Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Evaluations in Organizational Philanthropy

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1637182 Brayden King Vontrese Pamphile Northwestern University How do philanthropic foundations determine which nonprofits should receive their funds? The value of a nonprofit is multifaceted and difficult to assess, yet foundations have limited resources and must decide how to allocate funds. This study examines how grantmakers (i.e., those responsible for donations) assess the merit of nonprofits at two very different kinds of private foundations: corporate and independent. Understanding how grantmakers come to see nonprofits as worthy of funds is important, as foundations are vehicles through which the most affluent Americans influence how society approaches social problems. This project will yield information about how private foundations in the United States approach a broad swath of societally relevant outcomes. The results will have practical implications for understanding patterns of resource allocation within the nonprofit sector, as the project will reveal how different types of foundations conceptualize social problems, and specific nonprofits tackling those problems, as worth funding. Moreover, results will be relevant to ongoing policy debates about the role of private philanthropy generally and corporate philanthropy in particular. Findings from this research will be translated into publically assessable outlets including policy briefs, op-ed columns, the popular press, and practitioner conferences. Empirically, a total of 80 interviews will be conducted with grantmakers employed by 40 different corporate foundations and 40 different independent foundations. Ethnographic observations of one corporate foundation and one independent foundation are used to provide a greater understanding of the context and for triangulation purposes. Theoretically, the project bridges insights from organizational theory and the sociology of evaluation. Specifically, the project examines the nature of competing organizational goals in shaping the evaluation process. The project explores whether and why uncertainty associated with competing goals leads evaluators to rely on cues outside their organization, such as the behavior of high-status peers. Additionally, the project explores whether and why unified goals orient evaluators toward reliance on internal cues such as fit with foundation mission and history. The project further develops the sociology of evaluation by detailing the mechanisms by which organizational context and structure influence how evaluators assess the merit of different entities. This approach recognizes that evaluative practices, like other organizational practices, are shaped by the fields in which they are embedded. The findings also have implications for organizational studies and for nonprofit scholarship more generally.