compiled dataset on immigration-related giving to study how funding for political citizenship services, integration services, and government-related advocacy influences the identification of deportable immigrants across the continental United States. The quantitative analysis indicates foundations exert indirect influence within local immigration policy outputs through the use of targeted philanthropic grants. However, the effect of the indirect influence depends upon the policy activities receiving funding. Philanthropic foundations’ providing funding for political citizenship and integration services lead to decreases in immigration enforcement. While funding for government-related advocacy can help increase immigration enforcement, it can also help address issues of equity in immigration enforcement. Interviews with foundation grantees provide further insights into how the funding of these policy activities can alter the relationship between the philanthropic community and the government agencies implementing U.S. immigration policy.