The Many Faces of Philanthropy 2025

S240009 25

Philanthropy is characterized by a common goal: improving humanity’s well-being. This goal has been recently formalized by the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda to achieve the 17 Sustainable Developing Goals. The world revolving around this mission, however, is extremely complex integrating several different disciplines including Finance, Law, Philosophy, and Psychology. Moreover, in a world marked by an exponential Digital Transformation, it is increasingly fueled by technological approaches derived from Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.  

This class has two main focuses:  

  • The first is on data-science in philanthropy, during these sessions we will explore the main issues, opportunities, and methods for collecting philanthropy data, how to prepare this data in order to draw meaningful insights from it, and how analytical conclusions should be communicated in order to support the philanthropic sector based on date-driven evidence. 

  • The second brings in a regional dimension. Very little is known and taught about alternative approaches to philanthropy developed outside the “Western” (EU – UK – US) world. We will learn from regional speakers from Asia (e.g. China, India), Middle East/Arabic (e.g. U.A.E), Latin American (e.g. Colombia) and African (e.g. South-Africa) to learn about different ways of doing Philanthropy. This part of the course offers an introductory overview of how philanthropy in each of these geographies approach key thematic areas of philanthropic engagement.