Private dollars in public education

Although there has been academic writing on corporate involvement in K-12, existing research does not take into account the changing nature of corporate philanthropy, and what, how , and why corporations give to K-12. In the following thesis, I examine how corporations conduct their grant-making in education and what motivates them to do so. Drawing on 27 interviews with grant-making leaders at Fortune 300 companies and quantitative survey data on 49 corporate foundations, I explore how corporations direct their philanthropic grants in K-12 and why they choose to give to K-12. The dissertation brings together sociological research on institutional isomorphism, business and management literature on the role of corporate social responsibility, and education research to explain what, how, and why corporations invest in the K-12 sector. In the second chapter, I use my survey and tax form data to examine decision-making agency within corporate foundations, whether and how corporate foundations collaborate with other organizations, what types of issues they tend to give to, and what they report to be their motivations for giving. In the third chapter, I use qualitative data from 27 interviews with corporate foundation leaders as well as these organizations' publicly available mission statements to explore the aspects of strategy such as vision and mission statements, grantee selection, and evaluation processes that help us understand corporate motivations to give to K-12. In the fourth chapter, I describe three distinct giving typologies of corporate foundations come into relief. First, traditionalists are legally attached to the company but operate with considerable independence from their parent company. Next, legitimizers make grants to help the marketing and branding of the business product.

Third, strategists work at the intersection of the business and the social sector to serve the goals of the company while also addressing the goals of the community.