Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing最新文献

This essay explores the crucial yet often overlooked role of religious identity in philanthropy, focusing on how Christian hegemony influences the sector's practices and priorities. While scholars have extensively studied the impact of social identities such as race, gender, and sexuality on philanthropic giving, the significance of religious diversity remains largely neglected. Building upon the existing literature, this essay argues that understanding and embracing religious diversity is essential for fully realizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) within philanthropy.

This article examines the philanthropy/marketing interface with reference to celebrity philanthropy, focusing on the American YouTube star, MrBeast, and the Chinese government regulation of celebrities and social media influencers. Celebrity nowadays can refer to film and music stars with international broadcast media visibility and to people who create their own fame through social media and appeals to niche markets/audiences (social media influencers). While the United States of America has historically used tax incentives to encourage elite philanthropy as a matter of individual choice, the Chinese government is regulating the cultural industries to promote and direct celebrity and influencer philanthropy towards government-endorsed development goals. Comparing debates about MrBeast philanthropy with the operation of philanthropy in China highlights different ideas about celebrity/influencer philanthropy and the role it can play in supporting public welfare.

Income plays a crucial role in shaping pro-social behavior, particularly in the context of charitable giving. However, existing literature reveals mixed findings when dealing with the nuances in this relationship. This study aims to evaluate the main hypotheses concerning the influence of income on charitable giving, drawing on data from a 2021 national survey with 2099 respondents in Brazil. This study contributes with new evidence to the topic within the context of a middle-income Latin American country, an aspect often overlooked in previous studies. Our analysis focuses on how an individual's household income influences three key aspects: the likelihood of giving, the amount given, and the proportion of household income donated. The findings indicate that individuals from higher-income households donate larger sums of money but the same proportion of income as other income households. Household income does not significantly affect the likelihood of donating or the proportion of income donated.

MrBeast is the world's most successful individual YouTube content creator. Having made his name with videos of high-concept challenges and stunts, he has subsequently produced a series of viral videos centring on acts of philanthropy – drawing both praise and criticism in the process. This paper attempts to place MrBeast's approach in the context of wider historical and current debates about the nature and role of philanthropy, in order to ascertain what (if anything) is genuinely novel about it, and how we should understand it in relation to models of philanthropy that have gone before. The paper considers “Beast Philanthropy” through a range of lenses − aesthetic, ethical, economic and political − and what these can tell us about the key questions we should be asking and whether, on balance, we should view this phenomenon positively or not.

Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson is the most watched person on earth. There are undeniably far worse figures who could be commanding such attention, but there remains uncertainty about his methods of philanthropic giving and what Beast Philanthropy ultimately hopes to achieve. Beast Philanthropy claims that, through entertainment-based giving, they are inspiring a new generation of young people to be more civic-minded. However, this jars harshly with the hedonistic indulgence of many MrBeast videos, which delight in spectacular wastefulness and luxury consumerism. Moreover, Beast Philanthropy fosters both passive and romanticized notions of generosity, conditioning viewers to think of their attention as a gift and that giving should be always and endlessly fun. Finally, the insistent anti-politicism of Beast Philanthropy entails a refusal to offer even the slightest of opinions on the underlying causes of suffering and inequality. This deliberately incurious worldview may promote a narrow and stunted perspective on how meaningful social and political change is achieved. However, there are reasons to be optimistic and open-minded, and philanthropic foundations should not outright dismiss the prospects for Beast-style giving.

There is a tendency in the study of philanthropy to see each new innovation or movement as transformative and distinct from what has come before. Before MrBeast there was philanthrocapitalism and before long there will be another shiny new toy for those of us who research or practice philanthropy to study. Happily, Rhodri Davies' analysis of MrBeast's philanthropy avoids falling into the trap of seeing novelty at every turn. Instead, he presents a nuanced and measured analysis of the criticisms of MrBeast and of his philanthropic endeavours, weighing up where the mud sticks and where it does not. This response explores the relative novelty of MrBeast's approach to philanthropy and of the criticisms that have been levied at it.

Numerous studies have sought to understand why philanthropists are not giving more to charity. Two recently published studies identified a lack of faith in charities and an absence of trust as significant barriers to philanthropy. We report on the findings of a qualitative study which sought to examine the extent to which trust, and relationships influence the wealthy to give or withhold funding to charities. We employed in-depth qualitative research methods and semi-structured, conversational-style, interviews as the major form of data collection. We utilised Braun and Clarke's ‘reflexive thematic analysis’ method of thematic analysis which gave rise to 4 key themes and 9 sub-themes. Findings revealed that trust underpins the relationships that philanthropists have with charities and is an important conduit to forging an ongoing relationship. Trust is frequently relied upon as a proxy for evidence and an absence of trust will usually lead a philanthropist to withhold funding.

In recent issues of this journal, Solow, Symes and Webb (2023, 2024) present a new way to structure legacies by creating an intermediate fund which they call a Master Fund. They prove some interesting properties of this approach, comparing it with the traditional approach whereby the whole bequest is transferred to a Charity Fund. Their main mathematical results are obtained under continuous compounding, and numerical results are derived under (a more realistic) annual compounding assumption. In this note, additional practical results are obtained mathematically under the assumption of annual compounding. Specifically, it is shown that using a Master Fund always results in a time after which the annual amount of money a beneficiary organisation receives is greater than that without using the Master Fund. While the foregoing statement might not be true for the net present value, conditions on the annual investment, disbursement and discount rates under which this is the case are also provided.

With a growing emphasis on empowering communities amongst the practices of philanthropic foundations, practitioners recognise the need for giving strategies grounded in communities of practice's contextual and contingent knowledge. This bringing of beneficiaries' lived experiences into grantmaking represents a wider recognition that sees gift-giving as a dialogical process that uses relationships with community beneficiaries as the point of departure for creating progressive forms of philanthropy, broadly referred to as ‘relational philanthropy’. Foundations that declare themselves as relational funders typically take a more trusting approach by offering more unrestricted, longer-term funding, simplifying reporting requirements, and empowering grantees to use the resources provided more flexibly. In this paper, we argue that relational philanthropy expresses a form of ‘relational work’, as it possesses a trust-based character that speaks to the reciprocal power of gift-giving, whereby both benefactors and beneficiaries receive value from the co-created, context-drivengift exchange: beneficiaries receive philanthropic resources (time, treasure, talent, ties) with more control over spending, while the benefactors gain grassroots insights that can inform future funding policies and practices. In this paper, we show that such reciprocity between funders and their beneficiaries is an important step towards empowering communities for three reasons: (1) by strengthening trust in, and sharing power with, their grantees, foundations empower them to engage more thoroughly with their communities; (2) by grantees communicating their community-level lived experiences to foundations, foundations can develop more informed and relevant grantmaking decisions, and; (3) as reciprocal exchanges are built on trust, this relational philanthropy creates social capital that strengthens relationships and solidarity across civil society.