Engaging Children in Meaningful Charity: Opening‐up the Spaces within Which Children Learn to Give

Abstract

This paper presents qualitative evidence from an in‐depth, participative action research project with 150 children aged 4–8 years old, exploring their experiences, perceptions and preferences regarding charitable giving. Most children positively engage in charitable giving through home, school and their community; however, less than 20% are aware of the cause area they are being asked to support, and most have little decision‐making in their giving. Children’s willingness to engage increases when they critically examine the cause area and are facilitated to lead on giving decisions, often resulting in increased and sustained efforts to support cause areas that matter to them.

A literature review of experimental studies in fundraising

“…Second, "warm glow," or the "joy of giving," may result from a socialization process, as evidence suggests children give because of pure altruism (List & Samak, 2013). That said, a recent study by Body, Lau & Josephidou (2019) highlighted the common practice of encouraging transactional fundraising among children, such as encouraging fundraising efforts through incentive rewards, rather than engaging children about their ideas and values about giving. They argue that a more critical engagement of children in ideas of giving often results in increased effort to support causes that matter to thempotentially a different goal than that of the organizations incentivizing the transactional fundraising efforts.…”

Philanthropic tales: A critical analysis of how philanthropic citizenship is represented in children’s picture-books – problems and possibilities

“…Indeed, as Martin (1994) highlights, it is the combination of these virtues put into philanthropic action which he argues 'provides a forum for moral creativity, for putting our version of a good society into practice, and for fostering caring relationships that enrich individuals and communities alike ' (p. 172). We extend this to argue that a citizenship approach to philanthropic giving seeks to embrace social justice, where children are simultaneously encouraged to develop the virtues to respond to social needs, whilst critically exploring and engaging with the wider issues which sit behind notions of charity (Body et al, 2020a;Simpson, 2017). As Peterson (2019) suggests, engagement in communities and deliberation with others is central to developing individual character virtues, alongside recognising and challenging structural injustices.…”

Developing a children's rights approach to fundraising with children in primary schools and the ethics of cultivating philanthropic citizenship

“…This has resulted in charities increasingly becoming mainstream in education (Power & Taylor, 2018). Indeed, research shows that schools often go to great lengths to encourage, support and engage children of all ages in charities and charitable giving, creating a strong enthusiasm for giving and supporting others (Body et al, 2020). However, whilst school and pupil involvement in fundraising campaigns could be a useful means of developing early philanthropy and giving, there is evidence that children's involvement in charitable giving via schools can often be passive, and the tokenistic transactional nature of the giving could be counterintuitive to long-term goals of provoking social change.…”

“…Ethical Theory Formulation Condition Met by Dominant Fundraising Practices in Schools (Body et al, 2020) TRUSTISM (Anderson, 1996;Rosen, 2005) Fundraising is ethical when it promotes, sustains, protects or maintains public trust, and unethical when it damages these things.…”

“…Less common is information to help children critically engage in the cause area. In addressing this, we argue that a children's rights approach to fundraising offers exciting opportunities for children to explore real issues and real responses and opens-up the spaces where children can meaningfully engage in conversations about charity and giving (Body et al, 2020). For example, the co-construction of fundraising activities between organisations, schools and children provides a real opportunity for exciting curricula development in character and citizenship education.…”