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Michael Moody BECOMING A VENTURE PHILANTHROPIST: A Study of the Socialization of Social Venture Partners Michael Moody Research Paper - 31 May 2009 BECOMING A VENTURE PHILANTHROPIST: A Study of the Socialization of Social Venture Partners Michael Moody Research Paper - 31 May 2009 This research was supported by the California Community Foundation Endowed Research Fund at The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy Michael Moody: President, Moody Philanthropic Consulting, LLC; 3215 W. Franklin Street, #5; Richmond, VA, 23221 ABOUT THE CENTER ON PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC POLICY The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy promotes more effective philanthropy and strengthens the nonprofit sector through research that informs philanthropic decision making and public policy to advance public problem solving. Using California and the West as a laboratory, the Center conducts research on philanthropy, volunteerism, and the role of the nonprofit sector in America’s communities. In order to make the research a catalyst for understanding and action, the Center encourages communication among the philanthropic, nonprofit, and policy communities. This is accomplished through a series of convenings and conversations around research findings and policy issues to help key decision makers work together more effectively to solve public problems and to identify strategies for action. The opinions presented in this paper represent those of the authors and not those of The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy. Copyright © 2009 by The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy School of Policy, Planning, and Development University of Southern California Lewis Hall, Room 210 Los Angeles, California 90089-0626 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America About the Author Michael Moody, Ph.D., is a cultural sociologist and President of Moody Philanthropic Consulting, LLC, where he provides consulting and research services to philanthropic organizations and donors. He is the co-author, with Robert Payton, of Understanding Philanthropy: Its Meaning and Mission (Indiana University Press, 2008), and has published articles about the emergence and evolution of venture philanthropy, and the philanthropic idea of serial reciprocity or “giving back.” Before becoming a consultant, Dr. Moody taught at Boston University and served on the faculty of the School of Policy, Planning, and Development (SPPD) at the University of Southern California. He conducted the research for this report while at SPPD, where he was a Faculty Fellow of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy. BECOMING A VENTURE PHILANTHROPIST: A Study of the Socialization of Social Venture Partners EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The research project reported here sought to help meet the need for better understanding of donor education and learning, a need which is increasing with the emergence of more engaged, strategic donors and new giving vehicles. There is little scholarly work on these processes of “donor socialization,” which include both formal donor training and experiential means of immersing donors into the culture of an institution, thereby helping to sustain the institution while also helping donors become more effective philanthropists. This multi-method research project examined donor socialization in Social Venture Partners International (SVPI) by gathering survey and interview data from individuals who became “partners” in local “SVP” affiliates of SVPI, as well as document and observational data on SVPI’s much imitated methods of donor development. The project set out to investigate both what SVP partners learn and how they learn it, to address questions about the content, process, and impact of socialization on these donors, and to derive best practice recommendations for the field of donor education and development. The results provided strong evidence that involvement with SVP has the intended effects on individual partners. Nearly all partners—97.7%—reported that they had learned something significant since joining SVP, while 70.9% said their amount of giving increased, and 86.3% said they changed how they give. Partners indicated that their involvement with SVP was a factor— often a “significant” or “primary” factor—determining these changes in how much they give, how they give, and what they have learned. That is, SVP socialization has an impact on partners’ giving behavior, practices, and knowledge. Moreover, the influence of SVP appears to become more pronounced both as partners become involved in more SVP activities and as they serve as partners for a longer time. The impact of SVP socialization is perhaps most clearly seen in changes in how partners give. Partners were asked in the survey about 12 characteristics of “strategic philanthropy”—all aspects of the approach to giving promoted by SVP—and whether they practiced this in their giving since joining SVP and before joining. For every one of the 12, there was an increase in the number partners (often more than twice as many) saying they practiced it after joining. Also, giving practices that were highly emphasized in the SVP training curriculum and other materials—e.g., a focus on results, giving for capacity-building, and writing fewer but larger checks—were the practices showing the biggest increases and cited the most in interviews. Partners reported learning many things as a result of involvement with SVP, but especially knowledge about social issues, their local community, and nonprofit organizations and the nonprofit sector in general. In interviews, partners noted that they came to appreciate the importance of supporting capacity-building in nonprofit investees, but many also acknowledged the challenge of “translation” they confronted as business-minded professionals trying to learn how things work in the nonprofit world. This project also provided useful insight into the different specific socialization processes that SVP partners go through, and which part of the process partners considered most transformative. Various data showed consistently that both formal donor education processes and experiential donor engagement processes played an influential role. But the interactive learning venues were considered the most impactful, and this was the case for every partner outcome measured—how they give, how much, and what they learned. Partner education events were especially helpful in providing factual knowledge, while the range of experiential processes allowed partners to “exercise” their knowledge and skills in ways that made the learning stick, kept them engaged, and allowed for peer-to-peer learning. Two of the hands-on SVP activities— serving on a grant or investment committee, and volunteering with an investee—were identified repeatedly as the peak socialization experiences for partners. Serving on a grant committee— often the first major form of involvement for all new partners—was consistently singled out in interviews as the most “indispensible” part of the partner development experience. There appeared to be a common learning curve for each partner going through SVP socialization processes. This begins with crucial engagement in the first-year and continues with learning derived from varied experiences, but the process explicitly has “no finish line.” There is some evidence of identifiable stages of partner philanthropic development, and SVP affiliates are now trying to specify and support those stages in the partner “life cycle.” However, the findings here also suggested the importance of an individualized path that takes into account where a donor is coming from and, especially, their extent of involvement. “Mileage varies” for each individual partner because “you get out of it what you put into it,” and engagement and learning reinforce one another over time. Finally, SVP socialization was found to be an important influence on partners even when explicitly compared to other life experiences and influences. These results confirm earlier findings about SVP’s impact on partners, but do so with more geographically diverse data and with some more depth of explanation provided by interviews. This study of a successful and often imitated model of donor education and learning can also help improve the still evolving field of donor development and advisement. Best practices recommendations derived from this study include: . Create more experiential, interactive venues for learning. Provide ample opportunities for both intense and sustained involvement, but allow for individualization. Help donors that have little experience in the nonprofit sector with the translation process. Encourage and provide opportunities for peer-to-peer learning among donors. Learn about and complement where donors are coming from. BECOMING A VENTURE PHILANTHROPIST: 1 A Study of the Socialization of Social Venture Partners INTRODUCTION Understanding the process of donor education and learning has never been more important than it is right now. Despite the recent economic downturn, in the past couple decades there has been a significant increase in the number of high net worth individuals seeking professional assistance with their giving (Schervish, 2000), and growing numbers of donors of all sorts deliberately looking to give in engaged, strategic ways (Grace and Wendroff, 2001). It is no coincidence that this rise in new donors has paralleled the well-documented development of new vehicles and means for giving such as giving circles, “venture philanthropy” techniques, and donor advised
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