Philanthropy can be learned: A qualitative study of student experiences in experiential philanthropy courses

Experiential philanthropy is an innovative service-learning pedagogy that allows students to study social problems and nonprofit organizations and then make decisions about investing funds into nonprofits working to address these problems. Although prior research has shown that instructors’ use of experiential philanthropy is positively associated with a number of student learning outcomes, few studies have employed in-depth qualitative methods to assess the effectiveness of experiential philanthropy—especially from the perspective of students. Therefore, in this study, we utilize computer-assisted technologies to mine data from students (n=973) concerning their perceptions about participating in an experiential philanthropy course. Overall, our results show that similar to the results of prior research, students do believe that experiential philanthropy enhances their learning as well as their willingness to contribute to their community. However, for some students, engaging in experiential philanthropy is less likely to enhance their desire to contribute monetarily to nonprofit organizations and more likely to enhance their desire to contribute in the form of voluntary action.