Professor David King

David P. King is the Karen Lake Buttrey Director of the Lake Institute on Faith and 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 shapes their motivations, rhetoric, and practice. 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 of philanthropy should play in shaping the public good.

His most recent book, God’s Internationalists: World Vision and the Age of Evangelical Humanitarianism (UPenn Press 2019) was awarded the 2020 Peter Dobkin Hall Prize for the best book in the history of philanthropy. With Philip Goff, he is editing the forthcoming volume Religion and Philanthropy in the United States (Indiana University Press). 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 and other nonprofits receive, manage, and spend resources. He is fueled by facilitating conversations with civic leaders, donors, and fundraisers (of all generations) around the intersections of giving, philanthropy and the public good.