Ekkehard Thümler

Foundations, Schools and The State

Abstract The public school systems of both Germany and the United States face environmental pressures to provide better and more equitable results, while at the same time they are criticized for high degrees of bureaucracy and structural inertia. Public–private partnerships are frequently praised for their potential to provide a remedy to these deficits. In this article, I investigate the role of private philanthropic foundations that co-operate with public actors in school improvement partnerships. Drawing on institutional theory and empirical data derived from the exploratory research project ‘Strategies for Impact in Education’, the article concludes that an important function of such arrangements is the generation of legitimacy in case of ‘successful failure’.

Accountability, Democracy, and Post-growth: Civil Society Rethinking Political Economy and Finance

Since the fall of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, the economic downturn has taken a heavy toll on many countries. In the public and academic discourse on necessary remedies and reforms, the spotlight is on the role of political elites and business. The actual and potential role of civil society is hardly mentioned in these debates. Yet, it is within civil society that an alternative paradigm and fundamental rethinking of conventional wisdom may emerge. In this collection, we present three different ways to frame the crisis and explore the corresponding roles of civil society actors: Reinforcing public accountability, regaining democracy, and exploring post-growth scenarios. Our goal is to investigate the potentially transformative role of civil society in order to reflect on possible paths towards social change that are not merely remedial but also (re-)constructive in nature.

Sind Stiftungen Soziale Investoren? Zur Anwendbarkeit eines ökonomischen Begriffs auf die Tätigkeit gemeinnütziger europäischer Stiftungen

Der Begriff „Investition“ entstammt dem Bereich der Okonomie. Von Investitionen ist in einem betriebswirtschaftlichen Kontext dann die Rede, wenn es um die Anschaffung von Produktionsmitteln oder um Geldanlagen mit dem Ziel der Generierung finanzieller Gewinne geht. Stiftungen hingegen engagieren sich mit eigenen Projekten oder finanziellen Transfers fur das Gemeinwohl. Auf den ersten Blick scheinen Stiftungen also alles andere als klassische Investoren zu sein. Inwiefern lasst sich philanthropische Tatigkeit dennoch als – wenngleich Soziale – Investition beschreiben und welchen Nutzen hat eine solche Perspektive fur die wissenschaftliche Analyse und fur die Praxis? Unser Beitrag untersucht diese Fragestellung auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse des Forschungsprojekts „Strategies for Impact in Philanthropy“ (SIP). Ausgangspunkt fur unser Vorhaben war die Beobachtung, dass die materiellen Ressourcen, die Stiftungen zur Verfugung stehen, in Relation zu den adressierten Problemen in der Regel als marginal anzusehen sind.

Philanthropy and Education

This series highlights first-rate scholarship related to education and philanthropy, attracting the top authors writing in the field. Philanthropy is broadly defined to include time, talent, and treasure. In addition to traditional forms and definitions of philanthropy, the series highlights philanthropy in communities of color as well as philanthropy among women and LGBT communities. Books in the series focus on fundraising as it is an integral part of increasing philanthropy and has an ever-increasing market.

Islands of Success Revisited: Which Role for Philanthropy?

Readers may have observed at this point that, while the problem solving model does not claim to serve as a blueprint for philanthropic practice, it contains a good deal of implicit advice for practitioners, provided that the single elements are taken as prescriptions rather than explanations. By including ample illustrations on how social impact has been realised in the different cases, we intended to provide an ostensible framework aimed at orienting and informing the future practice of education philanthropy. The purpose of this was to help practitioners develop a more advanced conception of the particular requirements of their profession, and thus to enhance the capacity for intelligent action. In this last chapter we will, first of all, resume our more instrumental findings and outline the model’s implications for philanthropic strategy making. We will subsequently begin putting them into context and discuss their broader societal relevance. The idea is to simultaneously suggest tools for the generation of social impact, as well as put forward a different perspective on how to conceive the results of education philanthropy in the first place.

School Reform and Philanthropy: Theory and Literature

Our study draws on the new institutionalism in organisational theory to inform its analysis. A main theme of this approach is the assumption that explanations of the structure and behaviour of organisations should pay attention to legitimacy rather than performance. Contrary to rational actor models, presuming that organisations are essentially autonomous entities endowed with an intrinsic interest in performance and effectiveness, and a preference for steady improvement (both measured along a stable set of organisational aims), new institutionalism holds that organisations have a strong inclination towards satisfying the explicit, as well as implicit, expectations for rational and responsible behaviour that are prevalent in their environments; only the adherence to these patterns of behaviour and the resulting ascriptions of legitimacy secure social support, a flow of resources, and, thus, organisational stability and survival (Meyer and Rowan 1991). However, the institutionalised patterns of “proper” behaviour that are taken as self-evident by both internal and external audiences are not necessarily rational in nature themselves, but rather “rational myths,” that is, unverifiable narratives about the right ways to conduct social tasks (Koch 2009: 113–114). Thus, instead of being mandatory because of being rational, essentially contingent types of action and cognition are labelled as rational, and hence mandatory, because they comply with worldviews that are dominant at a certain time (cf. Hasse and Krucken 1999; Walgenbach and Meyer 2008).1

Education Philanthropy in Germany and the United States

One of the most significant international trends in education is the increasingly important role of private actors in the improvement of public schools (Meyer and Rowan 2006). International advisory firms, non-profit organisations, corporate social responsibility divisions of commercial enterprises, individual consultants and a growing number of philanthropic foundations have joined the field which used to be almost exclusively government domain (Bethge 2006; Rowan 2006). The public school system is thus becoming an arena where new and old actors meet in order to improve its quality in possibly innovative, often collaborative, and sometimes contentious ways.

Philanthropic Impact and Effectiveness in Education

In the previous chapters we introduced six case studies of philanthropic interventions to set the stage for the more analytical part of this book. These cases enable us to better assess the type, scale and scope of the social impact that is actually caused by education philanthropy, and allows us to build our model on empirical rather than anecdotal evidence. Because we observed major differences in the quality and quantity of the evidence presented by programmes to prove their effectiveness, and knowing that evaluations may be biased and more a matter of public relations rather than neutral feedback, we concluded that an overall assessment was necessary. Hence, as a further step, the nineth chapter compared the evidence for each individual programme to help us arrive at a more differentiated and profound judgement of what each case really achieved. In the following we introduce a model of social problem solving based on the common lessons that we can learn from these very diverse programmes in terms of the generation of social impact.