The Business of Hope

This open access book contributes to research on the ascendance of neoliberalism in Canada through the vantage point of professional fundraising in the 1990s and 2000s. Fifty high-ranking fundraisers from across Canada were interviewed through 2008 and 2009 about changes they had witnessed since starting their careers. Fundraising as an occupation was burgeoning in this period in response to the devolution of state responsibility across the major domains of nonprofit activity: education, health care, social services, the arts, recreation, overseas humanitarian activities, and environmental protection. Welfare state retrenchment left the nonprofit and voluntary sector competing for private sources of funding with the help of these newly hired expert staff. As fundraisers worked to instill a culture of philanthropy, while targeting the ultra-rich and advocating for tax-favourable treatment of major gifts, they became both products and promoters of the neoliberal political and culturalreconstruction of Canadian society.

This is an open access book.

An original academic work drawing on the as-yet-unstudied perspectives of fundraisers in North America Makes fundraisers visible as neoliberal subjects grappling with the political and moral implications of social change Valuable not only to economic and political sociologists, but also those working in non-profit and fundraising This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Auteur

Mary-Beth Raddon is Associate Professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. She is the current chair of the Department of Sociology and a former graduate program director of the MA in Social Justice and Equity Studies. She is a qualitative researcher in the field of economic sociology.

Contenu
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Business of Hope.- Chapter 2. The Do or Die Project of Creating a Culture of Philanthropy.- Chapter 3. In the Business to Change Lives: Fundraising as a Neoliberal Vocation.- Chapter 4. The Generosity Gap: Canadian Fundraisers' Cross-National Comparisons.- Chapter 5. We Have to Fit the Men in Somewhere: Explaining Gender Inequality in Fundraising.- Chapter 6. I Have to Be Optimistic; I'm a Fundraiser: Professional Fundraising and the Politics of Hope.- Appendix: Research Methods.