Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Theses and Dissertations

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Spirits of Charity: Personal Experience Narratives and the Philanthropic Tradition
(2026-05) Hillier-Geisler, Megan C.; Moody, Michael; Benjamin, Lehn; Hill, Reinhold; Longtin, Krista; Shaker, Genevieve
This dissertation studies personal experience narratives’ role in philanthropic acculturation. Analysis of existing literature reveals the field of philanthropic studies has yet to rigorously examine narrative themes and folkloric patterns of prosocial stories. To address this gap, this dissertation explores the following question: How can a narrative analysis method grounded in folklore studies help scholars better understand the ways in which formative stories of many types reflect the content and expressions of philanthropic culture? The field of folklore gives us a new lens and established tools to study the types of stories we already collect in philanthropic studies. This dissertation analyzes two disparate types of experienced-based memory tales to identify cultural values, practices, and narrative elements. Personal experience narratives (PEN) are shown to reflect and maintain broader philanthropic attitudes, actions, and beliefs. The interdisciplinary methodology created and used in this dissertation, philkloristics, is applied to PENs covering mundane and fantastic topics alike—philanthropic autobiographies (PAB) and good ghost stories (GGS). Analyzing these two different types of PEN not only tests the method’s rigor, but effectively reveals the interconnected work both perform in civil society. This research finds PENs highlight philanthropic folkways of teller’s culture and are also characteristic of traditional lore. Vernacular belief was discussed in 78% of PABs in the study, and 44% of GGSs discuss gifting and themes of assistance. Thematic content concerning place, folk, community, and belief emerged as four key areas for philanthropic identity formation in both story types and demonstrate that values are linked to beliefs. Major findings include both a newly identified public space (moral imaginary) and considerations of tradition as competent responses to interpersonal ideas about what is good. This dissertation demonstrates that philanthropic narrative scholarship will be improved by integrating more interdisciplinary insights from folklore, based in the findings that PEN can convey philanthropic values, even when they appear as unrealistic legends (i.e., supernatural memories). Narratives such as PEN, voluntarily shared to create public good, are the essence (or spirit) of charity. In this way, a PEN is both a traditional gift, and the gift of tradition itself.
Beyond the Grant: Multidimensional Power in Foundation-Nonprofit Relationships
(2026-05) You, Wenpei; Paarlberg, Laurie; Benjamin, Lehn; Brass, Jennifer; Gazley, Beth
Power is a central yet often underexamined dimension of philanthropic relationships. In foundation-nonprofit grantmaking, foundations control financial resources and are therefore widely assumed to dominate the relationship. While existing scholarship documents this structural asymmetry, less attention has been given to how nonprofit grantees exercise influence within these relationships. This dissertation examines how nonprofits exercise power in foundation-grantee relationships and how organizational resources enable or constrain such influence. Drawing on Lukes’s multidimensional theory of power, the study conceptualizes power in grantmaking as operating across three dimensions—decision-making, agendasetting, and discursive power—and distinguishes between the sources of power (i.e., various forms of organizational capital) and the exercise of power in collaborative interactions. The research is situated in China, a tightly regulated and high powerdistance context that provides a revealing setting for examining how nonprofits navigate structurally asymmetric relationships. This dissertation adopts a mixed-methods design. The qualitative phase employs grounded theory based on 52 interviews with nonprofit leaders, foundation representatives, and sector experts, supplemented by site visits and document analysis. Building on these insights, the quantitative phase analyzes original survey data collected from 247 social service organizations across China. The two phases provide both indepth contextual understanding and broader empirical testing. The findings reveal that power in foundation-nonprofit relationships is multidimensional and varies along a spectrum from foundation dominance to shared influence and, in some cases, nonprofit-led dynamics. Nonprofits exercise agency by mobilizing different forms of organizational capital, including social, political, symbolic, mission-driven, reputational, knowledge, and institutional capital. These capitals operate through distinct mechanisms: relation-based capital generates access, positional leverage, and short-term influence, while capability-based capital enables deeper and sustained influence through expertise, credibility, and dialogue. In authoritarian contexts, these mechanisms produce a dual-track pattern of nonprofit power: one rooted in political embeddedness and the other in knowledge-based authority. The study also shows contextual factors, such as foundation size and value misalignment, shape how these capitals translate into influence. By integrating theories of power, organizational capital, and philanthropy, this dissertation offers a multidimensional framework for understanding power in foundationnonprofit relationships and provides new methodological tools for empirically studying power in collaborative governance.
Political Learning in Nonprofit Human Service Organizations
(2025-11) Duffy, Barbara J.; Benjamin, Lehn M.; MacLean, Lauren; Craig, David; Hong, Michin; Schnable, Allison Y.
Extensive scholarship finds that nonprofit associations can play an important role in democracy by providing opportunities for their constituents to learn civic and political skills necessary for active citizenship. Critical to this learning is an organizational structure that is non-hierarchical, participatory, and where individuals have equal standing. Less attention has been given to political learning in nonprofit human service organizations (NPHSOs) because these organizations are unlikely to meet these conditions. Rather than assume NPHSOs foreclose opportunities for political socialization, the study set out to ask, what kinds of political learning take place among clients in NPHSOs? The study focused on nonprofits serving people coming home from prison, a field known as reentry. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with leaders, staff, and clients in three case organizations in a Midwestern city. The study found that clients not only learned how to navigate the relationship with their probation officers, who acted as an extended arm of government, but also were also influenced by the messages embedded in the organization’s formal social change strategy and informal culture about what they needed to do fully participate as members of society. These implicit and explicit messages created distinct learning environments that influenced clients’ sense of self with important implications for agency, a fundamental component of citizenship. The study identified three distinct learning environments, each with its own vision of citizenship that influenced clients’ self-recovery and agency. In one case (“engaged citizen”) clients learned about their rights, and their passions to help others were not only recognized but they were given opportunities to develop and act on them. In another (“self-sufficient citizen”), clients with severe mental illness were supported in their recovery and in achieving independence by directing their agency toward goals developed in partnership with staff. In a third case (“responsible citizen”), clients were re-formed by channeling their agency into character development and employment. The study demonstrates that NPHOs, despite inhospitable conditions for supporting civic and political engagement, play an important but underappreciated role in citizenship development by influencing client agency.
Alumni Citizenship Behavior (ACB): Understanding Its Antecedents, Dimensions, Mechanisms and Consequences
(2025-11) Okaomee, Anastesia Ayondu; Shaker, Genevieve; Badertscher, Katherine; Berry, Christopher M.; Carpenter, Janet S.
This three-essay mixed-methods dissertation develops the concept of alumni citizenship behavior (ACB), informed by insights from organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). It introduces the Alumni Citizenship Behavior (ACB) framework, highlighting experiences with the organization as key antecedents, the emotions elicited by those experiences as the mechanisms driving the behavior, and the consequences of the behavior for the organization and its members. Essay 1 examines empirical evidence to support the ACB framework through a systematic review of the literature about alumni engagement. The review finds disproportionate attention given to the antecedents, with less emphasis on the mechanisms, and negligible focus on the consequences or impact of alumni engagement in existing scholarship. The results highlight the importance of adopting the ACB framework for research in advancing the understanding of the nature of alumni behavior. Essay 2 uses interviews to conceptualize alumni citizenship behavior from the perspectives of alumni. The findings suggest that ACB is an “expected behavior” of alumni as “citizens” of the university. ACB comprises various forms of alumni support to the university and its community, with consequences at the individual, unit, and organizational levels. Essay 3 employs inductive and deductive methods to develop an Alumni Citizenship Behavior (ACB) Scale through a sequential process involving a literature review, interviews, expert reviews, cognitive interviews, and an exploratory survey of alumni. Findings from this survey suggest the possible multidimensionality of the ACB construct. The dissertation represents the first known holistic effort to broaden the understanding of alumni behavior through the lens of organizational citizenship behavior. It offers practical insights for cultivating, soliciting, stewarding, and reinforcing alumni citizenship behavior for the benefit of universities and their members.
The Emergence of China-U.S. Giving in the Twenty-First Century: The Role of Elite Training Programs
(2025-08) Carrigan, Cathie Marie; Badertscher, Katharine; Konrath, Sara; Wiepking, Pamala; Schnable, Allison; Kahn, Hilary E.
The phenomenon of U.S. nonprofit organizations contracting with and receiving gifts from organizations abroad has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention. In the United States, policy makers, journalists, and scholars have framed U.S. universities’ foreign gifts and contracts, particularly from China, in a way that conflates all dollars received with the nation-state of origin and malign foreign influence operations. This study introduces the concept of philanthropic inflows through multiple analyses to discern outcomes of Mainland Chinese organizations’ reported funding to U.S. universities between 1986 and 2019. It compares government, industry, and higher education data with funders and recipients and examines over one thousand documents. It finds that public universities were more likely to have reported international engagements as contracts, while some private universities reported funding for the same types of activities as gifts. The study makes a testable proposition that organizations receive cross-border gifts according to their own logics. Additionally, the study covers three phases of China-U.S. engagement, beginning with China’s Reform and Opening Up in the late 1970s, when U.S. economists advised Chinese leaders on the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented one. In the early 1990s, U.S. universities received federal grants through a program designed to help former Soviet states in Central and Eastern Europe privatize. The universities used the U.S. government grants to develop training programs and new business degrees for those international clients, and later drew on those experiences to expand their offerings into Asia, creating Executive MBAs in partnership with Chinese universities. Beginning in the early 2000s, Chinese banks contracted with U.S. business schools for short-term executive training programs as they prepared to join the global economy, and the business schools continued to develop customized programs for executives in new industries as they emerged in China. Finally, after 2010, the wealth generated by China’s economic growth allowed Chinese high-net-worth individuals to begin making major philanthropic gifts to U.S. universities and to contract with universities for jointly developed programming as they explored new ways to leverage their wealth to create social good in China and around the world.
Toward an Inclusive Landscape of Informal and Formal Giving Behavior: With Voices from Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Indiana (USA)
(2024-12) Yasin, Kidist Ibrie; Wiepking, Pamala; Badertscher, Katherine; Adamek, Margaret; Konrath, Sara; Rooney, Patrick
My dissertation explores an inclusive landscape of philanthropy by examining a range of informal and formal giving behaviors and their explicit and implicit motives to enhance our broad understanding of philanthropy. I focus on issues that were less emphasized in philanthropic studies, such as informal giving, the perspectives of people from the Global South (specifically Ethiopians), and implicit motivations. The dissertation is presented in a three-manuscript format. The first manuscript investigates informal giving through a systematic literature review, identifying key practices such as informal helping, mutual help systems, caregiving, and remittances. The driving reasons for informal giving include reciprocity, human and social capital, emotions, altruism, and other less focused reasons such as social media, crisis, and sense of duty. The study also highlights differences in gender and geographical location in informal giving practices. The second manuscript explores and compares the spectrum of informal and formal giving behaviors and motivations among Christian Ethiopians living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Indiana, US, focusing on Christians in the Protestant and Orthodox denominations. Using semi-structured Zoom and telephone interviews with 34 participants, the study reveals various informal giving practices, such as financial, in-kind, and emotional support to extended family, friends, neighbors, and strangers, as well as formal giving behaviors, including establishing NGOs, formal volunteering, and charitable donations. The research identifies explicit and implicit motivations for engaging in this spectrum of giving behaviors, such as religious beliefs, cultural heritage, parental teaching, being part of a church community, and affiliation implicit motivation. The study also identifies some variations in the understanding, practices and motivations for giving among participants in the two locations and denominations. The third manuscript investigates implicit motivations among Giving Pledge signatories using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) textual analysis of the pledge letters. It examines the primary three implicit motives: achievement, affiliation, and power. The results show that affiliation implicit motives are relatively more prevalent than achievement and power motives among the pledge signers. The study also explores how these implicit motivations associate with key demographic variables and philanthropic subsectors.
Christian Personalism and Human Rights Prior to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Philosophical and Theological Exploration
(2024-12) Williams, Andrew Lloyd; King, David P.; Badertscher, Katherine; Haberski, Raymond J.; Steensland, Brian
The high tide of modern transnational institution-building occurred in the immediate aftermath of two profound crises: the Great Depression and World War II. No document better captures the aspirations for a post-war era of greater human welfare than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR elevated the rights of individual humans above the doctrine of state-sovereignty and embodied the burgeoning view that states have a responsibility to secure the welfare and rights of all persons. A “new” school of human rights historiography has shown that Christian personalists were among the few advocates of “human rights” in this period. Moreover, Jacques Maritain and Charles Malik, prominent Christian personalists, were directly involved in United Nations efforts to codify universal human rights. Yet new-school historiography has over-corrected for “classical” historiography’s penchant to rely heavily on arcane philosophical and theological developments dating centuries and even millennia into the past. New-school historiography deracinates Christian personalism form its nineteenth century forebearers: philosophical personalism, phenomenology, existentialism, and neo-classicism. It also underplays the orthogonal character of a movement that aspired to create a third way between established polarities. The very term “personalism” connotes a middle position between individualism and collectivism: individual human beings have inviolable dignity and are inherently relational. As such, the current picture of the advent of human rights discourse in the mid-twentieth century is incomplete. By connecting Christian personalism to its nineteenth-century philosophical roots and contextualizing its views of the relationship between the individual and the state in the crisis milieu of the transwar era, I fill an important gap in the history of “human rights” discourse in the buildup to the UDHR.
Experiencing Nonprofits in Vietnam: What Matters Most to the People Nonprofits Aim to Serve
(2024-07) Doan, Dana R. H.; Benjamin, Lehn M.; Wiepking, Pamala; Dwyer, Patrick C.; Pasic, Dean Amir; Merritt, Cullen C.; Sidel, Mark
To better understand nonprofit performance and impact, this study set out to identify the salient viewpoints of the individuals and communities a nonprofit human service provider sets out to serve, i.e., the nonprofit’s constituents. Focusing on the first encounter with a nonprofit, which the service management, public encounters, and help-seeking literatures all identify as important to understanding experiences of and engagement with service organizations, I ask: How does a constituent’s first encounter with a nonprofit influence their experience and decision to engage with the organization? To address this question, I implemented a community-engaged, multi-phased, Q methodology study with 56 women in Vietnam. I utilized a focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, participant reflections on a first visit to a nonprofit, a Q sort, and debrief interviews. My research revealed three viewpoints and four dimensions of effectiveness. The three viewpoints include: Mutuality - I am looking for signs we can work together as equal partners to address my problem; Caring - I am looking for signs you are personally motivated towards helping me; and Efficiency - I am looking for signs I can get what I need in a timely manner. The four dimensions of effectiveness include: relational, technical, accessibility, and other dimensions of effectiveness. Regardless of the viewpoint, the relational dimension of an encounter is central to constituent decisions to engage with a nonprofit, a dimension that is undertheorized in social impact measurement. That said, all three viewpoints bring the four dimensions of effectiveness together in distinct ways. In this way, a Q study reminds us that constituents are not all the same and exposes some of the differences. These findings offer implications for research and practice on nonprofit management and measurement.
Board and Staff Representation and Grantmaking in Community Foundations: The Effect of Racial Representation, Intersectionality, and Donor Control
(2024-07) Ming, Yue; Paarlberg, Laurie E.; Badertscher, Katherine; Gazley, Beth; Rooney, Patrick
As the United States continues its significant demographic shift, concerns persist about philanthropic responsiveness to the needs of diverse communities. While foundations aim to address societal challenges, historical leadership structures can pose barriers to equitable outcomes. This raises questions about the representativeness of philanthropy to the broader public. The theory of representative bureaucracy establishes a framework for understanding the connection between representation and outcomes, positing that passive representation, which is bureaucrats share the same demographic origins as the general population, will result in active representation, which is producing policy outputs that benefit the interests of individuals who are passively represented. This study applies the theory of representative bureaucracy to nonprofits, specifically examining the case of community foundations in the United States. It investigates the influence of racial representation, the intersectionality across race and gender among representatives, and the impact of donor control on grant allocations to underserved groups. Key questions examined include: Does a positive relationship exist between racial representation in board and staff in community foundations and grant allocations to grantee organizations serving people of color? Does intersectional representation yield stronger results than solely racial representation? Does increased donor control weaken the positive relationship between board and staff members’ representation and grant allocations to grantee organizations serving people of color? This study utilizes longitudinal data spanning from 2012 to 2016, collected from a national sample of community foundations. The findings contribute both theoretically and practically to the understanding of the relationships among representation, discretion, and grant-making outcomes within the nonprofit sector.
Intellectual Structure and Dynamics of Novelty Within Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies: A Computational and Structural Analysis
(2024-07) Ai, Jin; Badertscher, Katherine; Guo, Chao; Steinberg, Richard; Andersson, Fredrik; King, David
This dissertation examines scholarship within the emerging interdisciplinary field of philanthropic and nonprofit studies. The field has experienced significant shifts due to evolving societal and technological landscapes. To facilitate the effective and sustainable growth of the field, the study first seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of its intellectual structure using computational methods. To sort out the pattern and impact of novel research, the study then introduces a new typology of research novelty. Drawing upon network analytics, and theories of scientific discovery and innovation, four types of novelty are proposed, including Pioneer Novelty (introducing a new topic to the field, and the topic thereafter becoming central to the field), Periphery Novelty (introducing a new topic to the field, but the topic remains peripheral to the field), Shortener Novelty (reducing the connection distance between two topics that are previously disconnected or indirectly connected, and subsequently reshape the direction of the field evolution), and Strengthener Novelty (reinforcing the connection between two topics that are previously weakly connected, and subsequently change the centrality of the topics). The study identifies twenty knowledge clusters by analyzing a dataset of 60,399 articles gathered from the Web of Science database using a curated keyword list. The structure and scope of the clusters suggest that the field of philanthropic studies is changing from its interdisciplinary roots in social sciences and humanities to a broader spectrum, including social sciences, life science & biomedicine, arts & humanities, technology, and physical sciences. Further, analysis of novelty uncovers complexities in the relationship between research novelty and impact. Notably, Pioneer/Periphery Novelty is positively correlated with citation impact, while Shortener Novelty is negatively related and Strengthener Novelty shows varied relationships. These findings suggest the need to reevaluate the theoretical and methodological approaches that have been engaged in investigating the field, and the need for an evaluation framework that acknowledges and rewards various novel endeavors in advancing the progress of the field. In summary, by mapping the intellectual structure and analyzing the dynamics of novelty within philanthropic studies, the study enhances a ‘sense of intellectual continuity and coherence’ within and beyond the philanthropic studies community.

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