- Browse by Author
Browsing by Author "King, David"
Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item 6 charts that illustrate the surprising financial strength of American houses of worship(The Conversation US, Inc., 2019-12-16) King, David; Lilly Family School of PhilanthropyItem Cross-cultural Mutuality: Exploring Philanthropic, Faith-based Partnerships Between Cuba and the United States(2021-11) Goodwin, Jamie L.; King, David; Herzog, Patricia Snell; Wiepking, Pamala; Kahn, Hilary; Konrath, SaraIn the global age, grass-roots religious organizations seek to better collaborate across national and cultural borders. Through the theoretical lens of mutuality, this dissertation explores the nature and quality of interpersonal relationships inherent in faith-based, philanthropic partnerships between the United States and Cuba. Mutuality is a framework for understanding human relationships; it describes when people regard one another as whole persons and a relationship as something of inherent value. This study explores the value of relationships, the processes by which they form, how they relate to institutional structures, and the role of a common faith in bridging other cultural differences. Religious communities are considered the primary civil society institutions with national reach in Cuba. The research site for this study is a Protestant civil society organization on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba called Campo Amor. Campo Amor operates both nonprofit and for-profit activities and receives substantial American donations through a foundation in Spain. Over the past 20 years, Campo Amor has multiplied from two to more than 120 house churches. Before COVID-19 it welcomed more than 500 American partners each year. Using a co-created, phenomenological qualitative design, this study will provide knowledge into the role of relationships in philanthropic, faith-based partnerships, particularly between regions of geopolitical hostilities. It advances understanding of the role of religion and relationships in philanthropy across a variety of cultural differences. Among other findings, interviewees described mutuality as 1. the commitment to sharing; 2. Intersubjective relationships which enter into and care about the thoughts and feelings of another; and 3. the habitual approach that emphasized living one’s way into patterns of thought, versus thinking one’s way into patterns of life.Item Empathy and its implications for prosocial behavior and engagement with the arts(2018-02-12) Kou, Xiaonan; Konrath, Sara; King, David; Ottoni-Wilhelm, Mark; Beckman, Emily; Davis, MarkThis dissertation contains three essays examining empathy and its implications for prosocial behavior and arts engagement. Empathy here refers to both compassion and concern for others (emotional empathy) and the understanding of the feelings and needs of others (cognitive empathy). Empathy is fundamental to our social life, and this dissertation explores its implications for two essential components of social life: prosocial behavior and arts engagement. Chapter 2 examines how three dimensions of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983)—empathic concern, perspective taking, and personal distress—are associated with charitable giving, and whether these associations vary across charitable causes. Using data from a nationally representative sample of American adults, the study confirms that the three IRI dimensions are associated with charitable giving in different ways. Chapter 3 focuses on the interplay of trait empathy and people’s tendencies to diversify (spread out) their prosocial behavior. By analyzing data from two samples of American adults, this study reveals that people with higher empathic concern (emotional empathy) versus higher perspective taking (cognitive empathy) have distinct patterns in how they spread out their monetary gifts, but trait empathy is not associated with the distribution of time spent in helping others.Item Empty pews take a financial toll on many US congregations(The Conversation US, 2020-04-29) King, David; Fulton, Brad R.; Munn, Chris; Lilly Family School of PhilanthropyMost Christian churches were relying heavily on 'collection plates' to pay their bills before the pandemic struck. And less than half were doing any online fundraising as of 2018.Item Faith-Based Social Entrepreneurial Orientation: A Case of Evangelicals(2021-10) Clark, Richard S.; Craig, David M.; King, David; Steensland, Brian; Badertscher, Katherine; Guo, ChaoThe focus of this study is the experiences of eight individual evangelical social entrepreneurs within their congregations. What type of legitimacy do they seek and/or receive for? Do they sense any pressure to conform/motivations to act relative to their congregation’s values/identity? Do these relationships encourage or discourage their entrepreneurial orientation/intensity and in what ways? The primary research question is “how does embeddedness in an evangelical faith community affect the experiences and expression of social entrepreneurial orientation and intensity for evangelical faith-based social entrepreneurs, if at all?” The study identifies three types of congregations in terms of their relationship to the social entrepreneurs in their communities. Two are entrepreneurial, two others are supportive, four are non-supporting. Three areas of tension emerged that highlighted the experiences of the entrepreneurs within their communities of faith in different ways and to various degrees. The first is a tension between the sacred and secular, which is a question about whether entrepreneurism is itself a sacred calling and whether sacred activities and profit motives can mix. The second tension is between differing visions of what it means to do good. This is fundamentally about diagnosing the problem efforts at doing good are attempting to ameliorate. The entrepreneurs in this study generally agree that the problem is both personal and societal and requires a holistic transformational approach to discipleship and social entrepreneurship. The final tension is between institutionalism vs. movements. Movements tend to be somewhat chaotic and allow freedom for adherents to take risks and test ideas whereas institutions tend to restrict and control in the interest of preserving focus on mission. A key finding is that regardless of the posture of the various churches, the entrepreneurs in every circumstance maintained their social entrepreneurial orientation. If they could not find support for their entrepreneurial efforts within their existing community of faith they may or may not continue to maintain the same level of commitment to that community while seeking support elsewhere, but in all cases, their level of entrepreneurism remained high.Item Financing Social Enterprise in the Very Long Run(ACRN Oxford, 2017) Thornton, Jeremy; King, David; Lilly Family School of PhilanthropyAll social enterprises share a common struggle to finance collective goods. Collective goods are notoriously difficult for private firms to produce, because of the incentive for their constituents to defect, or free-ride, on the contributions of others. Because of their historical success, this paper looks toward long-lived religions institutions for strategies to mitigate the collective action problem. We empirically examine the Southern Baptist Convention, which records its efforts to finance international missionary activities since 1935. We test a club good model of adherence. Consistent with the club model, we find that contributions to international missions increase with both religious and secular competition for adherents. We do not find that the specific mechanism for collection within the Southern Baptist matters. We conclude that the club model of organization, where high membership costs are deliberately applied, offers valuable – and counterintuitive – lessons for social enterprises more broadly.Item How religion motivates people to give and serve(The Conversation US, Inc., 2017-08-19) King, David; School of PhilanthropyItem Reflections on Session I: Framing Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society(2017) King, DavidItem 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, WendyThe 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.Item Social Entrepreneurship Among Protestant American Congregations: The Role, Theology, Motivations, and Experiences of Lay and Clergy Leaders(2019-08) Austin, Thad Stephen; King, David; Tempel, Eugene R.; Steensland, Brian; Burlingame, Dwight F.This qualitative dissertation contributes to the nascent literature on the study of social enterprise in American congregations through an examination of the role, theology, motivations, and experiences of Protestant Christian social entrepreneurs who are pursuing (or have pursued) social entrepreneurship in the congregational setting. These religious leaders engage the free market by establishing social ventures such as hotels, thrift stores, community development corporations, restaurants, retail outlets, publishing companies, and landscaping businesses among others. Drawing on forty-four in-depth, semi-structured interviews with lay and clergy leaders representing a diverse sample of twenty-six American congregations from four Protestant traditions and six geographic regions, this dissertation asks: Who are these congregational social entrepreneurs (their role and their theology)? Why do they engage in congregational social entrepreneurship (motivations)? And how do they go about establishing social ventures (experiences)? This study provides scholars and practitioners insights into the identity, motivations, and experiences of American religious leaders who are pioneering an emerging form of religious practice that blurs the distinction between the pastor and parishioner, the sacred and secular, and the instrumental and expressive. This dissertation offers contributions to both theory and practice. Instead of conceptualizing “social entrepreneurship” and “values and faith” as separate categories (as in prior research), this dissertation introduces a new theoretical paradigm with an intersecting model of instrumental and expressive rationales for nonprofit institutions. Transcending otherwise clearly defined boundaries, the study’s findings speak to the flexibility of social entrepreneurship to conform to the values of its leadership and the pervasive and permeating reach of faith within the context of human endeavor. Additionally, this research offers a constructive understanding of the role, theological tenets, and practical experiences of lay and clergy leaders.