Publishing information:
Pamala Wiepking
Amsterdam: Vu University, April 2008. 164pp. Cloth. ISBN 978-90-77383-07-0. €20
At a time when the UK and Scottish governments have committed £2.2m (alongside the Carnegie UK Trust) to fund research into charitable giving and philanthropy, Wiepking’s book – which addresses the core problem of ‘why do some [Dutch] people donate more money to charitable organisations than others?’ – is a reminder that other European countries are also starting out on the path of creating a knowledge base for their philanthropic sectors. Drawing on an extensive dataset of giving in the Netherlands, Wiepking offers four extended studies of giving and introduces a novel, and useful, suggestion that there exists a ‘giving standard’ which influences the level of donations that are felt to be appropriate in specific situations. Wiepking is a promising young academic but her book is fully accessible to lay readers and will repay close reading by people working in all areas of the philanthropic sector.
