Abstract
In the edited volume, Hoosier Philanthropy, Columbia University Senior Lecturer Greg Witkowski and his colleagues deepen our understanding of philanthropy and nonprofit organizations in Indiana with one of the few state-based accounts of philanthropic activity. While analyses of philanthropy and nonprofits that focus at other levels are certainly valuable, a state-centered perspective also makes good sense because philanthropy and the nonprofit sector are shaped, at least in part, by state histories, cultures, and institutions, including state government. Moreover, a state (and local) focus recognizes that so much philanthropy stays relatively close to where donors live.
Residents of Indiana are known as Hoosiers, and Hoosier Philanthropy is a wide-ranging account of their philanthropic activity, going back to the state’s founding in 1816. This comprehensive book, which would be especially useful in graduate or upper-level undergraduate overview courses in philanthropy, contains a foreword, introduction, and 15 chapters that sum to 465 pages. An historical approach is predominant in the book, reflecting that the book’s editor and the largest number of chapter authors are historians.
The first major section of Hoosier Philanthropy discusses philanthropy and nonprofits in different program areas, including religion, social services, higher education, and health. The second section describes the philanthropic contributions of important Hoosier residents, including Calvin Fletcher, a 19th-century Hoosier farmer, lawyer, and banker; Madam C. J. Walker, an African American entrepreneur who developed beauty products, who actually only briefly lived in Indiana but who headquartered her company there; and Eli Lilly and his descendants whose pharmaceutical company produced insulin and other drugs, yielding income that now funds one of the largest foundations in the United States. Remaining sections address a variety of practices and trends in Hoosier philanthropy, including early interest in evaluating nonprofit effectiveness, support for the growth of community foundations in the state, and the value of philanthropic and nonprofit collaborations.
So, what is Hoosier philanthropy? In his introductory chapter, Witkowski suggests there are four defining characteristics of philanthropic practices in Indiana: the existence of an extensive group of donors, an emphasis on collaboration, the early adoption of new approaches to philanthropy that have already been proven effective elsewhere, and the existence of a broad, beneficiary group centered on the middle class. This last point, about the large number of middle-class beneficiaries of Hoosier philanthropy, seems especially interesting and important. As Witkowski reports, “Philanthropic giving suffers from misconceptions that it is for those most in need, when in reality, it often supports mainstream middle-class or upper-class practices and people” (p. 22). Witkowski’s introduction previews how subsequent chapters on social services, religion, education, and health care all show the tilt of Hoosier philanthropy toward middle- and upper-class beneficiaries. Indiana is probably not unique in this middle- and upper-class bias of philanthropy, which likely holds in the United States generally and perhaps globally as well.
In addition to the four features noted above, two other characteristics of Indiana philanthropy receive significant attention in Witkowski’s introduction and throughout the book: the importance of philanthropy in a state with small government, and the strong connection of philanthropy and religion in the state. Hoosier reservations about government apparently have deep roots in the state’s history. In his chapter, “Indiana’s Philanthropic History,” noted Indiana historian James Madison reports, “Hoosier distrust of government [is] . . . a tradition that runs through two generations of public policy. Hoosiers have always preferred small government” (p. 34). In another historical chapter, James Connolly writes that Indiana’s earliest settlers “brought with them a set of beliefs that emphasized personal liberty, egalitarianism, and skepticism of government activism” (p. 109). Madison goes on to suggest that “[s]mall government has meant that Hoosiers have placed very large burdens on private philanthropy” (p. 34).
Has philanthropy been up to the task? Hoosier Philanthropy begins with a thoughtful foreword by Clay Robbins, the current chairman and chief executive officer of the Lilly Endowment Inc. (abbreviated as LEI throughout the book), who reflects on the importance of community in his own life. Regarding his youth, Robbins remembers not so much the giving of money by his own family and neighbors but in-kind gifts and a “generosity of spirit” that helped those in need (p. xvi). Later chapters go on to describe the many impressive contributions of philanthropic funding in Indiana, including through significant investments by LEI and others in universities, hospitals, arts institutions, and social service agencies.
At the same time, there is some wondering about whether, in the context of limited government, there are sufficient levels of Hoosier philanthropy to address public needs in a satisfactory way. According to Nicole Etcheson, in the 1800s, one of Indiana’s most prominent early philanthropists, Calvin Fletcher, “believed strongly in the need for government to provide public services and welfare . . . Fletcher certainly thought government could do more, especially for public education” (pp. 200–201). Regarding present-day Indiana, Robbins’s foreword cites some of the lingering challenges Indiana faces, including relatively poor health indicators, lagging measures of well-being for children and youth, modest education levels, and low per capita income levels compared to other states (p. xxvii). While Robbins goes on to note that Indiana is one of the best states for business, one is left to question whether more government engagement might help Indiana address some of the weaknesses that Robbins cites. While clearly a strong believer in the value of community and private philanthropy, Robbins asks, “What can be appropriately initiated or funded by the private sector or philanthropy and what needs public funding or public policy changes?” and suggests there may be more opportunities for philanthropy to engage with government (p. xxx).
With regard to another major theme, the important connection between philanthropy and religion in Indiana, David King writes about “the pervasiveness of religious institutions throughout the state” (p. 49), especially those dominated by White Protestants, and concludes that “religious philanthropy clearly has and will continue to be a major agent for sustaining and shaping the Hoosier state” (p. 76). The Lilly Endowment is relatively unusual among large foundations in having religion as a major area of focus for its grantmaking. In their chapter on philanthropy and higher education, Paul Pribbenow and Caitlin Crowley tell an interesting story about philanthropic efforts to bolster small, independent, church-related, non-tax-supported colleges and universities, which otherwise might have to turn to the federal government for funding and then have to comply with federal regulations and oversight.
The historical accounts in Hoosier Philanthropy help bring some of the traditional wisdom about philanthropy to life, but also suggest where conventional thinking may oversimplify reality and need to be revised. For example, on the latter point, the chapter by Peter Weber and Chen Ji, “Social Innovation in the Heartland,” counters a common explanation for foundations’ use of program-related investments, in which they make loans—and not just grants—for charitable purposes, with the loans preserving foundations’ assets while grants would deplete their resources. As Weber and Ji describe it, the Indianapolis Foundation’s (IF) purchasing a building and leasing it to the Indianapolis Senior Citizen’s Center (ISCC) in the early 1960s “was not part of a conscious, strategic process but rather the outcome of a long process in which the purchasing and leasing of property was a financially safe alternative to regular grant making” (p. 322). The IF leased a building to ISCC rather than providing funding to ISCC to buy the building itself because the foundation was concerned about ISCC’s financial viability and the risk that providing ISCC grant funding for the building would be wasted if ISCC ultimately had to dissolve.
In another chapter, Ruth Hansen also tells a counter-intuitive story about the Gary Neighborhood House, whose leaders in the 1960s advocated for systemic social change in ways that cost the nonprofit significant philanthropic support, demonstrating that nonprofit executives do not always seek to maximize funding, as we typically expect. Finally, Philip Byers makes a similar point about the limits of some common generalizations about philanthropy and nonprofits in his account of Earlham College Professor Elton Trueblood and the founding and evolution of the Yokefellow movement. According to Byers, the movement began with a vision of religious practice which required at least “minimum discipline,” and evolved, with significant philanthropic support from Indiana donors, to strengthen its leadership, physical plant, and spiritual retreats (p. 395). At the same time, the movement became less relevant in Japan where it had previously gained some popularity because the new emphasis on retreats “were a luxury only to be imagined” (p. 411). While the findings from Byers’s story “confirm that philanthropy generated substantial change, they nevertheless resist the popular ‘overbearing philanthropists’ interpretation. Rather than some furtive group of self-interested puppet-masters, the relatively impersonal mechanics of social movement philanthropy drive this story” (p. 411). Philanthropy’s impact was significant, but was not particularly intentional with regard to the nature of the impact.
Overall, Hoosier Philanthropy makes an important contribution to the nonprofit research field that breaks new ground with its thoughtful, comprehensive, state-based analysis of philanthropy and nonprofits. Inevitably, there are a few shortcomings in Hoosier Philanthropy—there is some repetition across chapters and one can imagine chapter authors making greater use of data about their topics—but these are minor concerns. While Hoosiers themselves may have the most interest in this excellent book, we all have a lot to learn from the volume about how home-grown philanthropy shapes local nonprofits and other institutions and is, in turn, shaped by these same institutions.
