IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Author "Benjamin, Lehn"

Browsing by Author "Benjamin, Lehn"

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Building Civic Infrastructure Organizations: The Lilly Endowment's Experiment to Grow Community Foundations
(2019-05) Wang, Xiaoyun; Benjamin, Lehn; Burlingame, Dwight; Guo, Chao; Ottoni-Wilhelm, Mark; Steensland, Brian
In the past 50 years, we have seen significant public and philanthropic investment in building civil society in countries around the globe. This includes initiating community foundations to support the development of vibrant communities and civic life. Yet we have little knowledge about why some initiatives bear fruit and others fail to do so. More specifically, why some community foundations initiated by institutional funders are able to garner local giving necessary to sustain themselves and others are not. This dissertation contributes to our knowledge about such initiatives by researching the Lilly Endowment’s GIFT Initiative (Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow), a project providing incentives to start nearly 60 new community foundations and revive 17 existing community foundations in Indiana since 1990. I employed mixed methods and three sources of data: historical archives, statistics of community foundations’ financial information and community demographics, and case studies of four community foundations. First, I found two existing explanations offered in the literature did not account for the lack of local support for the community foundations I studied. More specifically, I found that high level of income and wealth does not necessarily lead to high level of giving to community foundations and the lack of community identity is not the primary reason explaining community foundations’ struggles in attracting local donations. Rather the study shows that social capital is crucial for garnering local giving through the mechanism of facilitating information sharing. Second, I examined the long-term effects of matching grants, a key strategy used by Lilly Endowment to leverage local giving. I found that long-term provision of matching grants might reduce organizations’ incentives to seek funding sources on their own. My dissertation lends further insight into the sustainability of civic infrastructure organizations, a popular institutional model for building local civil society even today.
Eight Myths of Philanthropy
(Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), 2019) Benjamin, Lehn; Pasic, Amir; Freeman, Tyrone; Herzog, Patricia Snell; King, David; Konrath, Sara; Mesch, Debra; Osili, Una; Ottoni-Wilhelm, Mark; Practor, Andrea; Rooney, Patrick; Shaker, Genevieve; Wiepking, Pamala; Rolland Price, Abby; Smith Milway, Katie
In this practitioner-engaged article, the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy describe eight common myths of philanthropy. Myth busting these misconceptions, the article provides an overview of who gives, how, and with what impact. In so doing, the article contributes to a better understanding of the breadth and diversity of giving.
Get involved : stories of the Caribbean postcolonial black middle class and the development of civil society
(2018-03-07) Williams-Pulfer, Kim N.; Stanfield II., John H.; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Benjamin, Lehn; Steensland, Brian
The main research question of this project is: How do the narratives of Caribbean black middle class civil society within the bounds of the “post-postcolonial” state, explain the evolving yet current environment of local and postcolonial civil society development? Using the Bahamas as a case, this project explores the historical, political, cultural, and social conditions that supported the development of civil society within the context of a postcolonial society. Furthermore, an investigation via in-depth interviews, participation observation, archival, and contemporary document analysis contextualizes the present-day work of civil society leaders in the Bahamas. Methodologically, the project employs narrative analysis to uncover the perspectives, voices, and practices of black middle-class Bahamian civil society offering an unfolding, dynamic, and nuanced approach for understanding the historical legacies and contemporary structure of local civil society and philanthropy. The study focuses on three primary forms of narratives. These include the narratives of the past (historical), the narratives of expressive and aesthetic cultural practices, and the narratives of lived experience. The project locates that the development of civil society is linked to historical and cultural forces. The findings show that that the narratives of history, social, and artistic development foregrounds a hybrid model of civil society development drawn from the experience of slavery, colonialism, decolonization, as well as the emerging structures related to economic and political globalization. Furthermore, observed through resilience narratives, local civil society leaders negotiate the boundaries of hybridity in their understanding of their personal, social, and professional identities as well as the way in which they engage government, the public, as well as local and international funders.
Limited leadership: an examination of Houston nonprofit board diversity and whether selection processes and executive director perceptions of governance models affect composition
(2016-02-03) Seaworth, Angela D.; Cochran, Philip L.; Benjamin, Lehn; Mesch, Debra J.; Witkowski, Gregory R.
Nonprofit governing board diversity recently gained attention from scholars, and the changing demographics of the United States' population create urgency around understanding how to diversify nonprofit boards. This study examined nonprofit board diversity in the largest majority-minority city in the United States -- Houston, Texas -- which was also declared the most diverse city in the country in the 2010 Census. GuideStar was used to identify nonprofit organizations in the Houston metropolitan area with annual revenue of $250,000+ and were contactable. 712 executive directors were surveyed electronically; there was a 26% response rate yielding responses from 185 nonprofit organizations. The survey was designed in three sections to study board composition, board processes and whether or not the executive director's perception of the governance model would influence the diversity ratio on an organization's board, and the analyses correspond with those three sections. The study found Houston's nonprofit boards are 9% more diverse than the national average and that Caucasians continue to be overrepresented in governing roles. Other composition findings were that the diversity ratio for board members under 35 years old is beginning to mirror the Houston population and that there was statistical significance between board members being 65 years+ and a lower diversity ratio on the board; however, there was no evidence that suggested nonprofit boards are more diverse in diverse communities. The study identified a gender gap in executive committee service, with a mode of one female serving on these committees despite that fact women make up 46% of all nonprofit board members. No relationship was found between diversity ratios and board procedures or the executive director's perception of the organization's governance model. Other findings were that Houston boards use executive committees at twice the rate of the national average, and that there is direct contradiction between the perceived value of diversity and what characteristics are considered important when recruiting board members. This study ruled out simple solutions for increasing board diversity through board procedures, and it identified areas for future research regarding governance models, the alignment of recruiting characteristics with board diversity and gender equality in leadership.
Philanthropy, policy, and politics : power and influence of health care nonprofit interest groups on the implementation of health care policy
(2018-03-29) Qaddoura, Fady A.; Burlingame, Dwight F.; Benjamin, Lehn; Menachemi, Nir; Kennedy, Sheila
Nonprofit organizations that “speak for, act for, and look after the interests of their constituents when they interact with government are, by any definition of political science, interest groups.” Indiana’s recent implementation of the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0 (HIP 2.0) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) opened a window of opportunity to closely examine the role of nonprofits in shaping the implementation of health care policy. Existing literature on health and human service nonprofit organizations did not examine in depth the role and influence of nonprofits as interest groups in the implementation of public policy. This study examines a deeper research question that was not given adequate attention under existing studies with a special focus on the health care policy field: whose interest do nonprofit organizations advance when they attempt to influence the implementation of public policy? To answer this question, it is critical to understand why nonprofits engage in the public policy process (motivation and values), the policy actions that nonprofits make during the implementation of the policy (how?), and the method by which nonprofits address or mitigate conflicts and contradictions between organizational interest and constituents’ interest (whose interest do they advance?). The main contribution of this study is that it sheds light on the implementation of the largest extension of domestic social welfare policy since the “War on Poverty” using Robert Alford’s theory of interest groups to examine the role of nonprofit organizations during the implementation of HIP 2.0 in Indiana. Given the complexity of the policy process, this study utilizes a qualitative methods approach to complement existing quantitative findings. Finally, this study provides a deeper examination of the relationships between nonprofits as actors within a policy field, accounts for the complexity of the policy and political environment, analyzes whether or not dominant interest groups truly advance the interest of their constituents, and provides additional insights into how nonprofits mitigate and prioritize competing interests.
Reading Between the Lines: Social Contextual Influences on the Production of and Response to Charitable Appeals
(2021-07) O'Connor, Heather Ann; Konrath, Sara; Shaker, Genevieve; Benjamin, Lehn; Haberski, Raymond
This two-article, mixed-methods dissertation examines social contextual influences on donor and fundraiser behavior. It presents an extension of the Charitable Triad Model to conceptualize philanthropic behavior as a contextualized act informed by the social context shared among and between fundraisers, donors, beneficiaries, and organizations. The first article extends research on how social identity shapes donor behavior. This work finds that people are more likely to donate when they share identities, experiences, or group affiliations with beneficiaries. However, donors make philanthropic decisions in the context of multiple—and sometimes incongruent—identities. How might this complexity affect philanthropic behavior? I apply an intersectional approach to consider donors holding two simultaneous yet seemingly incongruent social identities. Using interviews analyzed with grounded theory, I examine the philanthropic journey of twenty Catholic women who donate to pro-choice organizations and identify as pro-choice activists. I uncover a common process shared by the donors as they navigate their seemingly incompatible identities. Findings reveal implications for fundraisers seeking to understand donors and for organizations that address controversial causes. The second article uses an experimental design with professional fundraisers to test how the presence of a teammate affects the performance of a common fundraising task, that of writing a charitable appeal letter. A large body of research in non-fundraising domains finds that working in a team versus alone can positively affect performance and team members’ satisfaction. Further, new research finds that fundraisers who feel like they fit with their environment have higher satisfaction and retention. However, no known research has examined the role of the social environment in fundraisers’ crafting of charitable appeals. Using person-environment-fit theory, we randomly assign fundraisers to work in a team versus alone to examine how this affects their satisfaction with the task, as well as the content of the letter produced. Results suggest implications for the management of development teams. Overall, this dissertation provides evidence-based insights to improve fundraising practice.
Rites of the Soil: Exploring the Ritualized Work of a Nonprofit Community Garden
(2022-12) Alexander, James Robert; Craig, David; Benjamin, Lehn; King, David; Vogt, Wendy
The field of ritual studies has often been relegated to the disciplines of religious studies and anthropology, and typically understood within a religious context. However, this dissertation applies the study of ritual to a nonprofit organization as a distinct organizational culture that engages in mission driven work that, at times, can also function as a series of deeply meaningful rituals; within ritual studies, this process of practical work taking on enhanced meaning is known as ritualization. Utilizing Ronald Grimes' categories of ritual sensibilities (specifically decorum, magic, ceremony, liturgy, and celebration), this research sought to better understand how the work of The Lord's Acre, a nonprofit community garden dedicated to addressing the conditions of food insecurity, can similarly be viewed as ritualized activities. The study was conducted through the use of intensive participant observation and interviews conducted between 2018-2020 on site in Fairview, North Carolina. The research uncovered several important revelations. First, the work of the garden often hinged upon the use of ritual language, spaces, and objects, and some of the rituals defied the clear categorization under Grimes' schema. Instead, ritual attitudes toward the work under observation became blends of multiple categories, such as celebratory ceremonies, thus helping to reify Grimes' theory. Secondly, at times, the rituals undertaken at the organization resembled rites of passage popularized by Arnold van Gennep and also sustained periods of liminality, or communitas, popularized by Victor Turner, especially in the organization's attempts to build community through educating others about food insecurity. Finally, the research discovered that the practice of liturgy, conventionally thought to reside within religious nonprofit organizations, was active within the organization and thus may also be alive and well within secular nonprofit organizations.

Browsing by Author "Benjamin, Lehn"

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