Charity, Philanthropy and Development in Colombo: An Overview of a Research Project

This paper is a history of a developmentlinked research project into philanthropy in Colombo. It presents the background to the research, considers the reasons for the project being designed in a specific way, and summarises the conclusions the researchers arrived at. Whilst being of interest in themselves, the argument of this paper is that it is doubtful whether the research conclusions have had or will have any major impact on development practice nor have they contributed much if anything to poverty alleviation which was the desired impact of the project as far as the funder was concerned. This raises the more general question what are the preconditions which would lead to academic research having a more effective role in development.