David King

Scotland Visiting Professorship Award, University of Edinburgh, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - History

David 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. Trained as an American religious historian, his research interests broadly include exploring the practices of twentieth and twenty-first century global faith communities as well as more specifically investigating how nonprofit organizations shape their motivations, rhetoric, and practice. He is the author of the recent book, God’s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism (UPenn Press 2019). As the Co-PI of the National Study of Congregations’ Economic Practices, (NSCEP), the largest nationally representative study of congregations’ finances conducted in a generation, he is helping to build a new field of research on how congregations receive, manage, and spend resources. His current work focuses on expanding the critical study and practice of philanthropy across historical, geographical, political, cultural, and religious lines in order to develop deeper engagement across cultures and countries on the role philanthropy should play in shaping the public good. He is fuelled by facilitating conversations with civic leaders, donors, and fundraisers (of all generations) around the intersections of giving, philanthropy and the public good.