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Ronald King
PHST-P450
Defining and Defending Philanthropic Studies
February 21, 2017

In their essential text Understanding Philanthropy, Robert Payton and Michael Moody

advocate for a dialectic on civil society centered upon the philosophy of meliorism. Meliorism is

grounded in pragmatismindeed, Payton and Moody were deeply influenced by the most

seminal pragmatist, William James. If, as Payton and Moody maintain and I agree, salvation of

the world will come from rightly directed human effort (Payton, pp. 122-3), then it must also

be true that knowledge is necessary to ensure that said effort is proper, efficient, and right.

Philanthropic Studies, then is one vital component of the philosophy of meliorism. If meliorism

is the practice of rightly directed human effort, then no philanthropist can be worthy of the name

without consciousness that transcends emotion, focus that transcends desire, and action that

transcends ambition. Philanthropy does not reject emotion, desire, and ambition. Philanthropy

cannot exist without these. But effective philanthropy calls for the harnessing of these energies

via logic and best practices. Meliorism is a practical reaction to our obligations under the social

contract, and can only be possible with rationality obtained through knowledge.

Examples abound of organizations in the private sector who have leveraged knowledge to

eliminate the depredations of human error on organizational performance. Being that the

greatest impediment to progress is human bias, many studies have strived to implement strategies

to neutralize the myriad ways in which these tendencies manifest (Koehler, 1994) (Cheng, 2010)

(Samuelson, 1988). If we accept the view of Payton and Moody that philanthropy is a necessarily
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melioristic endeavor, then the need for Philanthropic Studies as a discipline becomes clear, since

meliorism demands education as a conduit for rationalism.

If James is one of the twin pillars of pragmatism, then John Dewey is arguably the other,

despite his refusal to be labeled as such. Essential to Deweys views on education was his

embrace of the concept of fallibilism. Fallibilism claims that, for the most part, no sphere of

knowledge can be claimed to contain absolute truth. Excepting certain scientific and

mathematical truisms, everything can be seen as up for debate. Deweys view of fallibililism,

then, maintains that a certain flexibility is necessary for the attainment of knowledge, that the

pursuit of knowledge should be without end, and that this pursuit is necessary for the survival of

humanity (Gribov, 2001). Dewey advocated for a broad, wide ranging education because the

tendency of humanity to embrace narrow foci impedes the ability of the student to recognize the

shifting, malleable nature of truth and knowledge of truth. This narrowing of focus and emphasis

of specialization results in a citizenry devoid of the tools needed to participate in civil society

(Dewey, 1944).

Pragmatism is impossible without awareness. An education in Philanthropic Studies

grounds the prospective philanthropist in the mechanics of a vital tradition that informs the very

existence of civil society. Philanthropic Studies is a response to the impetus that we grasp why

we need to change the world. Philanthropic Studies teaches us to question the nature of empathy,

and to face reality. The gauzy perspective of dreams brings us to philanthropy, but that

perspective can leave our vision obscured to the implications of action. Philanthropic Studies

provides focus, and the student of Philanthropy emerges with more than a degree. Effective

meliorism can only be accomplished with complete knowledge, and if meliorism is the most
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purely ethical approach to philanthropy, then the philanthropist must know the world. Knowing

the philanthropic self is essential.

A principled citizen can change the world without knowing who Wolfgang Bielefeld is.

Knowledge does not erase the necessity of hard work. Anyone who deigns to strive for a more

perfect world can point to hundreds of inspiring examples of people who made a difference

without obtaining a degree in Philanthropic Studies. Examples abound of people who start

nonprofit organizations with nothing more than a G.E.D., a wealth of life experience, and an

unflagging belief in oneself. The path to amelioration is undoubtedly less Sisyphean if the

prospective agent of change has taken a few courses and absorbed the wisdom of those who

preceded them. There is no better justification for education than the accumulation of wisdom.

Richard Turner maintains that Philanthropic Studies is best viewed as an education in the

humanities, a discipline separate from nonprofit management (Turner, 2004). The justification

for this becomes clear when viewed through the lens of meliorism. Much has been made of the

transformation of the nonprofit sector from a charity based societal institution to the current

ecosystem of idealism melded with the principles of scientific philanthropy developed in the 20th

century. Venture philanthropy seeks to implement the time-tested axioms of venture capitalism in

seeking to develop solutions for societal need. Ample literature exists on the scientific side of the

emerging nonprofit sector. The same cannot be said for philanthropy itself, even with all of the

progress made by scholars like Merle Curti and Peter Dobkin Hall. As Hall himself states in his

retrospective on the field, fewer than 1000 articles were published on the nonprofit sector in the

second half of the 20th century (Hall, 1999). Of these, about one sixth could be properly

classified as studies of philanthropy, as opposed to charity or nonprofit organizations themselves.

If the nonprofit sector is to become as efficient and successful as the public and private sectors,
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philanthropy needs to be as fully realized as an academic discipline as the other fields of study

that make the sector go. More work needs to be done to determine the nature of need, the quality

of response to need, the impetus to give as an expression of membership in civil society, and the

ways in which civil society reacts to shortfalls in service provision by the private and public

sectors. Foundations have worked diligently to analyze these problems for more than a century.

The principles of the scientific method have been exploited to laudable effect in the promotion of

melioristic principles. Much more needs to be done to develop and promote a base of knowledge

from which interested agents can draw from in their philanthropic heuristics. Academia is only

starting to address these blind spots in the humanities. The knowledge gained will always be

modifiable by changes in the political landscape, cultural imperatives, and economic realities.

Expanding upon Payton and Moodys definition of philanthropy as voluntary

action for the public good (Payton, p. 27), Philanthropic Studies is best viewed as a humanities-

based analysis of those factors which influence philanthropy as a driving force in civil society.

While many disciplines touch upon the institutions that emanate from civil society, there exists a

void in the marketplace of ideas for a unified conception of civil society itself. Helmut Anheiers

vision of civil society as the arena outside family, government, and market where people

voluntarily associate to advance common interests based on civility (Sievers, p. 8) is one that

demands further study, especially considering current political events. Large swaths of the

population have been left feeling marginalized and unrepresented. In the past, the answer for the

realization of civil rights for minority peoples have come from the work of people in the

nonprofit sector. Much of that work took up the mantle of influential advocates like Michael

Harrington. Change agents will need to consider the ways in which civil society adjusted to

multiple political realities in the half century preceding this one.

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Crucial to grasping those changing realities (and what they have to teach us about the

ones we contend with in the present) is to unearth the roles the nonprofit sector played (and

continue to play) in improving or exacerbating those factors that interfere with progress. Merle

Curti may have made the most compelling case for the existence of Philanthropic Studies when,

while advocating for a more formal literature of the field, he pleaded for a truly independent

history of philanthropy to be developed (Curti, p. 362). Much of what we know about the

nonprofit sector, even today, is indelibly influenced by those publications composed by nonprofit

organizations. Autobiographical history is rarely complete and necessarily self-serving. If we

accept the old saw that repeating history is tantamount to doom, then it stands to reason that we

ought to at least know that history beforehand, or at least as much as Philanthropic scholars can

glean. A melioristic approach to Philanthropic Studies will reward a melioristic approach to

philanthropy.

Knowledge is malleable because it is cumulative. The shame of the nonprofit world

resides not in those rare stories where leadership exploits the public trust but in the organizations

that fall short of their overreaching, unrealistic missions, those organizations that fold due to

inadequate support from the public and private sectors, those worthy nonprofits who are

cannibalized by more worthy nonprofits, and those organizations who thrive in spite of a lack of

compelling need. Foundations without focus. Visionaries without perspective. These failures,

too, are cumulative. As civil society lurches unsurely into the third decade of the twenty-first

century, as even the nature of civil society comes into question in some quarters, all who have a

stake in civil society will need to draw upon the lessons of the past to grasp where we are

headed. A melioristic approach, then, to leveraging civil society in service to doing good,

demands the study of philanthropy.

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Works Cited

Cheng, F.-F. and Wu, C.S. (2010). Debiasing the Framing Effect: The Effect of Warning and

Involvement. Decision Support Systems, 328-334.

Curti, M. (1957). The History of American Philanthropy as a Field of Research. The American

Historical Review, 352-363.

Dewey, J. (1944). The Problem of the Liberal Arts College. The American Scholar, 391-393.

Gribov, S. (2001). John Dewey's Pragmatism and Moral Education. Philosophy of Education,

373-380.

Hall, P. D. (1999). The Work of Many Hands: a Response to Stanley N Katz on the Origins of the

"Serious Study" of Philanthropy. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 522-534.

Koehler, D. J. (1994). Hypothesis Generation and Confidence in Judgement. Journal of

Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 461-469.

Payton, R. and Moody, M. (2008). Understanding Philanthropy. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

Samuelson, W. and Zeckhauser, R. (1988). Status Quo Bias in Decision Making. Journal of Risk

and Uncertainty, 7-59.

Sievers, B. R. (2010). Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Fate of the Commons. Lebanon: Tufts

University Press.
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Turner, R. (2004). Philanthropic Studies as a Central and Centering DIscipline in the Humanities.

International Journal of the Humanities, 2083-2086.