City University to run Giving Research Centre

Charity News Alert

November 2007

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Professor Jenny Harrow and her team at City University have been selected to run the main hub of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy.

In addition, City has been allocated one of the spokes of the new centre, which is to focus on research into institutionalised giving structures.

Professor Harrow (pictured) is co-director of Cass Business School’s doctoral programme and is a professor of voluntary sector management at the school’s Centre for Charity Effectiveness.

She is to work on the hub alongside Cathy Pharoah, ex-director of research at Charities Aid Foundation who will also act as the hub’s co-director; Karl Wilding, director of research at NCVO and Professor Stephen Osborne of the University of Edinburgh.

“The role of the hub is not just to co-ordinate but to support the programmes in each of the spokes,” said Harrow. “It is very important for us that this research is something that engages with practioners and takes place in context with the work practioners do.

“We are concerned with making philanthropy effective, and with policy-makers having research-based understanding of how to target policy,” she added.

Two other spokes of the research centre will be run out of separate universities. One, which is to focus on individual and business giving, has been awarded to Professor Charles Harvey at Strathclyde University.

The other area of research will focus on charitable giving and social redistribution, and will be run by Professor John Mohan at Southampton University. Mohan's team includes ex-deputy director of the Institute for Philanthropy, Beth Breeze.

The fundraising community gave a guarded response to the news. “There is still no doubt that more research is desperately needed by the fundraising community,” said Joe Saxton, chair of the Institute of Fundraising.

“So far fundraisers have not been included in the specification or the selection process, nor are they clearly visible in the successful bids. However, we’re looking forward to the detailed plans from the successful tenders and a period of intense engagement with the fundraising community so that those bids can be of maximum value to the fundraising world.”

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