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Mapping the Unequal Playing Field: The Disparities and Geography of Philanthropy
The first pillar of my research developed from my dissertation represents a systematic investigation to explain the locational distribution and disparity of community philanthropy. Philanthropy is a defining feature and cornerstone of the nonprofit sector. One special type of place-based philanthropy is community foundations, a form of 501(c)3 grantmaking intermediaries, which serve as a local governing mechanism for distributing community resources to address public problems and improve community well-being. It is critical to ask: What factors drive or hamper the incidence of such philanthropic efforts in communities? In the paper “ The Geography and Disparities of Community Philanthropy” published in Voluntas (Wu, 2021), I offer a community assessment model and empirically accounts for the place-to-place difference in the locational distribution of community foundations in relation to community needs and resources, and ecological environments. I found significant disparities in where they serve and the scale of their philanthropic activities along the economic, ethnic, sociodemographic, religious, and urban-rural lines. Alarmingly, community foundations tend to be absent in vulnerable communities such as those with high poverty, ethnic diversity, and the proportion of ethnic minorities.
These findings propelled my continuing investigation into the “Place Dilemma of Community Philanthropy,” which describes the situation that community foundations are not only place-based but also potentially place-bounded and powered by inequality. Their philanthropic capacity—the ability to raise funds from and distribute them to local communities—depends on the locational assets that their communities inherit in the first place and the degree of inequality within the communities. This working paper won the ARNOVA Best Conference Paper Award in 2018.
Extending on the place dilemma paper, my team (with Chao Guo and Ji Ma) is finishing up an externally funded research project that analyzes philanthropic gaps across American communities, particularly the extent to which local nonprofit sectors serving disadvantaged, minority and rural communities might “lock in” the path of “philanthropic desert” over time. Our findings illuminate the “Matthew Effect in American Generosity”—a self-reinforcing process reproducing disparities across space and time. We have developed multiple national panel datasets of local nonprofit sectors from 2000 to 2020 and found evidence for consistently lower philanthropy capacity in poor, minority, and rural communities over time. Additionally, government funding moderates the relationship between community disadvantage and philanthropic capacity. The study makes a significant theoretical and empirical contribution to advancing research in the philanthropic gaps and won the RGK-ARNOVA President’s Research Award and an award from the Generosity Commission.
Building on the “Matthew Effect” study, my research has expanded to investigate “Social Justice Grantmaking in Response to Social Movements” Preliminary findings show that larger social protests in recipient cities significantly enhance both the likelihood and amount of social justice grants, reflecting foundations’ responsiveness to public demands for change. Additionally, increases in the non-white population percentage in communities correlate with higher grant amounts, indicating a focus on addressing inequalities in more diverse areas. Interestingly, while generous foundations may initially avoid social justice grantmaking, those that do engage tend to commit larger funds to high-impact areas. Conversely, concentrated funders often avoid exploring new priorities like social justice causes. These insights highlight both opportunities and challenges in fundraising
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