abstract: The lasting benefits of high-quality early childhood programs are widely understood. These benefits and the well-documented return on investments are among the factors that have shaped executives at philanthropic foundations’ grant making in support of early childhood programs, policies, and research in the United States. Yet little is known about the investments they are making in the field of early childhood. Drawing from a conceptual framework that combines types of philanthropic investment with the concepts of accountability and transparency, I conducted a comparative case study of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, George Kaiser Family Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, all of which began financially supporting early childhood between 2000 and 2005. I attempted to understand how and why philanthropic foundations and pooled funding organizations have supported early childhood from the late 1990s through 2018. Based on my analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with current and former early childhood philanthropic foundation, pooled funding, and operating organization executives, I found that each foundation independently determines their investment decision processes and invests a disparate amount of money in early childhood. In addition, philanthropic foundations gain programmatic and legislative power by leveraging funds and partnering with additional foundations and businesses. With the inclusion of early childhood programs in K-12 education systems and the decrease in national and state education funding from those same budgets, it is critical to understand how philanthropic foundations have supported early childhood education and some of the implications of their support both locally and nationally. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Policy and Evaluation 2019

Philanthropy and philanthropic associations and organizations were highly active in European countries in the 19th century, because of the widespread poverty that affected people of the lower class. Poverty, and solutions for it, was highly debated and resulted in different policies that affected the image of and conditions for the population in need. In this time of distress, people of the philanthropic organizations, made it possible for children to be relocated to other families, to be under better conditions during their growth. Because of the religious roots and agenda that philanthropic organizations possessed, it is interesting to investigate how this might have been an act of controlling, disciplining and monitoring the socially vulnerable. This thesis intended to study the underlying motives of the said institution by analyzing discourses of the children and parents through subject positions, discipline mechanisms and surveillance. The results demonstrated that there were acts of normalization and discipline of the poor by taking them out of their said to be morally corrupted homes and conditioning them in another with Christian morality and rituals. Children and their parents were monitored through the community and children were highly observed through follow-ups when committed in the association. There were also acts of othering by describing children and parents as the opposite of the desirable norms and therefore increasing the distance between the socially vulnerable and the upper class. Mothers were especially vulnerable when describing the parents as immoral, frivolous and prurient.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / 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.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This dissertation explores growth among American charities by examining 25 years of the Philanthropy 400, an annual ranking published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy of the 400 charities receiving the most donations. Data preparation for the Philanthropy 400’s first analysis remedied publication deadline constraints by aligning data by fiscal years and adding 310 charities omitted from the published rankings, resulting in a study population of 1,101 charities. Most studies of charity finance examine individual Forms 990. The Philanthropy 400 uses consolidated financial information from entire organizational networks, creating the same basis for charities filing a single Form 990, like the American Red Cross, and charities with affiliates filing more than 1,000 Forms 990, like Habitat for Humanity. Organizational ecology theory frames examination of aggregate changes in the Philanthropy 400. Two questions examine how age and dependence on donations as a percentage of total income affect persistence in the rankings. A third question examines the changing share of total U.S. giving received by ranked charities. Despite stability resulting from the same charities occupying 189 of the 400 ranking positions every year, the median age of ranked charities decreased. Younger charities generally climbed within the rankings, while older charities tended to decline or exit the rankings. Younger new entrants often persisted in the rankings, suggesting some donors embrace various new causes or solutions. Charities ranked only once or twice decreased in number with each successive ranking. Most charities ranked only once entered the rankings by receiving two or more times their typical amount of donations, suggesting that sustained fundraising programs regularly outperform charities that periodically experience years of extraordinarily high donations. The aggregate inflation-adjusted donations received by the Philanthropy 400 increased during the study period and increased as a percentage of total U.S. giving. As predicted by organizational ecology, the increasing percentage of total U.S. giving received by the Philanthropy 400 coincided with slowing growth in both the number of U.S. charities and total U.S. giving. If the Philanthropy 400 continues to increase its percentage of total U.S. giving, this could affect financing for smaller charities.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This dissertation examines perceptions of purpose in family foundations and the impact of differences in those perceptions on family foundation board composition/function and on grant making activities. One of the primary decisions facing the donor who creates a private foundation relates to governance. Here, the donor arguably faces a deeply personal choice: to what extent should the donor’s family be involved? Related to this choice is the question of the degree of focus on the mission-related aspects of the organization or the family-related aspects of the organization. This dissertation explores whether family foundation trustees view family purposes and social impact purposes as meaningful for the foundation they represent and whether trustees differ with regard to the degree to which they emphasize one or the other. If family foundation trustees do meaningfully differ in this regard, what difference does an emphasis on family or social impact purposes make on board composition, grant making focus and stability, similarity to one’s peers, and other factors? Through a combination of survey, interview, and review of publicly available material, this dissertation explores this question for a sample of family foundation trustees in two Midwestern states.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The Smokey Bear Campaign is one of the most popular and recognized public communication campaigns in the United States. The Advertising Council began the Smokey Bear campaign in 1944 and it is the longest running public communication campaign in the United States. Through a rhetorical narrative methodology, this study analyzed Smokey Bear advertising pieces from its inception through the present. The analysis of the advertising pieces was organized by narrative elements of the campaign, such as narration, themes, characters, and major and minor events with a focus on philanthropic composition relating to awareness and behavior change messaging. The following question is answered: what kind of messaging focus does the Smokey Bear campaign deploy and what aspect of philanthropy does the Smokey Bear campaign seem to be achieving? Conclusions on the philanthropic aspects of public communication campaigns are drawn based on the analysis of the Smokey Bear campaign.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The shrinking space for civil society and the increasing number of unfavorable legislation affecting the work of non-governmental organizations continue to be burning issues for global philanthropy. Using a case study approach, this thesis explores how democracies regulate the operation of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations in Hungary and Israel. This thesis examines what the presumed and real motivations of democratic governments are to adapt such regulations and how the political, economic and socio-cultural environments might influence their enactment. This thesis also compares the Hungarian and Israeli regulations to the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this study we examined 381 interactions between Donors and Fundraisers from a large research university by analyzing their Contact Reports. Specifically, we examined whether we could extract measures of fundraiser empathy through the application of a coding scheme and linguistics analysis, and whether there are differences in the reports based on donor characteristics. We found evidence that there are significant differences between how fundraisers write reports and what they include in them, based on school of graduation and type of interaction, but little difference in their treatment by donor gender. We conclude that indeed measures of empathy can be extracted from Contact Reports, but that minimum standards of reporting should be adopted by fundraising organizations in order to support using Contact Reports as qualitative evaluation tools.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The modern fair trade movement and resulting network emerged during the twentieth century as a strategy to alleviate extreme poverty through creating equitable trading initiatives and markets. Since its emergence, fair trade has grown tremendously to include initiatives across the globe, particularly within the Global South. Although the intent to do good is present amongst fair traders, the impact of these initiatives remains rather ambiguous, especially in regards to culture. Using a case study approach, this thesis aims to identify the cultural implications of fair trade activities and initiatives on Ghanaian basket weavers and their local communities, and then determine the effectiveness of the fair trade movement in aligning intent with impact within this context given these findings. From there, specific policy recommendations are provided for future initiatives.

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