The International Human Rights Funders Group and Foundation Center recently published Advancing Human Rights: Update on Global Foundation Grantmaking, a report analyzing the who, what, where, and how of human rights philanthropy. The latest update gives us an increasingly robust data set on human rights grantmaking around the world. While it provides our colleagues in the human rights philanthropy and NGO communities a snapshot of where money is being spent, a natural follow-up question looms: could academics use this data set in their research? Researchers are always on the lookout for new sources of data, right?
This question of bridging the divide between philanthropy practice and scholarship is less simple than it might appear.
This question of bridging the divide between philanthropy practice and scholarship is less simple than it might appear. As someone who worked for over a decade as a foundation program officer before pursuing a PhD in political science, I’ve found that the questions I would ask as a practitioner differ greatly from those I ask as a researcher and scholar. While my goal as a program officer has always been to promote accountability and democracy, I’ve had to acquire a more detached objectivity as a researcher and ask questions with a broader perspective. I helped to provide some of the early data to the Advancing Human Rights initiative within my foundation, and looking at it now as a researcher provides a different view.
