Giving Compass' Take:

• Abby Rolland breaks down Sevda Kilicalp's success in philanthropy and how Kilicalp focuses her energy to be a global citizen in order to make an impact.

• How are you prepared to adapt your giving under changing circumstances? How can you increase your global awareness?

• Read about what it means to be a global citizen and entrepreneur.


How does someone with extensive global knowledge of the field become involved in it initially? Sevda Kilicalp first discovered the sector as a young volunteer. Building on those experiences and her undergraduate work, she began her career at Third Sector Foundation of Turkey (TUSEV), where she worked on a comparative research study that looked at giving in Muslim countries.

As one of the thematic networks coordinators, Kilicalp is in charge of four of EFC’s networks: gender equality, diversity, migration, and integration, disability, and children’s network.

She also runs the organization’s international leadership programs, one in which European philanthropy leaders meet with Chinese philanthropy leaders once a year, and a new one where European leaders meet with philanthropy leaders from Russia, a country that combines European and Asian heritage in philanthropy.

Kilicalp has used research for her Ph.D. to focus on nonprofit organizations in a changing environment. With the guidance of her chair Dr. Lehn Benjamin, Kilicalp analyzes organizations’ internal practices, what challenges some face with several crackdowns on civil society, and how they adapt to changing citizen demands.

Kilicalp looked at this question of how nonprofits respond by studying six Turkish organizations working on children’s issues. Based on the systematic analysis of the explanations and justifications of research participants concerning why they adopt certain practices, she describes the conflicting demands imposed by conflicting institutional prescriptions on major organizational elements.

She analyzes evolution of expressive activities, funding streams, governance mechanism, performance accountability, program strategy, relationship with government, and relationship with other nonprofits to determine how successful the case organizations were in paying attention to government pressure and risk, but also figuring out how they could contribute to social change and find different ways to connect with citizens. In this way, she seeks to understand unique challenges nonprofit leaders face in a changing environment.

Read the full article about being a global philanthropic citizen by Abby Rolland at Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.