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Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) becoming business-like is a contested issue. Some understand the adoption of business-like practices by NPOs as a case of adopting rational myths through institutional isomorphism and thus potentially dangerous for NPOs’ ability to fulfill their unique societal roles. Others are more optimistic, arguing that technical rationality is possible in the adoption of business-like practices, and that such practices can therefore support NPOs in fulfilling a wide range of societal roles. Drawing on survey data of NPOs in Flanders, we examine the relationship between the extent to which NPOs use business-like practices, and the extent to which they engage in various societal roles. We find that business-like practices are weakly related to NPOs’ societal roles. All roles are positively related to nonprofit managerialism and unrelated to NPOs’ reliance on commercial funding. Our results suggest that a certain optimism regarding the rational use of business-like approaches is justified.

Funding: Open access funding provided by Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) contribute to vital neighborhoods by building communities of citizens and acting as intermediaries between citizens and organizations. We investigate how NPOs’ engagement in social and systemic integration is shaped by neighborhood characteristics, and how it relates to the organizational practices of managerialism and organizational democracy. We combine survey data with administrative data from a representative sample of NPOs in a major European city. To measure the effect of neighborhood on organizational integration, we separated the city into 7,840 grid cells characterized by population, per capita income, share of immigrant population, and density of organizations. Findings indicate that managerialism positively relates with systemic integration, as organizational democracy relates with social integration. Neighborhood characteristics, however, are not related with NPOs’ engagement in integration. Our findings contribute to research on urban social cohesion by illuminating the interplay between NPOs’ organizing practices, local neighborhoods, and contributions to both forms of integration. Publisher PDF

The pandemic has impeded Austrian NPHSOs on multiple levels: service delivery, income streams, costs, and human resources. To analyze the consequences, we tackle two questions: How has the neo-corporatist welfarepartnership between the government and NPHSOs passed this stress-test? What are the potential effects on the overall composition of the sector? Theoretically, we draw on social origins theory to explain the welfarepartnership in Vienna. Empirically, we analyze online-survey-data and interviews with NPHSO-executives from 2021. The results indicate that Vienna’s welfare-partnership has passed this stress-test successfully, but overall in favor of large NPHSOs, thus forwarding concentration in the sector.

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) are a novel form of cross-sector collaborations and an alternative way of financing innovative social services. Based on an in-depth longitudinal case analysis and drawing from agency theory as well as resource dependence theory, we examine the process of interest alignment among involved partners over the lifespan of a SIB pilot project in Austria. Our study shows the multitude of problems and costs that such a challenging arrangement of multiple stakeholders brings along, thus dampening overoptimistic expectations in SIBs. We also suggest an analytical framework that improves the assessment of SIBs’ probability of success.

Corporate volunteering (CV) is an increasingly common type of nonprofit-business collaboration and can take various forms, and its benefits for the business partner are well studied. The benefits for the nonprofit partner, however, are less evident and often questioned. This study investigates why nonprofits engage in and how they make sense of CV collaborations, building on the concepts of sensemaking and cognitive frames. Drawing on interviews with staff in nonprofit organizations, we reveal that decisions about CV collaborations usually go beyond the resources acquired through CV itself. We identify three different CV frames and show how they lead to different types of partnerships, hereby challenging the assumption that more integrative partnerships are superior to philanthropic ones. Our results show that depending on the frame used, different perceptions of the distribution of power between the nonprofit and the business partner exist, addressing the crucial role of how nonprofit organizations position themselves in such partnerships.

PurposeIncreasingly complex societal challenges call for new, innovative solutions that social hybrid business models can provide. Social supermarkets (SSMs) are one example offering access to affordable food to people living in poverty while reducing food waste of nearby retailers. Finding the “right” location is an essential part of this retail marketing strategy. However, limited research has attempted to investigate the specific conditions of locational planning for hybrid and nonprofit retail organizations. This paper illustrates the case of Austria where SSMs are well established.Design/methodology/approachA GIS-based white space analysis was carried out to identify potential neighborhoods or rural areas for new social supermarkets with sufficient nearby demand, supply and no existing SSMs. The empirical parameters for this spatial analysis can be transferred to European countries with similar ecosystems. The authors collected a unique data set of 79 (2014) and 88 SSMs (2019) and 4,665 (2014) and 4,211 (2019) food retailers as (potential) suppliers to SSMs. To determine demand, the authors relied on small-scale integrated wage and income tax data and unemployment rates (2011) from Statistics Austria.FindingsOverall, Austria has very good spatial access to grocery stores, including to SSMs. SSM access increased especially in the capital of Vienna between 2014 and 2019. The GIS-based white space analysis identified several other regions where residents have a high demand for affordable food with sufficient potential suppliers of surplus food but no SSM yet. Neighborhood-level findings are released as part of a publicly accessible spatial decision support system.Originality/valueThe methodology allowed a specific definition of the key areas of relevance by matching the demand for SSMs, calculated as the number of people with low incomes in the respective regions in Austria, with the supply of SSMs, calculated as the amount of potential food loss prevention by nearby retail stores. These parameters have proven to help in identifying the white spaces and therefore can be used in Austria and other European countries with similar ecosystems.

Civil courage refers to the behavior where people actively intervene to protect a victim in a concrete situation of injustice despite the risk of becoming a victim themselves. To act with civil courage, one requires competencies that relate to prosocial values as well as the physical and social ability to act. In this context, this brief reports the opinions of 2,046 respondents—representatives of Germany with respect to age, gender, and region—on what, according to them, are the best contexts for learning civil courage. “At home and/or from family” as well as “through volunteering” are considered the most suitable contexts to learn civil courage. In contrast, television, social media, and the internet are considered the least supportive contexts.

We know that immigrants around the world are more likely to start companies than native-born populations but we have a limited understanding as to why. New research suggests personality-based self-selection — in particular, a propensity for risk-taking — may be a hidden driver. The findings have implications for investors, who might want to provide services tailored to the needs of migrant entrepreneurs, including visa and legal advice, and policy makers, who might want to extend support beyond beyond the small group of later-stage international entrepreneurs who are usually the target of entrepreneurship visa programs and investment promotion agencies.

Human resources are vital to an organization’s success and are a driving force behind innovation processes. This study examines the influence of various employee characteristics and their effect on the innovation culture with public and nonprofit organizations (innovation climate). Using data collected from 1220 public and nonprofit employees, we evaluate the role of various elements such as work motivation, job flexibility, and financial motivation, and how they affect an innovation culture within organizations. Findings from a series of OLS regressions suggest that job flexibility, the quality and reputation of the organization, and importance placed on work are positively related to both public and nonprofit innovation climates. Personnel inflexibility negatively affects the innovation climate in both the public and nonprofit sectors, and the effects of other variables, including advancement motivation, vary by sector.

The social services sector is among the fastest-growing industries, but it has gained little attention in the debate regarding firm growth. This article analyzes firm growth in relation to firm size using payroll expenses as our indicator for both firm growth and firm size. We apply structural equation modeling and full maximum likelihood estimation using Austrian data comprising all non-profit social service providers. After 2013, fewer firms have been entering and more have been exiting the sector; however, we find that growing in size is still not associated with higher growth rates. Our study emphasizes the role of small organizations in remaining a growth sector.

Equal access to childcare services is a key concern of childcare policy. This article analyses social inequalities in the availability of such services. We explore how observed disparities are related to the socio-economic status of neighbourhoods and investigate how different provider types contribute to such differences. To do so, we use data on all childcare centres in the city of Vienna, Austria, on the spatial distribution of children aged under six and on three measures of neighbourhood status, over a period of eight years. We find that spatial accessibility is highest in neighbourhoods with the highest socio-economic status, that such inequality has increased over time and that both effects can be attributed to the role of non-profits. The results indicate that the policy change undertaken in Vienna towards increased communitarisation – that is, a shift towards non-profit provision – has undermined the universal character of the city’s childcare system.

Previous research addressing the relation between income and donations as a proportion of income has revealed predominantly inconsistent results. In this article, we argue that this can partly be explained by the great variance of methodological approaches. Providing a literature review covering 26 studies, we systematically identify how methodological issues such as data, variables, and methods have affected former findings. In addition, we apply different methodological approaches to Austrian income tax data (n = 20,000), demonstrating how different methods lead to a variation in results. Overall, we show that existing studies are hardly comparable as their designs vary strongly. We point out that it is particularly important to use samples with sufficient cases of all income groups and methods that adequately account for the non-linear relation between the two variables, not restricting it to a U-shape. Our findings enable a better understanding and interpretation of diverging findings in philanthropic research.

This study investigates the impacts of negative and positive signals on public-serving organizations’ reputations. We draw on sociocognitive perspectives to test how organizations’ breaches of stakeholders’ trust are repairable over time as well as the moderating effect of organizational mission valence on this forgiveness process. Multilevel data from two slope-shift experiments (n = 304; n = 582) show that mission valence, or individuals’ affinity with an organization’s mission, intensifies the effects of both negative and positive signals in organizations’ reputation building processes. Negative signals have stronger negative effects on intentions to support the organization for individuals with high mission valence. However, the effect of successive positive signals is also stronger for individuals with high mission valence, suggesting greater forgiveness following a stronger breach of trust among these stakeholders.

Social origins theory explains variation between civil societies by power relations between socioeconomic classes and by path dependencies. There have been few systematic reflections on which dimensions of civil society depend on these factors and can thus be explained by the theory. With the help of a historical narrative of the eventful history of Vienna’s civil society, in which traditional, liberal, social democratic, statist, and corporatist patterns feature, we tentatively identify ten such dimensions: CSOs’ original founding dates; fields of activity; societal roles; reliance on volunteers and paid staff; political and religious affiliation; the relationship with government when engaging in advocacy; organizational governance structures; socioeconomic characteristics of CSOs’ workforce, board members, and service recipients; CSOs’ funding sources; and CSOs’ sizes. We suggest that civil society research would benefit from the anthropological approach of deriving etic categories for comparing civil societies and explaining the similarities and differences between them by consolidating single case studies that analyze the development of specific civil societies from an emic perspective.

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) contribute to vital communities by building communities of citizens and acting as intermediaries between citizens and organizations. We investigate how NPOs’ engagement in social and systemic integration is shaped by neighborhood characteristics, and how it relates to the organizational practices of managerialism and organizational democracy. We combine survey data with administrative data from a representative sample of NPOs in a major European city. To measure the effect of neighborhood on organizational integration, we separated the city into 7,840 grid cells characterized by population, per capita income, share of immigrant population, business activity level, and density of public sector and nonprofit organizations. Findings indicate that managerialism positively relates with systemic integration, as organizational democracy relates with social integration. Furthermore, NPO density has a negative effect on a single NPO’s engagement in social integration. Our findings contribute to research on urban social cohesion by illuminating the interplay between NPOs’ organizing practices, local neighborhoods, and contributions to both forms of integration.

Volunteering in civil society organizations (CSOs) is sometimes idealized as welcoming arena for everybody. Prior research, however, has shown that participation in volunteer work depends on gender, wealth, education, and social networks, suggesting that CSOs are not in fact open to everyone. Inequality within different fields of volunteering combined with the factors that put actors into more powerful positions has rarely been scrutinized. Besides identifying the characteristics and resources relevant for promotion, we primarily investigate how these patterns differ between four subfields: politics, social services, religion, and sports. We analyzed a large database created from the Austrian micro-census. The findings reveal significant relations between the actors’ gender, their occupational and educational status, and their hierarchical positions in CSOs within each of the subfields. Our results indicate that the extent to which social inequality spills over to volunteering depends on field characteristics: In the fields of sports and politics, occupational status plays a major role, while in the fields of religion and social services, educational status is more important. We explain these differences through organizational and individual factors that characterize these social fields.

» Die Mehrheit ist der Meinung, dass es in der Gesellschaft aktuell nicht genug Zivilcourage gibt. Dabei zeigen sich statistisch signifikante Unterschiede zwischen den Ländern und Altersgruppen. » Wahrgenommene Lernorte für Zivilcourage sind insbesondere das Elternhaus und freiwilliges Engagement. » Maßnahmen zur Förderung von Zivilcourage sollten die Bedeutung von freiwilligem Engagement und Erwachsenenbildung stärker in den Blick nehmen, gerade hinsichtlich Interaktionen in digitalen Räumen. » Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen zudem, dass die Entwicklung politischer Strategien zur Förderung von Zivilcourage stärker als bislang sozialwissenschaftlich begleitet werden sollten.

Die vorliegende empirische Studie widmet sich der Frage, inwiefern sich das individuelle philanthropische Verhalten (Freiwilligenarbeit (FWA) in einer oder Spenden an eine Nonprofit-Organisation) als Folge der globalen Covid-19-Krise verändert hat, und welche Faktoren mögliche Veränderungen im Verhalten erklären. Die Daten basieren auf einer repräsentativen Befragung von 2.000 Personen in Österreich und Deutschland aus dem Spätsommer 2020. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass drei Viertel der Befragten ihr Verhalten nicht verändert haben. In etwa gleich viele Befragte reduzieren bzw. erhöhen ihr Engagement. Negativ Betroffene erhöhen eher ihr Engagement, während positiv Betroffene dieses eher reduzieren.

Der NPO-Klassiker für alle Aktiven im NPO-Management in der 6. AuflageNPOs sind heute in jeder Hinsicht professionell und selbstbewusst, sehen sich aber auch mit ganz neuen Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Das Handbuch wurde in seiner sechsten Auflage komplett überarbeitet und in Teilen neu geschrieben. Aktuelle Entwicklungen in den NPOs und in ihrem Umfeld wurden berücksichtigt.Die Besonderheit des Buches liegt in der Verknüpfung von Wissenschaft und Praxis – die meisten Autor:innen forschen und lehren nicht nur, sondern befinden sich gleichzeitig in regem Austausch mit NPOs.

Der Austrian Social Enterprise Monitor 2021/2022 ist die bislang größte und erste internationale Studie zu Sozialunternehmen in Österreich. Er basiert auf Befragungsergebnissen (n=258) und Expert:inneninterviews (n=23) und bietet einen umfassenden Einblick in das Ökosystem.

Over the past 20 years, as the study of transparency has evolved into a burgeoning multidisciplinary field, nonprofit scholars have developed an impressive body of research on the antecedents and outcomes of the transparency of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). From both theoretical and practical purposes, it is necessary to develop an overall picture of such antecedents and outcomes, to allow scholars and NPOs to understand why, when, and how transparency should be implemented. Current studies provide a fragmented view, focused on specific elements of NPO transparency; with a systematic literature review of 76 articles, this article offers both an integrative framework of the antecedents and outcomes of NPO transparency and an agenda for research, based on a critical analysis of the integrative framework. Four relevant research orientations emerge: (1) direction of NPO transparency, (2) distinguishing actual from perceived transparency, (3) the dark side of NPO transparency, and (4) NPO transparency contingency factors. Research along these four orientations could add nuance to existing knowledge of transparency and provide key insights with regard to why, when, and how transparency works.

Tätigkeiten im öffentlichen Dienst bieten häufig die Möglichkeit, anderen zu helfen sowie einen Beitrag zum Gemeinwohl zu leisten. Diese als prosozialer und gesellschaftlicher Einfluss bezeichneten Eigenschaften, bieten ein großes Motivationspotenzial. Oftmals gewöhnen sich Beschäftigte allerdings an diese positiven Aspekte ihrer Tätigkeit und der Motivationsanreiz geht verloren. Der Artikel präsentiert die Ergebnisse dreier Experimente, in denen Beschäftigte über ihren prosozialen und gesellschaftlichen Einfluss reflektieren. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die Erinnerung an den prosozialen und gesellschaftlichen Einfluss einer Tätigkeit im öffentlichen Dienst das Wohlbefinden der Beschäftigten erhöhen, ihre Kündigungsabsicht verringern und sie eher dazu neigen, ihre Tätigkeit anderen zu empfehlen.

Nachdem der Lockdown vorüber ist und die Sommerferien begonnen haben, wollen viele Arbeitnehmer auf Urlaub fahren. Da die Pandemie aber noch nicht vorüber ist und von Medien und Politikern mit Nachdruck davor gewarnt wird, dass mit einer zweiten Welle und einer neuerlichen Schließung der Grenzen zu rechnen ist, stellt sich unter anderem die Frage, wohin man heuer in den Urlaub fahren bzw fliegen darf, was bei einer Dienstverhinderung gilt, welche Rechte und Pflichten Arbeitnehmer und Arbeitgeber in diesen Zusammenhang treffen und ob die Vertragsparteien an eine zB bereits vor Ausbruch der COVID-19-Pandemie bzw vor Erlassung bestimmter Reisebeschränkungen getroffene Urlaubsvereinbarung gebunden sind, wenn zB durch die Pandemie die ursprünglichen Urlaubspläne des Arbeitnehmers nicht mehr umsetzbar sind oder der Arbeitgeber den Arbeitnehmer wegen des Ausfalls anderer Arbeitnehmer nun dringend benötigt.

In den letzten Jahren hat sich sowohl der OGH als auch der EuGH wiederholt mit urlaubsrechtlichen Fragen beschäftigt. In diesem Beitrag geht es primär um die Entscheidung des OGH zur Verjährung des Urlaubsanspruchs trotz Scheinselbständigkeit (8 Ob A 62/18b) vor dem Hintergrund der letzten EuGH-Entscheidungen, wobei - im Gegensatz zum OGH - nicht nur auf die Rs King eingegangen werden soll, sondern auch die Auswirkungen der Rs Max-Planck-Gesellschaft/Shimizu und Kreuziger/Land Berlin auf das österreichische Urlaubsrecht näher beleuchtet werden sollen.

Nonprofit organizations highly depend on the public’s trust for legitimacy and support, to ultimately further their missions. Despite its high importance, little is known about the trust-building processes of the general public. In this study, we develop and test a multilevel study design to provide deeper insights into the public’s trust in nonprofit organizations and its relevant determinants. We used a comprehensive data set of 4,072 dyads, with survey data from 1,686 individuals and organizational data related to 102 German NPOs to investigate the different trust-building components: (1) individual public trust evaluation in NPO, (2) individual (trustor) context, and (3) organizational (trustee) context. The results of the analysis reveal unexpected differences in the importance of the different components for explaining the public’s trust in nonprofit organizations. Results show that the individual context is as relevant as the individual public trust evaluation, but the organizational context is far less important.

Of late, the problems of private external, or third-party funding of universities have been the subject of much debate, even at universities of economics and business. Given the constraints on government funding, politicians are looking increasingly to this source, with university leaders (rectors, deans, department heads) frequently being set targets for increasing income from it. Yet it is important to distinguish between different types of external funds. Moreover, their advantages and potential drawbacks must be weighed up. This paper seeks to do that, against the background of the author's more than 13 years as Rector of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Much of the paper thus draws rather less on theory than on that practical experience.

There are various methods for classifying nonprofit organizations (NPOs) according to their field of activity. We report our experiences using two semi-automated methods based on textual data: rule-based classification and machine learning with curated keywords. We use those methods to classify Austrian nonprofit organizations based on the International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations. Those methods can provide a solution to the widespread research problem that quantitative data on the activities of NPOs are needed but not readily available from administrative data, long high-quality texts describing NPOs’ activities are mostly unavailable, and human labor resources are limited. We find that in such a setting, rule-based classification performs about as well as manual human coding in terms of precision and sensitivity, while being much more labor-saving. Hence, we share our insights on how to efficiently implement such a rule-based approach. To address scholars with a background in data analytics as well as those without, we provide non-technical explanations and open-source sample code that is free to use and adapt.

Although civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe are often portrayed as similar, united by a shared communist past, they have developed along increasingly divergent trajectories over the past three decades. This article investigates the current state of civil society in the region and the role the institutional context plays in it. Drawing on historical institutionalism and the process of European integration, we classify the 14 countries under investigation into three distinct groups and analyze data from a survey of more than 350 local civil society experts. We find that, together with domestic governments, international donors and the EU are perceived as the most influential institutional actors for civil society organizations. Their respective influences, however, depend largely on a country's stage in the EU accession process. Overall, the study provides a differentiated mapping of civil society in this region and a better understanding of how the institutional context relates to a Country's civil society.

There is a broad academic discussion about the impact of funding grants from a foundation or a government department on individual support intentions toward the nonprofit organization receiving the grant. However, the role of the grant provider's reputation has frequently been overlooked. In this study, we experimentally tested whether there is a reputation spillover effect of a grant-providing organization. Based on a real-life example, we asked citizens to rate their willingness to donate to a nonprofit organization, and we experimentally manipulated the available information on funding sources. We test this for both a government department and a foundation as a grant provider. Our results suggest that not the act of receiving a grant, but the citizens' awareness about the funding organization—at least in the case of a foundation—has an impact on support intentions. In contrast, for a prominent government department as a grant provider, we did not find support for a reputation spillover effect.

In this article, we examine whether and how the institutional context matters when understanding individuals’ giving to philanthropic organizations. We posit that both the individuals’ propensity to give and the amounts given are higher in countries with a stronger institutional context for philanthropy. We examine key factors of formal and informal institutional contexts for philanthropy at both the organizational and societal levels, including regulatory and legislative frameworks, professional standards, and social practices. Our results show that while aggregate levels of giving are higher in countries with stronger institutionalization, multilevel analyses of 118,788 individuals in 19 countries show limited support for the hypothesized relationships between institutional context and philanthropy. The findings suggest the need for better comparative data to understand the complex and dynamic influences of institutional contexts on charitable giving. This, in turn, would support the development of evidence-based practices and policies in the field of global philanthropy.

This chapter explores determinants of board effectiveness in non-profit organisations. Board effectiveness constitutes an important topic in the non-profit governance literature. Our results show that board chair leadership and the human capital of the board are positively associated with board effectiveness as perceived by board chairs as well as chief executives. In addition, board size is positively associated with board effectiveness in the boundary-spanning role. We conclude by formulating implications for theory and practice.

Impact assessment is a high priority for most impact investors. However, little is known about how impact investors assess the potential of early-stage ventures before investing. This paper sheds light on the cognitive pattern used to form ex-ante assessments of social impact potential. Working with 41 verbal protocols of assessments provided by fourteen experienced impact investors, we identify 23 distinct cognitive patterns used to assess impact that were not previously described in research on heuristics of for-profit investors. Findings underscore the distinctiveness of impact investing as a practice and highlight the crucial role of individual cognition in the selection process.

How did the relation between Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and government develop during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, once governments had taken restrictive measures to lock down economic and public life? Austria is used as an example of a corporatist welfare state whereby collaboration between government and CSOs occurs particularly in the fields of social services, health-care, and youth. Our analysis focuses on the social service sector and differentiates between several social policy fields. We hereby analyze data from qualitative interviews with CEOs from 30 CSOs, four group discussions with another 30 representatives of CSOs, public agencies and authorities, and from a standardized questionnaire (n = 99 CSOs). We also utilize our own experiences as participant observers in meetings between CSOs and government. Results indicate that CSOs suffered financially partly due to a decrease in income, though mostly due to an increase in cost. In social services in particular, they also faced hardships caused by the need to reorganize operations and human resources, and by the increased demands of customers. Federal government took responsibility for supporting CSOs financially, though such support was hampered by unclear competencies in Austria’s multilayered federal system.

Gesundheitsdaten; Testpflicht; Impfpflicht; verweigerte Schutzmaßnahmen. Anlässlich der Coronapandemie stellt sich die Frage, welche Schutzmaßnahmen (zB Abstand halten, Tragen eines Mund- und Nasenschutzes [MNS], COVID-19-Test, COVID-19-Impfung) der Arbeitgeber (AG) von seinen Arbeitnehmern (AN) verlangen muss bzw darf, um sich, seine AN und seine Kunden zu schützen, und welche Daten er in diesem Zusammenhang erheben darf. Gleich vorweg sei anzumerken, dass es sich bei den folgenden Ausführungen um eine Momentaufnahme handelt, da sich die diesbezüglichen Bestimmungen regelmäßig ändern und die Antworten maßgeblich von der Entwicklung des Virus und seiner Behandelbarkeit abhängen.

[Abstract] This article is intended as the leading article in a special issue devoted to the achievements, limitations, opportunities and risks entailed in the research and practice of contemporary philanthropy. The article first characterizes philanthropy as a highly diverse and dynamic set of social practices that has only recently been subject to the systematic scrutiny of an emerging field of research, parallel to its rapid transformation and increased societal visibility. The main debates that emerged during the last two decades while researching the complexities of contemporary philanthropy are contextualized from the perspective of multiple disciplines; and the main foci for contentious conceptualizations and societal expectations explored. In this context, contributions of the special issues are summarized. Further avenues for pushing the boundaries of philanthropy research in ways inclusive of the dynamism, diversity, multi-disciplinarity and controversy that characterize the field, while at the same time providing meaningful answers to societal concerns about the potential and shortcomings of new philanthropic practices, are drawn.