Opportunity in an Age of Folly

1720 is remembered in European history as the year of folly, when the financial markets ballooned and then collapsed in the capitals of England and France. The financial crisis was of great import to the subsequent history of both countries: England emerged from the crisis on the way to becoming an international financial powerhouse, whereas France failed to modernize its financial infrastructure, which collapsed during the French Revolution. Much less is known, however, outside the Netherlands about the third economy involved in the Bubble, namely, the proto-capitalist economy of the Dutch Republic. This chapter makes the case that the Dutch financial economy, which in 1720 was more advanced than that of its neighbours, bore the brunt of the crisis much better than they. The Bubble in the Dutch Republic channelled some of the country’s previously underused capital reserves back into the economy and allowed for the rise of a number of municipal Bubble companies, chiefly devoted to shipping and insurance. Several of these survived the Bubble and developed into bona fide businesses with surprising longevity. The foremost example of this is the Rotterdam insurance company which lasted until the twenty-first century and continues to exist as a philanthropic foundation.

Philanthropic Foundation Responses to COVID-19

Philanthropic foundations are critical actors in the nonprofit sector—funding the programs of social and human service charities, fostering innovation, and serving as patrons of the arts. However, the dramatic growth of foundations and their endowments in recent decades has intensified charges of plutocracy—the claim that foundations are more interested in protecting their power and privilege than in contributing to the public good. The COVID-19 crisis has brought this critique into sharp focus, leading to the question, “How are large foundations acting to stem COVID-19’s impact and help in the process of recovery?” Our descriptive study leverages data from a nationwide survey of the 500 largest philanthropic foundations (by total assets) in the United States to characterize foundations’ (a) changes to internal strategy or giving, (b) shifts in relationships with grantee organizations, (c) prioritization of communities most affected by the COVID-19 crisis, and (d) collaboration across organizations and sectors.

The influence of board directors' institutional and business relationships on philanthropic foundation performance

PurposeThe effect of board intellectual capital on non-profit organizational performance in non-western, less developed economies has been an important yet under-researched area. Given that the institutional and business relationships of a board account for the majority of board intellectual capital, the purpose of this paper is to fill the previously mentioned research gap by addressing how the interactions of the two relationships of board directors influence Chinese philanthropic foundation performance.Design/methodology/approachFollowing Creswell's (2014) explanatory sequential mixed-methodology, a qualitative study (Study 1) was first conducted to pre-test the assumptions, and then a quantitative study (Study 2) was carried out based on a secondary database of 1,405 Chinese philanthropic foundations to further examine the hypotheses. Several regression models were built for analyzing the results.FindingsStudy 1 confirmed that Chinese philanthropic foundations gained greater revenues and hosted more public welfare activities by leveraging the reinforcing or complementary effects of board directors' intellectual capital to improve organizational performance. Study 2 further examined the hypotheses that the interactions of intellectual capital increased the total revenue and public welfare expenditure of the foundations; however, significant positive relationships were only identified in foundations at the local level, and no significant associations were found in those at the national level.Practical implicationsThe research indicates that the intellectual capital of board directors may influence the performance of their philanthropic foundations. Thus, Chinese philanthropic foundations should be more aware of the importance of this influence when determining which candidates will join the board.Originality/valueThe study makes significant contributions to the existing knowledge of the development of non-governmental organizations; it incorporates the resource dependence theory and agency theory into understanding how the intricate interactions between the institutional and business relationships of board directors affect foundation performance and how the jurisdiction affiliations act as a boundary condition for such relationships in a non-western setting such as China.

The community philanthropic foundation: A new form of independent public service provider for China?

There have been growing calls for new theories understand public governance with respect to service provision collaboration involving nonprofit and for-profit actors. In this article, we develop a framework for analyzing whether and how independent public service providers change cross-sector collaboration. We examine new forms of collaboration in nonprofit organizations in China. Based on a discussion of the effectiveness of public service delivery by community philanthropic foundations in three Chinese cities, our analysis reveals that the new type of collaboration entities are attempting to meet unfulfilled public needs. Outside the government’s hierarchical structure, nonprofit and for-profit actors jointly form independent organizations to address public issues. However, because public governance systems are more centralized in China than in many Western countries, the country faces major challenges in the production and delivery of public goods and in implementing service reforms. This article extends the existing research discourse on public governance and cross-sector collaboration.

Going general: Responding to yes–no questions in informational webinars for prospective grant applicants

While research on question–answer sequences has yielded important insights into the structures of responses and the actions they implement, the advising literature has illuminated how advice-giving may be resisted or avoided in certain institutional contexts. In this study, we examine the audio-recorded Q&A sections of applicant webinars delivered by a major philanthropic foundation in the United States, with a particular focus on the foundation representatives’ complex responses to audience members’ yes–no questions that seek specificity. Within a conversation analytic framework, we show how the practice of going general is engaged to manage the demands of being helpful to the individual questioner without appearing to guarantee a particular outcome while foregrounding the foundation’s principles and priorities for the broader audience. Findings of this study may be useful for formulating recommendations for foundation representatives tasked with communicating effectively with potential grantees.

Philanthropic Foundation Strategies to Advance Systems Reform: Perceptions from Frontline Change Implementers

This article examines the strategies and processes pursued by one foundation aimed at accelerating systems change reform efforts in four states. The findings suggest four strategies the Foundation employed in reform efforts: partnering with state policy actors to accelerate systems change efforts, providing technical assistance to support implementation, leveraging the reputation of the Foundation toward systems change goals, and facilitating the dissemination of innovation to states and localities. This study contributes to the literature by documenting the combination of strategies the Foundation applied in their effort to advance systems change, and by exploring the perspective of system professionals on what Foundation activities were viewed as more or less successful. Because systems change entails both policy and operational change, this study suggests foundation strategies need to harness both traditional approaches, such as targeting policy change, as well as approaches less traditionally used that may require new skill sets for foundations, including field building activities that enable system professionals to implement the change effectively.

Sabotage of Development: Subverting the Censorship of Renegade Research

In 2014, a prominent radical publishing house released a book about the influential development economist Jeffrey Sachs. The published version was one chapter shorter than the final proofs. This chapter had been removed after the publisher sought legal advice on content pertaining to fieldwork conducted in Uganda on Sachs’s Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an international development programme financed by some of the wealthiest individuals and most powerful corporations in the world. In contrast to the MVP’s remarkable claims of success, the censored chapter documented allegations of mismanagement and corruption, and told the story of the author’s detention, his pursuit by secret police on suspicion of ‘sabotage of development’, and subsequent threats of legal action made against him by the lawyers of Sachs’s philanthropic foundation. This article presents the censored chapter in its entirety, as an example of the stakes involved in transgressing ‘ethical research’ protocols that function to shield power from scrutiny. The chapter is prefaced with a discussion of the MVP and the state-capital-academia nexus, and is followed by a postscript, which sets out the principles of ‘renegade research’.