With a little help from our friends: private fundraising and public schools in Philadelphia

In this paper, we study fundraising efforts for traditional public schools in Philadelphia by neighborhood-based 'friends' groups that have incorporated as independent 501(c)(3)s to support individual schools. We situate the growth of school-based fundraising efforts within the well-known social science literature on the shadow state and the devolution of the welfare state over 30 years ago. As far as we know, this is the first application of these theories to education reform. We ask what characterizes schools and neighborhoods where school constituencies have incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations, how school-specific 501(c)(3)s raise money, and what priorities guide their investment objectives. We draw on interviews with local organizations, document review of IRS Form 990 filings, and school district and census demographic data. We find that the work of these organizations must be understood in the context of gentrifying neighborhoods and that they reflect the manifestation of inequalities in local capacity described in the shadow state literature.