IE for Philanthropy- an Approach to Identifying Opportunities for Grants, Collaborations and Policy Advocacy.

Sociology has been called the basic science of philanthropy much like math is the basic science of engineering and biology is the basic science of medicine. However, there are different types of sociology and some are more positivist than others. Philanthropy has often been considered a top-down approach to solving problems and has long utilized government surveillance data as a resource for decision making and the creation of initiatives. However, growing community philanthropy and community foundations have added large elements of democratic process. These philanthropic efforts stand to benefit from a sociology that is less positivistic. In this presentation I focus on the many uses of Institutional Ethnography and how it can help direct the day to day work of philanthropic professionals in seeking to address problematic aspects of everyday life that people experience in the communities they serve. I examine how IE has been helpful in creating grantmaking, collaboration and policy advocacy in such areas as housing safety, early childhood education, and racial equity. Building from this I explore the use of IE as a potential standard approach for philanthropic professionalization and training and highlight its use for such popular approaches as collective impact, community coalitions, community indicators, and policy work.