Reading Between the Lines of Philanthropy
The question arrived quietly, during a conversation that should have felt routine.
Tulsi Rajyaguru was working in Melbourne’s civil society sector, helping not-for-profit organisations secure philanthropic funding, when she found herself wondering:
“What do they think of us?”
The question lingered long after the meeting ended. Not because philanthropists misunderstood the organisations they funded, but because their understanding and focus differed so greatly from hers — shaped by their own subjective interactions, personal experiences and assumptions about the people and communities they hoped to help.
Years later, that same question now sits at the centre of Tulsi’s PhD at the ANU School of Culture, History & Language, within the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.
Back then, Tulsi was working closely with philanthropists, trusts and foundations supporting social and environmental causes. She noticed that donors often held a very distinct understanding of their relationship with the organisations they funded and the people those organisations served.
The more time she spent in the sector, the more aware she became of the ambiguity underpinning many philanthropic relationships. For organisations seeking funding, there was a constant negotiation between what they understood about donors and what remained opaque.
“When you work in philanthropy fundraising, there’s this constant grappling with what you know and what you don’t quite understand about donors and funders,” she says. “It’s something many people across the civil society sector experience.”
That uncertainty eventually led Tulsi towards research. As she began exploring scholarship on philanthropy, she realised the ambiguity she had experienced personally reflected a broader gap in understanding.
“I found that we don’t quite understand this ambiguity in philanthropy very well,” she says. “I realised then there was an opportunity for me to make a contribution and expand knowledge on philanthropy through a PhD.”
Now at ANU, Tulsi is investigating how knowledge — and the absence of it — shapes philanthropic giving. Her research examines how not-for-profit organisations, philanthropists and foundations make sense of one another during the process of giving and receiving funding.
At the centre of her work is the idea that philanthropy is not simply a financial transaction, but a social relationship built through assumptions, expectations and negotiations around what is known — and unknown.
“I’m trying to understand how people make sense of what is being given, and expected in return, during philanthropic giving,” she explains. “Particularly when they don’t necessarily know as much as they would like about each other.”
That focus pushes beyond the familiar public image of philanthropy as simply “doing good”.
“Philanthropy is not just one thing,” Tulsi says. “When we focus only one idea or narrative, we miss the many ways philanthropy operates as both a practice and an industry.”
She points out that philanthropy can fund innovative approaches to social and environmental issues in ways governments and businesses often cannot. But it can also reinforce existing systems of inequalities.
“Philanthropy holds the ability to pursue alternative paths to addressing social and environmental issues that governments or businesses often can’t,” she says. “But those approaches can also reinforce ways of thinking that deepen inequality.”
Tulsi’s PhD will involve ethnographic fieldwork across Melbourne’s civil society and philanthropic sectors. She hopes to speak with not-for-profit workers, philanthropic trustees, foundation executives and donors themselves, tracing how people navigate uncertainty and build relationships through the process of giving.
She is particularly interested in how knowledge becomes embedded within systems and conventions — including the things people stop questioning.
“Knowledge is always political,” she says. “How knowledge is produced — and also hindered — shapes relationships and social order.”
As someone at the beginning of her PhD journey, Tulsi says she is excited by the sense of contributing to something larger than herself.
“I’m excited that I get to build on ideas fostered by countless people across lifetimes,” she says. “What I’m working on is part of something much bigger than me.”
At the same time, returning to study after years in the workforce has meant relearning how to be a beginner.
“It can be pretty hard,” she admits. “You have to both learn and unlearn so many things during a PhD.”
Still, she says the moments of discovery make it worthwhile.
“Those ‘aha moments’ are definitely worth the daunting task of being a beginner again.”
Outside of research, Tulsi insists she is less interesting than her work suggests.
Her research suggests otherwise.