Insights from the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving on how to connect with faith-based donors
In this episode of The Beacon Podcast, Lighthouse Counsel Senior Consultant Dr. Lilya Wagner talks with David Patrick King about the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and about what faith-based giving looks like now.
David is the Karen Lake Buttrey director of the institute and associate professor of philanthropic studies at the school.
In their conversation, Lilya and David discuss:
- Why a secular, public university would have such a prestigious center for faith and giving
- A thumbnail sketch of how and why this center was started and by whom
- The tendency of churches to eschew the best practices and formal principles of fundraising because of the tradition of “God will provide.”
- A summary of how the center can help anyone, but particularly faith-based organizations.
About our guest
David P. King is the Karen Lake Buttrey director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving as well as associate professor of philanthropic studies within the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. He arrived at IUPUI in 2014 after serving as assistant professor of Christian history at Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee.
As an American religious historian, his research interests broadly include exploring the practices of 20th-and 21st-century American and global faith communities as well as more specifically investigating how the religious identity of faith-based nonprofits shapes their motivations, rhetoric and practice. He is the author of the recent book, God’s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism, that traces the history of World Vision, the world’s largest Christian humanitarian organization, in order to investigate the evolving understandings of religious identity, international development and public policy within the history of international relief and development organizations.
During his time at IUPUI, King has worked to build the field of religion and philanthropy through interdisciplinary research collaborations, convenings of junior and senior scholars and expanded critical reflections on the field.
The recipient of almost five million dollars in grant funding for Lake Institute projects and his own research, King continues to foster conversations around the dynamic relationship between faith and giving across all faith traditions.
