Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Evaluations in Organizational Philanthropy

西北大学慈善基金会如何决定哪些非营利组织应该接受他们的资金？非营利组织的价值是多方面的，很难评估，但基金会的资源有限，必须决定如何分配资金。这项研究调查了捐赠者(即那些负责捐款的人)如何评估两种截然不同的私人基金会--公司和独立--的非营利组织的优点。理解授权者如何将非营利组织视为值得资助的，这一点很重要，因为基金会是最富有的美国人影响社会处理社会问题的工具。该项目将提供有关美国私人基金会如何实现广泛的社会相关成果的信息。研究结果将对理解非营利部门内的资源分配模式具有实际意义，因为该项目将揭示不同类型的基金会如何将社会问题概念化，并将解决这些问题的具体非营利组织视为值得资助的。此外，结果将与正在进行的关于私人慈善事业、特别是企业慈善事业的作用的政策辩论有关。这项研究的结果将被翻译成可供公众评估的渠道，包括政策简报、专栏、大众媒体和从业者会议。通常，将对40个不同的企业基金会和40个不同的独立基金会雇用的授权人进行总共80次访谈。对一个公司基金会和一个独立基金会的人种学观察被用来提供对背景的更好理解和三角测量目的。从理论上讲，该项目将组织理论和评估社会学的见解联系起来。具体地说，该项目审查了在形成评价过程中相互竞争的组织目标的性质。该项目探讨了与相互竞争的目标相关的不确定性是否以及为什么会导致评估者依赖组织之外的线索，例如地位较高的同行的行为。此外，该项目还探讨了统一的目标是否以及为什么使评估者倾向于依赖内部线索，如与基金会的使命和历史相匹配。该项目通过详细说明组织背景和结构影响评估者如何评估不同实体的优点的机制，进一步发展了评价社会学。这种方法认识到，评价实践与其他组织实践一样，是由它们所嵌入的领域塑造的。这些发现也对组织研究和更广泛的非营利性奖学金产生了影响。

SES-1637182Brayden KingVontrese PamphileNorthwestern UniversityHow do philanthropic foundations determine which nonprofits should receive their funds? The value of a nonprofit is multifaceted and difficult to assess, yet foundations have limited resources and must decide how to allocate funds. This study examines how grantmakers (i.e., those responsible for donations) assess the merit of nonprofits at two very different kinds of private foundations: corporate and independent. Understanding how grantmakers come to see nonprofits as worthy of funds is important, as foundations are vehicles through which the most affluent Americans influence how society approaches social problems. This project will yield information about how private foundations in the United States approach a broad swath of societally relevant outcomes. The results will have practical implications for understanding patterns of resource allocation within the nonprofit sector, as the project will reveal how different types of foundations conceptualize social problems, and specific nonprofits tackling those problems, as worth funding. Moreover, results will be relevant to ongoing policy debates about the role of private philanthropy generally and corporate philanthropy in particular. Findings from this research will be translated into publically assessable outlets including policy briefs, op-ed columns, the popular press, and practitioner conferences.Empirically, a total of 80 interviews will be conducted with grantmakers employed by 40 different corporate foundations and 40 different independent foundations. Ethnographic observations of one corporate foundation and one independent foundation are used to provide a greater understanding of the context and for triangulation purposes. Theoretically, the project bridges insights from organizational theory and the sociology of evaluation. Specifically, the project examines the nature of competing organizational goals in shaping the evaluation process. The project explores whether and why uncertainty associated with competing goals leads evaluators to rely on cues outside their organization, such as the behavior of high-status peers. Additionally, the project explores whether and why unified goals orient evaluators toward reliance on internal cues such as fit with foundation mission and history. The project further develops the sociology of evaluation by detailing the mechanisms by which organizational context and structure influence how evaluators assess the merit of different entities. This approach recognizes that evaluative practices, like other organizational practices, are shaped by the fields in which they are embedded. The findings also have implications for organizational studies and for nonprofit scholarship more generally.