Six PhD projects at Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy to extend fundraising knowledge
Howard Lake | 5 November 2014 | News
The first six PhD research projects to be undertaken at the Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy at the University of Plymouth have been announced. Two further projects are expected to be added early next year.
The researchers, who include professional fundraisers, will tackle topics ranging from public attitudes to giving and fundraising, through rituals in fundraising events to the psychology behind solicitors’ attitudes to charitable bequests.
The Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy was launched in January 2014 by Professors Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang. It is designed to provide philanthropists and fundraisers with the robust and reliable research information they need to build sustainable philanthropy. It explicitly focuses on research with practical applications, so it aims not just to measure philanthropy but also to grow it.
Professor Jen Shang, director of research at the CSP, said she was delighted at the wide range of applicable doctoral research projects proposed to the Centre. She said:
“This research will explore what happens at the interface of fundraising and philanthropy, establishing totally new fields of knowledge in areas such as attitude formation and fundraisers’ moral identity. They show that fundraising and philanthropy are two sides of the same coin, and there’s no sudden break between the two.”
Plymouth’s first fundraising PhD projects
These are the topics that the six researchers will be studying.
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1) The ‘rituals’ of fundraising events
Malene Fregil
Full-time research student, Plymouth University
Consulting partner, Ingerfair, Norway and Denmark
Malene will explore the various types of rituals involved in fundraising events, how they are currently practiced, what might be the national/local differences in such events and how additional value may be created for supporters.
2) How digital fundraising can co-create social meaning
Sophie Kong
Full-time research student, Plymouth University
Sophie will examine which are the optimal forms of engagement in the digital environment that might foster giving. She will look at how fundraising rituals may emerge in the digital space as a method of social-meaning co-creation, and the role of communal-oriented online communities.
Plymouth University’s Development and Alumni Relations Office are helping make this possible by supporting Sophie through a Santander Scholarship.
3) The psychology behind solicitors’ attitudes to charitable bequests
Lucy Lowthian
Fundraising manager, York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Lucy will explore how the interaction between solicitors and their clients may, or may not, enhance the legacy giving experience for donors.The study should help develop an evidence-based syllabus for legacy giving training for solicitors.
She will study which psychological factors, in addition to social norms, could be used to make solicitors more comfortable in initiating conversations with their clients about leaving a charitable bequest. She will also look at how far such conversations can influence donors’ legacy giving choices.
4) What drives public attitudes to charitable giving and fundraising?
Ian MacQuillin
Manager, Rogare – The Fundraising Think Tank, Plymouth University
Ian is studying the applied ethics of fundraising. He wants to find out how individuals form, express and change their fundamental views about what charitable giving is about, and what it ‘should’ be about. He will study how this shapes their attitudes about the practice of fundraising in its various forms.
In particular he will look at how the charitable sector might influence these perceptions to create an environment that is more favorable to sustainable philanthropy.
5) The role that multiple identities play in the decision to leave a charitable bequest
Christine Punter
Former legacy promotions manager, NSPCC
Christine will be exploring how Irish people cultivate legacy giving within their national context. She will look at how Irish people manage multiple identities through their life span and how this identity maturation and life adaptation influences their legacy giving decisions.
She will also look at moral identity, Catholic identify, and rural/urban identity and how these might mediate in choosing to leave a legacy.
This will be the first research to explore the contribution that philanthropic psychology might make to the profession of legacy fundraising in Ireland and beyond.
6) How asking for major gifts affects fundraisers’ ‘moral maturation’
Jessica Silye
Fundraising manager, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust
Jessica will study “how major gift fundraisers’ moral maturation (moral identity, complexity and metacognitive ability) and moral conation (moral courage, efficacy and ownership) might influence the quality of major donors’ giving experience (satisfaction, commitment, trust, moral maturation and moral conation)”.
To do so she will explore “the mediating role of communal relationship building between major gift officers, major donors, and other key stakeholders”.
Her findings should help the Centre better support fundraisers professionally through a greater understanding of how the act of fundraising impacts them on different levels.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.