This project developed a resource development plan for the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, San Bernardino. It employs research in organizational communication and applies the theory of organizational identification to the relationship / donor aspect of the program. It also covers research in the field of organizational identification and its relevance to college alumni.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This dissertation employs a historical approach to the philanthropic activities of Madam C.J. Walker, an African American female entrepreneur who built an international beauty culture company that employed thousands of people, primarily black women, and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual revenues during the Jim Crow era. The field of philanthropic studies has recognized Walker as a philanthropist, but has not effectively accounted for how her story challenges conventional understandings of philanthropy. I use historical methods and archival research to determine what motivated and constituted Walker’s philanthropic giving to arrive at three main conclusions. First, Walker’s philanthropy can be best understood as emerging out of a moral imagination forged by her experiences as a poor, black, female migrant in St. Louis, Missouri during the late 1800s dependent upon a robust philanthropic infrastructure of black civil society institutions and individuals who cared for and mentored her through the most difficult period of her life. Second, she created and operated her company to pursue commercial and philanthropic goals concurrently by improving black women’s personal hygiene and appearance; increasing their access to vocational education, beauty culture careers, and financial independence; and promoting social bonding and activism through associationalism, and, later, fraternal ritual. Third, during her lifetime and through her estate, Walker deployed a diverse array of philanthropic resources to fund African American social service and educational needs in networks with other black women. Her giving positions her philanthropy as simultaneously distinct from the dominant paradigm of wealthy whites and as shared with that of other African Americans. Her approach thus ran counter to the racialized and gendered models of giving by the rich white male and female philanthropists of her era, while being representative of black women’s norms of giving.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Grounded in leadership, cultural, communication, and gender studies, this dissertation investigates the challenges African-American women executives in the philanthropic foundation sector faced as they strive to have their culture legitimated within the culture of the workplace. Through the use of case study methodology, I examined the experiences of participants by conducting oral history interviews that traced their critical path to leadership. I also incorporated my own experiences in the field to further explore the connections between race, gender, and leadership styles in philanthropic organizations. The interviews and my own auto-ethnographic research explored the possible consequences of black executive women in the foundation world not being able to share aspects of their cultural lives in workplace networks and the impact of the critical exclusion of who they really are as whole human beings on the quality of their careers. An analysis of data collected from the interviews revealed key factors critical to the success of study participants. First was the presence of familial or close adults actively engaged in philanthropic activity during the participants’ formative years. Second was a strong influence of a faith tradition. Additionally, the date revealed that participants’ involvement in outside leadership roles, often tied to their racial and gender identities, were not capitalized on by employers. This study achieved several key outcomes. First, it afforded participants an opportunity to develop the personal satisfaction of expanding the body of knowledge related to leadership development within the philanthropic foundation sector. Additionally, by sharing their stories, these individuals were able to develop or strengthen mentorship relationships. Lastly, this study has the potential of being of significant benefit to the greater philanthropic foundation sector, since it worked towards the expansion of the body of knowledge specific to the issues of gender and cultural differences within the foundation sector.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / indefinitely