This section is designed to help you find your way around the highvalue philanthropy sector. The section includes a note on academic research in philanthropy, links to research centres, and a chapter on how prospect researchers are using the new transparency to find and understand philanthropists.

Introduction

Europe is gradually uncovering its philanthropy. For the reasons we have been exposing in this book – government pressure and policy change, shifting attitudes to wealth, growing professionalism in the non-profit sector – we are starting to see the good (and, very occasionally, the bad) of Europeans.

Academic research challenges

Speak to researchers in philanthropy in Europe and you will hear about opportunities and barriers. The opportunities and the barriers sound the same.

• Opportunity: we know so little, really, about why people give in Europe. There is lots more to find!

• ◦ Barrier: we know so little, really, about how much people give, and who gives, in Europe. We have no data on which to base research!

• Opportunity: in continental Europe we can compare and contrast different cultures of philanthropy across a relatively small geographic area

• ◦ Barrier: maybe we can't compare and contrast different cultures of philanthropy in Europe. Maybe they are simply not comparable

• Opportunity: the new interest in philanthropy means that foundations are working to promote philanthropy

• ◦ Barrier: despite the new interest in philanthropy foundations are not funding (enough) research to understand philanthropy

• Opportunity: there is lots of good research on philanthropy in the USA

• ◦ Barrier: there is lots of good research on philanthropy in the USA … but does that really help us understand philanthropy in Europe?

In this sense, research in philanthropy is not that different from research into particle physics, pharmacology or phenomenalism – there are always opportunities and barriers in research whether it is in the sciences or the humanities. But philanthropy, especially high-value philanthropy, seems to have suffered from a lack of research. It has also lost out because of the compartmentalisation of research. As Arthur Gautier and Laurence de Nervaux (2015) point out ‘private donations have been the subject of studies [in France] by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and management researchers … [but] the knowledge is spread across these disciplines and it is very difficult to get an overview’.