Dr David King - orcid.org/0000-0001-6725-0053
Fulbright Scotland Distinguished Visitor, January - June 2022
Home Institution: Indiana UniversIty–Purdue University Indianapolis
David is the Karen Lake Buttrey Director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving as well as Associate Professor of Philanthropic Studies within the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Trained as an American religious historian, his research interests broadly include exploring the practices of twentieth and twenty-first century American and global faith communities as well as more specifically investigating how nonprofit organizations shapes their motivations, rhetoric, and practice. His first book, God’s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) won the Peter Dobkin Hall Prize for the best book in the history of philanthropy. With Philip Goff, he is editing the forthcoming volume Religion and Philanthropy in the United States from Indiana University Press. As the Co-PI of the National Study of Congregations’ Economic Practices, (NSCEP), the largest nationally representative study of congregations’ finances conducted in a generation, he is helping to build a new field of research on how religious and nonprofit organizations receive, manage, and spend resources.
His current work focuses on helping to expand the critical study of philanthropy across multiple scholarly disciplines and the public sector in order to develop shared conversations across cultures and countries on the role of philanthropy plays in shaping the public good. He regularly contributes to national media outlets such as The Washington Post, The Economist, The Atlantic, National Public Radio’s Marketplace Report, Religion News Service, The Conversation, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. He routinely works with leaders around the United States and internationally through Lake Institute’s executive training courses as well as through speaking at universities, professional conferences, and religious gatherings. He is passionate about research and teaching and is fueled by facilitating conversations with civic leaders, donors, and fundraisers (of all generations) around the intersections of giving, philanthropy and the public good.
Project Title: Philanthropy and the Public Good
While at the University of Edinburgh, King will explore the multiple moral traditions of philanthropy and charity and their impact on societies. The project, Philanthropy and the Public Good, serves as an updated and transnational history considering the nature of philanthropy and the pluralistic visions of the public good across historical, geographical, political, cultural, and religious lines. It seeks to map the various terrains of philanthropic studies across scholarly disciplines as well as alongside practitioners in order to construct a landscape of ideologies, practices, and critiques that inform philanthropy’s relationship to society. King will also conduct interviews with practitioners, developing case studies from philanthropic actors throughout the U.K. as well as develop new networks to foster study and ongoing partnerships between U.S. and European scholars.