In order to understand variation in use and rigor of credentialing programs for professionals, we look at interests in the programs from multiple stakeholder perspectives including professionals, employers of professionals, credentialing body, educational institutions, government, professional associations, and consumers. We propose an interacting nexus of actors whose motives are interwoven in the design and use of a credentialing program. We examine data from professional associations and credentialing bodies and find support for our hypotheses regarding instrumental, expressive, and relational motives. Our model helps explain variation in certification programs for professionals and membership associations' involvement with them.

Historical investigations into the social organisation, religious beliefs and giving patterns of a society are generally limited to the point after which it develops writing and begins preserving written records of such activities. Indeed, the very differentiation between 'history' and 'prehistory' is demarcated by the point at which these kinds of written records start being kept. Before this event there is only myth, preserved by the conventions of oral culture, and rightly regarded as suspect by historians. Scholarly findings in the field of Indo-European linguistics over the course of the 20^th century, though, have the potential for opening a window onto the religious practices and rituals surrounding private giving for public purposes among prehistoric Indo-Europeans, going back at least as far as the middle of the 3^rd millennium BCE. In particular, these findings allow for a serious reappraisal of an hypothesis first advanced by Roth (1855), and buttressed by the philological analysis of Kuhn (1859), that Prometheus of Greek myth and Mātariśvan of Vedic myth are cognate figures, pointing to the existence of an original Indo-European Proto-Prometheus from which both evolved.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Kuhn's hypothesis, positing the existence of an Indo-European Proto-Prometheus, was dismissed by Bapp (1896), Madonell (1897) and others as being based on "superficial resemblances" and "false etymologies". The subsequent work of Narten (1960), Schmidt (1975) and others, though, now demonstrate those critiques to have been themselves flawed. A serious reappraisal of the hypothesis that Prometheus and Mātariśvan are cognate myths is justified within the field of philanthropic studies, as re-establishing the existence of a genetic relation between Prometheus and Mātariśvan would point to the existence of a similarly styled mythic figure at the end of Greaco-Aryan unity, in 2500 BCE.

Within their respective mythic traditions, both Prometheus and Mātariśvan are founders of the religious ritual of sacrificing burnt offerings to the gods. In both ancient Greece and Vedic India, the ritual of sacrifice with burnt offerings constituted an important public ceremony. The sacrificial animals for these ceremonies, widely attested in the literature, were provided through private contributions. The larger forms of this ritual, with the sacrifice of upward of one hundred cattle (a "hecatomb"), were also invariably followed by a public feast, the guests of which numbered in the thousands, where the edible portions of the sacrificial animals were consumed. Ritual sacrifice followed by public feasting thus constituted one of the most ubiquitous and important forms of private giving and social assistance in ancient Greece. Establishing the existence of a Greaco-Aryan Proto-Prometheus would thus point to the existence of similar private contributions toward ritual sacrifice for public consumption among the Greaco-Aryans, dating back to at least the early 3rd millennium BCE. This paper thus primarily examines the linguistic evidence in support of the hypothesis positing the existence of an Indo-European Proto-Prometheus, supplemented by comparative mythographic analysis of the relevant aspects of Greek and Vedic myth.

Whether women are more generous than men or vice versa continues to be a matter of debate. Social-psychological theories of moral development and personality mirror stereotypes of nurturing mothers and cold-hearted fathers. Stratification theories still favor the dominant status position of men but the tide is turning in recent cohorts. Research findings in the field of philanthropic studies have been inconclusive. A systematic review of this literature suggests that gender differences vary not only from one historical period to another, and from country to country, but also vary with age, and that gender differences also differ between research designs and data collection methods.

After a brief sketch of the literature I present results from analyses of three types of data on giving in the Netherlands: from surveys, from experiments, and from tax records.

The surveys are the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey (GINPS), the Family Survey of the Dutch Population (FSDP), and a nationwide study among students in secondary education.

The GINPS is the signature research project of the Center for Philanthropic Studies at VU University. GINPS is a biennial survey study conducted since 2002 among a sample of >1,200 households in the Netherlands. The dataset includes measures of contributions of time and money as well as a variety of helping behaviors. In addition, the dataset includes measures of empathy, the principle of care, and resources that may explain gender differences.

The FSDP is a general cross-sectional survey study among 3,269 individuals in 1,841 households in the Netherlands. The study measures marital, educational, occupational and associational careers of citizens. The most recent wave (completed in 2009) also includes data on giving and volunteering, along measures of empathy, perspective taking, and the principle of care.

The Service Learning Study (SLS) among 2,826 students (aged 12-18 years) at 29 schools throughout the Netherlands offering secondary education was conducted as an evaluation of 2 service learning programs in 2008-2009. The survey includes measures similar to those in the GINPS.

Experiments in the GINPS and the SLS use variants of the ‘All or Nothing’ Dictator Game with charities identified as recipients. I compare the giving behavior of men and women in situations in which the price of giving is varied, social information is presented, and anonymity is manipulated in several ways.

Finally, the results of a large, random sample of official tax filings are presented, called the Income Panel Study (IPS). This is a random sample of 0.61% of all income tax returns submitted to the fiscal authorities in the Netherlands. Tax payers can claim a deduction from their gross income for charitable donations if the gifts exceed 1% of income. The analyses reveal evidence about gender differences among the more generous donors. I compare the use of the charitable deduction by male headed and female headed households, and the amounts donated, in the years 2000-2005. In multiple regression analyses I control for a wide range of sociodemographics, including age, marital status, household size, number of children, income, wealth, home ownership, occupational category, level of urbanization, and the tax price. The analyses include a set of controls that is roughly similar to that used in the ‘Women Give’ report relying on data from the COPPS module in the PSID. Measures of empathy and related constructs are not available in the IPS.

In brief, the results of the analyses show that women in the Netherlands are more likely to donate than men because of their higher levels of empathy but donate lower amounts because of their lower levels of resources.

A sizable body of research explains donor’s motivation for giving. Most research frames giving as an exchange, power conflict or altruistic behavior. This paper investigates donor’s motivation from a different theoretical perspective – identity bond orientation. It examines how religious distance percived by the donor, between donor and recipient, is related to charitable giving. By analyzing 2008-2009 wave of American National Election Studies panel data, with a nationally representative sample of over 2,200 American adults, the paper assesses the role of religious distance between donor and recipient in charitable giving, and how such a role is affected by donor’s demographic characteristics.

At odds with portrayals of faculty as disconnected and uninvolved are those who contribute time and intellectual resources to their institutions beyond all requirements and expectations and receive little recognition. To determine whether these activities are rooted in the same philanthropic values that inspire the giving of financial resources, this study used a cross-case analysis of interviews with faculty major donors to explore academic citizenship and giving behaviors. The participants were found to be dedicated academic citizens whose financial generosity built upon careers which were institutionally involved and characterized by innovation and which integrated service, teaching, and research as well as personal and professional priorities. Giving and citizenship were interwoven and framed by a perception of the academic profession as serving the greater good.

This article empirically examines how competition influences an organization’s strategic choice of product-market scope in an industry, as well as the relationship between product-market strategies and organizational performance. Using panel data of nonprofit charter schools in Texas (1997-2007), we find evidence that competition in a particular market segment decreases a focal organization’s likelihood of entering the segment; once having entered the market, an organization’s product scope increases with the number of competitors in the market, albeit at a decreasing rate. We also find that a broader product-market scope hurts an organization’s financial performance, but improves its non-financial (academic) performance.