Send us a text In this episode we talk to Liv Egholm, Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School, and Pia Gerber, Director of Freudenberg Stiftung, about philanthropy and democracy in Europe. Including: What is the core role of philanthropy within a democratic society, which differentiates it from either state or market provision? Can philanthropy be used to strengthen democracy, or is it inherently anti-democratic, because it offers a means for those with wealth to bypass the electoral s...
Jul 15, 2025•57 min•Season 1Ep. 86
Send us a text On this episode of the Philanthropisms podcast we talk to Alisha Fernandez Miranda, author of Someone's Gotta Give (out 5th August), a comic novel about the struggles of an American former fundraiser to balance motherhood, life in the UK and a new job working as a philanthropy adviser. Including: How did the book come about? How did the experience of working in philanthropy inform the book? Which archetypes and situations are people who work in nonprofits and philanthropy most lik...
Jul 10, 2025•45 min
Send us a text In the tenth edition of our podcast partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we talk to more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes. In this episode we hear from: Bouke Klein Teeselink (Assistant Professor in Economics at the Department of Political Economy, King's College London), about his research on how political affiliation affects charitable giving. Elizabeth Dale (Frey Foundatio...
Jun 26, 2025•56 min
Send us a text In this episode of the Philanthropisms podcast we talk to Róisín Wood, CEO of the Community Foundation Northern Ireland (CFNI), about the landscape for philanthropy and civil society in Northern Ireland. Including: How and why was CFNI originally formed, and what is the organisation’s focus today? What is the history and current context for civil society in NI? What is the overall makeup of the NI civil society sector, in terms of formalised vs informal orgs, large vs small, diffe...
Jun 12, 2025•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 85
Send us a text In this episode we take a look at the recent announcement by Bill Gates that he now plans to give away 99% of his wealth and spend down his foundation over the next 20 years. Including: Should we be excited about this news? Why has the announcement been made now? Should it be seen in part as a response to the Trump administration? Do the sums stack up? Can we square what has been said so far about the total amounts that will be given away with the projected annual spending rates? ...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 84
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Allison Fine (President of Every.org and nonprofit tech expert) about the impact of AI on philanthropy, and how it can be used to make fundraising more relational at scale. Including: Is everyday giving in decline? If so, what are the key drivers? Are there particular declines among certain demographics or age groups? Has this led to an over-reliance on a small group of donors giving larger amounts? What are the practical and ethical issues with this? Ha...
May 15, 2025•49 min•Season 1Ep. 83
Send us a text In this episode we discuss risk, success and failure in the context of international development and philanthropy, with Sarah Jeffrey (Vitol Foundation), Victoria Tayler (Risk Pool Fund) and Lonnie Hackett (Healthy Learners). Including What is the Risk Pool Fund and how does it work? What are the key market failures or needs it is designed to address? Are grantees often unwilling to highlight “failures” to their funders, for fear of losing future support? Are funders less likely t...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 82
Send us a text In this episode we discuss participatory grantmaking with Natasha Friend, Director of Camden Giving, and Maria Ahmed, a participant in Camden Giving's own participatory grantmaking work. Including: How did Camden Giving’s experiments with participatory grantmaking first come about? How does it work in practice? What has been the primary driver for keeping going? What have been the main insights from grantmaking meetings? Do the citizen grantmakers have full autonomy over grant dec...
Apr 17, 2025•52 min•Season 1Ep. 81
Send us a text In the ninth edition of our podcast partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we talk to more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes. In this episode we hear from: Mark Ørberg (Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School), about his research on Enterprise Foundations Michele Fugiel Garnter (Carleton University, Ottawa; and formerly University of St Andrews) abo...
Apr 03, 2025•58 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Marina Jones, Executive Director of Development & Public Affairs at the English National Opera and project lead on the history of fundraising for the fundraising think tank Rogare. Including: Why is a historical perspective on fundraising valuable? Is fundraising a particularly hidden part of the history of charity/philanthropy? If so, why? Are there useful practical lessons modern fundraisers can learn from their historical counterparts about techni...
Mar 20, 2025•53 min
Send us a text In this episode, we talk to Farai Chideya, journalist, writer, academic and lead author of a recent report from Bridgespan Group, "Philanthropy for a Multiracial Democracy: How Investing in Pluralism Can Open the Aperture for Democracy Funders". We discuss: Why is pluralism so important as an ideal, and what barriers/threats prevent it being realised? Why is it particularly important to emphasise multiracialism as an aspect of pluralism? What does it look like in practice to foste...
Mar 06, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 78
Send us a text In this episode we discuss climate philanthropy with Edouard Morena, Senior Lecturer in French Studies and International Politics at the University of London Institute in Paris. Including: How much philanthropy is currently aimed at climate issues? Can philanthropy play a meaningful role with respect to an issue of the scale of climate? If so, what is that role? In terms of existing climate philanthropy, what is the balance between downstream activity (i.e. direct interventions de...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 77
Send us a text In this episode we talk to political philosopher Ted Lechterman about why philanthropy should be an important topic of study for philosophers, and what some of the key questions a philosophical approach raises are. Including: Why is a philosophical perspective on philanthropy valuable/important? Is there a danger that philosophical critiques of philanthropy too often confine themselves to the realms of ideal theory, or fall into the trap of comparing worst-case examples of philant...
Feb 06, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 76
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Daniel Stid, Director of Lyceum Labs and former Program Director of U.S. Democracy at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, about philanthropy, pluralism and democracy. Including: Why has the long-standing consensus on the value of philanthropic pluralism been challenged in recent years? Is there a danger of being naïve about pluralism, and holding up an ideal that it will result in a dynamic equilibrium where views from all sides are able to be hear...
Jan 23, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 75
Send us a text In the eighth edition of our podcast partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we hear from more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes. In this episode we hear from: Marlene Walk ( University of Freiburg, Germany) and Jamie Levine Daniel (New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service) , about their research into how nonprofits can use social media most effectiv...
Jan 09, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 74
Send us a text In this episode we look ahead to 2025, and offer our annual set of predictions-that-aren't-really-predictions-but-more-like-thoughts-about-interesting-trends. This year we consider: UK Grantmaking on pause Implementing policies to boost giving Debate over tax relief for charitable giving US foundations under populist attack Next Gen philanthropy and new models Continued growth of DAFs Closing space for civil society in the US and beyond More UK charities to close Rebalancing head ...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 73
Send us a text In this episode we discuss social investment and impact investing with Scott Greenhalgh, Chair of Social and Sustainable Capital. Including: Is there a difference between social investment and impact investing? If so, what is it? Do we need to be clearer about this distinction? What is the relationship of ESG investing to impact investing and social investment? What is the current size and shape of the impact investment market in the UK (and globally)? How big a determining factor...
Nov 28, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 72
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Milos Maricic (entrepreneur and founder of the Altruist League) and Giuseppe Ugazio (Edmond de Rothschild Assistant Professor of Behavioral Philanthropy at the Geneva Finance Research Institute), the co-editors of the newly published Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy. We discuss: How the book came about, what is in it, and what the aim of it is. What are some of the key opportunities that AI might bring for philanthropy and c...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 71
Send us a text In this episode we explore the way that philanthropic donations are taxed. Why do so many governments around the world choose to offer tax breaks for charitable giving? What is the history behind this? How are tax breaks for philanthropy designed and implemented, and are they effective? Including: What are the possible theoretical justifications for a government choosing to offer tax breaks on philanthropy? What are the tax base rationale, the subsidy rationale and the pluralism r...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 70
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Lisa Greer, philanthropist and author of "The Essential Fundraiser's Handbook" and "Philanthropy Revolution", about how philanthropy and fundraising interact and what we could be doing better. Including: Have fundraisers become too reliant on the tools they use, rather than the deeper skills of relationship building? Do the incentive and reward structures in many nonprofit fundraising departments make it harder for fundraisers to focus on long-term relat...
Oct 17, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 69
Send us a text In the seventh edition of our partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we hear from more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes. In this episode we hear from: Georg von Schnurbein (Centre for Philanthropy Studies, University of Basel), on research looking at specialist "foundation investment funds" in Germany and whether they facilitate sustainable investing. Joris Schröder (Vrije Univ...
Oct 03, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 68
Send us a text In this episode we take a deep dive into the relationship between philanthropy and social justice. Does philanthropy necessarily deliver social justice; does it only do so under certain conditions, or does it sometimes actively get in the way of social justice? Including: Philanthropy as an individual act vs philanthropy as a societal mechanism, and why this creates a tension between emphasis on individual liberty and emphasis on justice. How changes in the understanding of proper...
Sep 19, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 67
Send us a text In this episode we take a deep dive into the world of philanthropic foundations. What are they, how did they evolve, and what light can their history shed on continuing debates about the role of foundations in our society today? Including: What are the key features that define philanthropic foundations? Are these consistent around the world and across time periods? Why do foundations often act as a lightning rod for wider concerns about philanthropy? The historical origins of west...
Sep 05, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 66
Send us a text In this episode, we sat down to talk about how we understand and measure global generosity with Pamala Wiepking, Stead Family Chair in International Philanthropy and Associate Professor of Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI in Indianapolis (and also Professor of Societal Significance of Charitable Lotteries at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands). Including: Is “philanthropy” a helpful word in a global context? If not, why not: do people...
Jul 18, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 65
Send us a text In the sixth edition of our partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we hear from more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes. In this episode we hear from: René Bekkers ( Vrije University, Amsterdam), about his work on measuring coherence and consensus within the growing field of nonprofit studies Tara Bryan (University of Nebraska, Omaha) & Vladimír Hyánek (Masaryk Universtiy, Br...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 64
Send us a text In this episode we talk to philanthropy and social change experts Mandy van Deven and Chiara Cattaneo about their work on building and resourcing narrative power within civil society. Including: What is narrative power and why is it such an important tool for CSOs? Does narrative work tend to focus more on developing narratives that are relevant to cause areas in which philanthropic organisations work, or on developing narratives about the nature and role of philanthropy itself? W...
Jun 20, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 63
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Kate Symondson, Head of Philanthropy at the Symondson Foundation, about family foundations, grantmaking & next gen philanthropy. Including How do the various members of a family foundation agree on what to fund and how? Which aspects of giving as a family are most rewarding, and which most challenging? Does doing philanthropy together have an impact on inter-family dynamics? Do Next Gen wealth holders have distinctive characteristics when it comes to...
Jun 06, 2024•58 min•Season 1Ep. 62
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Ian MacQuillin, Founder and Director of the fundraising think tank Rogare about the promise and perils of disintermediation in the charity sector, what a theory of fundraising ethics looks like, and why knowing more about the history of fundraising is important. Including: How did Rogare came about? What are the aims of the organisation, and what are its key themes/areas of interest currently? What is the current state of academic research on fundraising...
May 23, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 61
Send us a text In this episode we talk to Fozia Irfan OBE, Director of Impact & Influence at BBC Children in Need and recent Churchill Fellow, about her report Transformative Philanthropy: A Manual for Social Change , and about how philanthropy in the UK needs to change if it is to become a better tool for delivering social justice. Including: What does it mean to apply a social justice framing to philanthropy? Is this applicable to all foundations, regardless of cause area? Is the conversat...
May 09, 2024•1 hr
Send us a text In this episode we talk to historian Anelise Hanson Shrout about her fascinating new book Aiding Ireland: The Great Famine and the rise of transnational philanthropy. Including: Was the global philanthropic response to the Irish famine unprecedented at that point? Is the response best explained by the fact the famine was able to act as an “empty signifier” which allowed a wide range of groups to interpret the situation according to their own worldview and to imbue their giving wit...
Apr 25, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 59
