Marcel Breuer and Postwar America

At the center of Slocum Hall, four stories below a large skylight, stands a big shaggy lens - a deep, fur-lined scoop framed by a broad rectangle eight feet high. Between stepped floor and slanted ceiling is a curved wall punctuated by a trapezoidal aperture through which you glimpse a purple-tinted fragment of face. Forehead and cheeks, a nose and two eyes: Marcel Breuer. The lens, a pavilion encasing deep embrasures, marks an exhibition of material from the archive of this leading 20th century architect. It points you toward the adjacent gallery, where more than 120 drawings and photographs reproduced at full scale document thirteen major buildings and projects by Breuer and his office. Image enlargements, wall texts and diagonally striped fields of purple, pink and blue integrate walls and artworks into a color-saturated ambiance. Marcel Breuer and Postwar America offers a new picture of postwar modernism, along with the pleasure of looking at compelling drawings and photographs culled from the archive. It results from an innovative collaboration mobilizing archives and special collections in research and teaching. The exhibition emerged from a seminar I taught with visiting professor Barry Bergdoll at the School of Architecture in fall 2010. Each of the case studies was selected, researched, and curated by one of the students in the course, supported by the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library, which holds the Marcel Breuer Papers. The Installation was designed and build by faculty members Jon Lott and Brett Snyder with a team of students and staff. The catalogue documents the outcome of these partnerships in researching, teaching, curating, designing, building, and learning from Breuer. -Jonathon Masse

A tradition of giving

This project examines an underexplored topic—intra-family connections across generations (as opposed to inter-family connections)—and takes it one step further. The study provides a more useful framework for understanding the transmission of giving attitudes and behaviors within families than what was previously available using a traditional generational lens

What Works at Work? Toward an Integrative Model Examining Workplace Campaign Strategies

Many US employees are regularly asked to give charitable donations through work. The techniques used to solicit workplace donations vary. Drawing on a nationally representative survey, the study used a sample of donor responses to examine the effectiveness of several widely used campaign strategies: donor choice, company matching, public recognition, and solicitation support. The theoretical framework built on workplace research by Barman (2007) and established charitable giving mechanisms (Bekkers and Wiepking 2011a, 2011b). The research question was, “Do workplace campaign strategies lead employees to participate and to make (larger) donations in the workplace?” The positive outcomes of the strategies, aside from donor choice, were limited, suggesting that tried‐and‐true workplace fundraising strategies warrant additional scrutiny. The findings are meaningful to campaign managers seeking to identify approaches that generate workplace giving. For researchers, the results confirm growing attention to the importance of purpose‐based giving in comparison with community‐based giving

Women Give 2019

In Women Give 2019: Gender and Giving Across Communities of Color, the Women’s Philanthropy Institute seeks to understand how generosity links women across racial lines. While some research has examined race and charitable giving, this study is the frst to explore the intersection of race, gender, and giving.1 The study builds on a growing body of research that examines how women and men give. It is now well understood that gender diferences exist in women’s and men’s motivations for and patterns of giving. By focusing on the relationship among race, gender, and philanthropy, this report recognizes the philanthropic eforts of all women and in particular, women in communities of color

The 2016 U.S. Trust ® Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy

The 2016 U.S. Trust® Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy reveals consistent trends in the giving and volunteering behaviors of high net worth individuals and households from previous years, as well as departures from past trends. Most (91.0 percent) high net worth households gave to charity in 2015, and nearly half (49.7 percent) of high net worth individuals volunteered their time. On average, high net worth households gave $25,509 to charity in 2015. By comparison, households in the general population gave$2,124 in 2015

Tax Policy and Charitable Giving Results

This study used the Philanthropy Panel Study (PPS), which is the only panel study of philanthropy in America, and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which is the largest and longest running panel study in the world. The PSID has a rich array of data for over 9,000 households, including, income, wealth, marital status, existence and number of children, etc. We know from prior research that these variables play an important role in explaining and predicting giving patterns, and they are not all available in other datasets used for this type of research. Using this data, Indiana University’s estimates suggest that it is important to consider where tax payers are responsive to changes in charitable giving incentives. However, because there is still significant debate with regards to the responsiveness of charitable giving to changes in tax policy (see pages 11-15 for a discussion on tax-price elasticity of charitable giving), analyses of each proposal were also conducted using the commonly used elasticities: less responsive, -0.5 & moderately responsive, -1.0

Charitable Giving Around the 2016 Election: Does Gender Matter?

This study aims to provide insights on donations during the unique time period around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, using gift data from an online donation platform. Did giving to charitable organizations increase after the election? What causes benefited from post-election philanthropy? This study also seeks to understand whether there were gender differences in giving around the 2016 U.S. presidential election

The 2016 Planned Giving Study

Charitable bequests and other planned gifts have historically played a significant role in the funding of higher education institutions. Prominent institutions such as Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Julliard School have been established as a direct result of bequests, and these gifts continue to have a profound impact today. The field of planned giving has become more sophisticated over time. However, the complexity of various planned giving vehicles and the comparatively long time period required for planned gifts to be formalized make it difficult for researchers to systematically track and examine planned giving behavior. Existing studies, therefore, heavily rely on self-reported survey data or tax returns. This study is one of the first efforts that seek to understand the changing landscape of planned giving and to explore donor life-cycle trajectories at higher education institutions. This whitepaper is the first in what is hoped to be a series of reports based upon data on planned gifts and donors in the field of higher education. The whitepaper discusses findings from five case-study universities located across the U.S. As the study expands the sample to include more universities and colleges in the next phase, this report series will offer richer data and insights into more underexplored, yet important, questions in planned giving

How Women and Men Approach Impact Investing

The term impact investing evokes widespread interest, but few people have a deep understanding of the topic, and even fewer practice impact investing. What is impact investing? Who uses this investment strategy, and what are their objectives? Impact investing is relatively new and has developed rapidly over the last decade. The term itself was introduced in 2007 when the Rockefeller Foundation convened leaders in the fields of finance, philanthropy, and development, with the aim of building an industry of investing for impact.1 While a great deal has been written about the subject, most of this work comes from the world of finance and asks questions about financial return, comparing impact investing with investing purely for profit. The practice of impact investing is evolving exponentially, in contrast to research on this still-underexplored subject

Giving to Women and Girls: Who Gives, and Why?

Within academic research, individual philanthropy directed to women’s and girls’ causes has been understudied. This study highlights new data to understanding who gives to women’s and girls’ causes and their motivations for support. We conducted a two-part, mixed-methods study in the United States. First, we fielded a brief survey among a nationally representative survey panel. Second, we conducted seven focus groups among United Way and women’s fund donors who actively funded women’s and girls’ causes as well as donors who focused on other areas in their giving. In the survey, we find that among people giving to charity, half of women and 40 percent of men self-report giving to at least one cause that primarily affects women and girls. Women are both more likely to give to women’s and girls’ causes and give larger amounts to these causes, and are more likely to report giving to domestic violence organizations, women’s centers, LGBT rights, cancer care and research, and economic opportunities for women and girls. In the focus groups, women report giving to women’s and girls’ causes based on their personal experiences, including experiencing discrimination and having children, and because they believe giving to women and girls provides the best social return. Barriers to giving to women’s and girls’ causes include the complexity and scalability of women’s issues, the sex-segregated nature of women’s giving, and the connection to political issues which are often embedded in women’s causes. While this study provides valuable new research, more research is needed to understand generational differences among donors and how organizations focusing on women and girls can increase donor support