Pipeline Philanthropy: Understanding Philanthropic Corporate Action in Education During the COVID-19 Era and Beyond

Abstract

In response to COVID-19 many companies, particularly technology companies, voluntarily attended to the strained education sector by donating or temporarily discounting their core products, generating public support and gratitude. This type of philanthropic corporate action demonstrates an expansive and perhaps increasing function in the provisioning of certain educational materials and resources by private actors. This article analyzes this strand of corporate activity as pipeline philanthropy and shows how this model of strategic corporate giving differs from existing models of philanthropy in education. Through illustrations this study assesses the democratic implications of corporate entanglement through philanthropic action to evaluate whether the benefits brought about by an enhanced role for corporate actors in education are worth what they compromise.

Introduction

Philanthropy plays an influential role in schooling, taking on a multitude of forms and decisively shaping structures, resources, and priorities across countless facets of education. Corporate philanthropy is one part of this story, and the role corporate actors and corporations themselves play in educational spaces suggests an expansive and perhaps increasing function in providing access to certain educational materials, resources, and content for students, teachers, districts, and families. Over the past two decades, scholars, and the public have increasingly turned a critical eye toward the role of philanthropists in education, with a majority of the analysis focused on wealthy philanthropic individuals and their respective philanthropic foundations (Colvin, 2005; Frumkin, 2003; Giridharadas, 2018; Reckhow, 2010; Reich, 2005; Reich et al., 2016; Reich, 2013, 2018; Saltman, 2011; Scott, 2009; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). However, the role of corporations, and more specifically philanthropic activity performed by corporations, whose primary functions reside outside of discretely philanthropic projects, is often marginal or entirely absent from these important studies. In this article, I identify and theorize a particular strand of corporate philanthropy as pipeline philanthropy and ask how this model of strategic corporate giving differs from existing models of philanthropy in education as a practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I evaluate the democratic implications of pipeline philanthropy, assessing the potential benefits and risks in order to determine whether such relationships are worth what they compromise.

In response to the onset of the COVID-19 crisis in early 2020, many technology companies that deliver services connected with moving school operations online—Comcast, Verizon, Zoom, Google, and a plethora of EdTech companies, to name a few—offered free or heavily discounted access to their otherwise paid products, embedding themselves in student and teacher homes across a number of U.S. and international school districts in an unprecedentedly short period of time. In public statements, these companies identified their voluntary activity as connected to civic duty and in response to the devastation of the ongoing crisis that left many students, families, and districts without adequate access to educational content. While the precise catalyst for their response may be temporally unique, this corporate behavior is situated within an ongoing, though largely unexplored area of education philanthropy which I call pipeline philanthropy. Pipeline philanthropy describes the phenomenon in which corporations contribute “in-kind” donations, either by donating or discounting their own core products (i.e., their own core goods and services) or by restrictively funding the purchase of curricular programs, services, and products related to their own core product. This type of highly restricted and earmarked donation, contribution, partnership, and involvement by a corporation in the field of education is distinct from the dominant forms of philanthropy in education, as it produces a “pipeline” of (future) consumers and clients, paralleling lead-generation business marketing strategies that aim to interest potential customers.

Pipeline philanthropy draws on the concept of a sales “pipeline,” a term frequently engaged in business and marketing strategy to describe the sales process by which individuals become (paying) customers, clients, or users—who I refer to as customers going forward, for brevity—of the company’s product. The word “pipeline” appears often in education scholarship, particularly in reference to the “school-to-prison-pipeline” or the “leaky pipeline” that metaphorically examines why women are underrepresented in STEM fields. However, the usage here in pipeline philanthropy is deployed strictly to resonate with business and marketing strategy rhetoric. In business operations, the sales pipeline is dependent on, or at the least related to, a company’s marketing strategy: the mechanisms that companies use to generate sales leads. The marketing techniques and lead generation strategies deployed by companies in the development of their sales pipeline are multifarious, and continuously improved upon by marketing professionals to design and operate their marketing funnel in such a way to maximally capture and retain paying customers. Examples of known and regularly deployed B to C (business to consumer) marketing strategies include targeted advertising, promotional marketing, discounting and coupons, and freemium models. ¹ Each of these marketing strategies work to identify and capture potential customers, bringing them into and through a sales pipeline to increase overall revenue. Pipeline philanthropy offers a conceptual frame to evaluate the burgeoning philanthropic action of corporations occurring at all levels of U.S. and international education, and as this article investigates, the overall expanding presence of corporate actors in U.S. K-12 educational spaces. The development of this frame contributes to education philanthropy literature by identifying and explicating this phenomenon of increasing philanthropic action by corporations in education and situates existing CSR literature in order to understand this particular type of corporate activity more broadly.

In the development of this conceptual argument and frame, I engage with public statements, press releases, and online text published by the companies themselves and made available through their official websites, which are available to all members of the public. In addition, I consider the reception and interpretation of those statements by the popular and news media. This approach employs discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis techniques (Fairclough, 1995; Phillips & Hardy, 2002) in order to “decipher the underlying meaning, deep assumptions, and relations of power that are supported by and constructed through a discourse” (Crawford, 2004, p. 23). In explicating this concept, I first offer a definition of pipeline philanthropy. I interpret philanthropic corporate behavior during the onset of COVID-19 to illustrate this concept. To demonstrate the usefulness of this concept beyond COVID-19, I consider the historical case of Apple’s Kids Can’t Wait initiative and Google’s Workspace for Education products. This article demonstrates the distinctiveness of pipeline philanthropy from other forms of philanthropy in education, which have been well documented and evaluated, and situates pipeline philanthropy within existing models of corporate philanthropy and CSR practices. Finally, I offer an evaluation of the benefits and risks associated with pipeline philanthropy in order to better assess the relationships initiated and sustained by corporations through this type of activity.

Conceptualizing and Illustrating Pipeline Philanthropy

Pipeline philanthropy is a philanthropic relationship between a corporation and a receiving entity in which one of the key outcomes of the relationship is to sustain or expand the customer base for the corporation’s core product, service, or business, and thus contribute to its overall revenue. This is not to say that such an outcome is the explicit intention or (sole) motivation of the corporation—as intentions are often murky and complex, making them difficult to validate—but rather that regardless of intention or motivation, the relationship produces or has the potential to produce a certain type of tangible outcome related to business prosperity. Tangible outcomes related to business prosperity might occur on two compatible planes: first, through institutionalized tax deductions for corporations, and second, through future profit and revenue growth. Pipeline philanthropy is a restricted type of philanthropic activity, one in which the corporation contributes in-kind donations that are distinctly nonmonetary in form and infungible, as opposed to cash donations toward general operating purposes. Pipeline philanthropy specifically refers to philanthropic action performed by a corporation, distinguishing it from other philanthropic forms in which an individual or philanthropic foundation disburses money or in-kind donations to a recipient. Unlike cash donations, which are the transfer or gift of funds in the form of currency, in-kind donations or gifts “are contributions of goods or services, other than cash grants. . .Goods, like computers, software, furniture, and office equipment” (Candid.Learning, n.d.). According to the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, U.S. corporations may claim federal tax dedications for charitable contributions of up to 10% of their taxable income (Internal Revenue Service, 2021), among other state and local tax deductions. Taxable donations include cash and noncash charitable contributions of property—notably equipment and intellectual property. ² Drawing on Salamon and Anheier’s (1992) definition of philanthropy as “the giving of gifts of time or valuables (money, securities, property) for public purposes” (p. 130), this corporate activity is philanthropic insofar as it involves a gift of valuables toward the public purpose of education. While temporarily offering a product for free or at a discounted rate is not as clearly eligible for tax deductions—and seemingly left to the interpretation of the claimant—I interpret specific types of discounting and free access to be philanthropic when this action is articulated as a gift and for public purposes by the giver, the recipient, or the public. In many cases, institutionalized tax deductions are likely to incentivize corporate charitable contributions as a mechanism to offset otherwise taxable revenue and demonstrates institutional deference that rewards corporations for philanthropic action (Saunders-Hastings, 2022a). ³ However, because federal corporate tax returns are not publicly available (per Pub.L. 94-455), one can only speculate on whether corporations indeed claimed or received deductions for these contributions.

While pipeline philanthropy is certainly not restricted to technology companies, the magnitude and high degree of publicity for technological in-kind donations allows for relatively accessible analysis. Likewise, while pipeline philanthropy exists across a variety of organizational fields and international contexts, its prevalence and expansion in U.S. education is the primary focus of this article. The decentralized nature of U.S. education governance and unique institutional deference toward philanthropic actors allows schools to aggregate robust in-kind donations by technology companies of computing devices, software, curricular programs, and earmarked funds for technology purposes. Where schools and those actors involved in schooling efforts—students, teachers, parents, and school administrators—are the recipients of in- kind technological donations and earmarked grants made directly by the proprietary company, this presents an opportunity to evaluate the inception of a philanthropic relationship between a school community and corporate entity. Such relationships freely embed certain products and services into the educational environment, at times bypassing bureaucratic restrictions—such as a transparent contract selection process or school board vote that approves or denies changes to the budget—that might otherwise accompany purchases of products and services. The embedded relationship, generated initially as a philanthropic one, permits a degree of entanglement between the company and its products on the one hand, and the schooling community as consumers on the other. Once an initial (free) introduction and integration is made, continuous and expanding adoption—that is, purchasing more of the company’s products or services, or upgrading to the paid version of the free product—may appear logical and perhaps cost effective to the school recipients, effecting a linear continuation toward product uniformity that decreases variance, increases manageability, and simplifies overall.

This is distinguished from other types of Corporate Social Responsibility and corporate philanthropy, which I expand upon below, insofar as the future customers are not ancillary to the philanthropic action, but rather the direct recipients of the philanthropic action. This is a process in which initial direct—schools and school districts—and indirect—students and their parents—recipients of donations are converted into customers, either in the short-term through contract extension, or the long-term as loyal consumers. I conceptualize pipeline philanthropy as a strand of corporate philanthropy, one in which the direct and indirect recipients of the philanthropic action are brought into the sales pipeline in part through the initiation of a philanthropic relationship. As such, all pipeline philanthropy is therefore a type of corporate philanthropy, however, not all corporate philanthropy is necessarily pipeline philanthropy. In certain cases, the increased customer base or branding opportunities enjoyed by the philanthropic corporation may be an un(der) articulated objective of such a relationship, where the company states an alternative purpose, such as civic responsibility or moral duty, as the guiding motivation behind the pursuit of said relationship or philanthropic action. For the purposes of understanding and developing this frame, the authenticity of the company’s stated motivations is somewhat irrelevant, or at least of diminished importance. Instead, I focus here on the consequences or prospective outcomes of the established relationship because the entangled customer relationship appears to exist regardless of whether the financial gains or explicit expansion of the customer base are articulated as objectives.

Pipeline Philanthropy in Education During COVID-19

Pipeline philanthropy is best unpacked through illustrative cases, many of which became visible through corporate responses to the COVID-19 crisis. In many cases, these responses attended to the pressing circumstances during which schools rapidly converted all schooling functions to distanced or remote online formats, working quickly and with limited resources to accommodate students, while simultaneously responding to expert recommendations and governmental restrictions against in-person schooling. At the outset of mass school closures beginning in mid-March 2020, many schools, districts, and states scrambled to outfit teachers and families with adequate materials, devices, and technological infrastructure to conduct learning operations virtually, acknowledging a paucity in resources and the “digital divide” that might exacerbate already existing inequalities (Lake & Makori, 2020; Nagel, 2020). In response to the health crisis, select companies, particularly companies whose primary products and services are directly related to virtual educational content—educational technology platforms and curriculum—or indirectly related by enhancing or providing the delivery of virtual educational content—Internet Service Providers (ISPs), device manufacturers, video conferencing tools, etc.—temporarily offered their products or services to schools and adjacent actors at free or heavily discounted rates. These companies engaged in rhetoric, examples of which I expand on below, that reflected the perceived urgency faced by schools and concerns about prohibitive costs that might be incurred in order to sufficiently equip students and teachers with the technological resources demanded by such a transition. In mainstream press coverage of these actions, including depictions by educator journals, technology companies were favorably represented as having “stepped forward to help educators reach students in virtual ways,” (Shaffhause, 2020) and as having “stepped up to help teachers facilitate online learning for home-bound students” (Foresman, 2020). Online news sources aimed toward educators, such as The Journal, quickly collated and regularly updated exhaustive lists of corporations and other education related entities offering free and discounted virtual services for teachers, students, and families (Shaffhause, 2020). As of its update in June of 2020, Dian Shaffhause’s list contained nearly 450 unique “education technology companies” who had committed to supporting virtual learning efforts by “making their paid services free through the rest of the school year; in other cases, they’re lifting limits to services and/or adding premium features to what’s free.” A small sampling of these and other corporate responses demonstrates both the range of discrete offerings and the parity in language used to describe the purpose and content of their philanthropic action, a few of which I highlight here for illustrative purposes.

After initial lobbying by the FCC, many broadband and telephone service providers signed onto the Federal Communications Commission’s 60-day “Keep Americans Connected Pledge” released on March 12, 2020, with nearly 70 companies committing to the pledge in less than 24 hr and agreeing to the stipulations outlined by Chairman Ajit Pai, which stated intentions to minimize internet service disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak (Federal Communications Commission, 2020). ⁴ In addition to the tenets of the FCC Pledge, Comcast claimed to be “taking immediate steps to make it easier to connect low-income families to home internet” by offering temporary and means-tested access (Comcast, n.d.). ⁵ The primary offer made available was that “New Internet Essentials customers will receive two free months of Internet service” pending approval of eligibility—initially offered until May 13, 2020, and ultimately extended through December 31, 2020, but discontinued after the launch of the Affordable Connectivity Program on December 30, 2021 (Comcast, n.d.; Federal Communications Commission, 2022). While existing customers were not eligible for free or discounted services, Comcast did commit to increasing service speed at no additional charge, offering special availability to discounted laptops, and opportunities to resume service for those customers previously disconnected “due to hardship.” In Philadelphia, the city where Comcast is headquartered, the School District of Philadelphia detailed a host of connectivity options that outlined opportunities for accessing free hotspots made available by large ISPs in response to the pandemic, including those by Comcast, Verizon, and others (Fink-Yates, 2020; School District of Philadelphia, 2020). However, reports from students and local news media conveyed substantial challenges by students and their families in securing these offers despite the ISPs’ advertising, leading to frustration between school district administrators, district families, and the corporations (Graham, 2020).

According to Verizon’s announcement on March 14, 2020, Verizon would be “tripling its monthly data allowance for its Verizon Innovative Learning schools” through June 30th. This sat alongside Verizon’s other COVID-related philanthropic activities, including its “More at Home on Us” program effective March 26, 2020; a “total COVID-19 crisis commitment [that] now stands at over $55 million” as of May 7, 2020; and its New York Times partnership. Beginning April 6, 2020, Verizon partnered with the New York Times company to offer “free digital access to NYTimes.com” for “all students and teachers in high schools within the U.S.” through July 6th (Vicker, 2020), and temporarily expanded access to otherwise paid products for 14 million students in the NY geographical area. Providing access to virtual learning was a key objective beyond internet service providers as well. Google, Inc’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, tweeted on April 1, 2020, that the company would be partnering with the California governor to provide “4,000 Chromebooks to California students in greatest need & free WIFI to 100,000 rural households” in order “to make distance learning more accessible” (Pichai, 2020).

In a related vein, Zoom announced on March 6, 2020 that it would be “temporarily removing the 40-min time limit on free Basic accounts for primary and secondary schools affected by the Coronavirus,” a feature typically reserved for paid “Education plans” and “Pro Accounts.” While initially targeted toward U.S. schools, Zoom subsequently partnered with UNESCO to enhance “learner wellbeing” through “universal connectivity,” joining the “Global Educational Coalition for Covid-19 Response” to extend this temporary feature to select “countries of interest” (Australia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Japan, France). In the U.S. context, this offer required school verification and the initiation of formal contact with the Zoom education sales team, effectively constituting schools into the Zoom sales pipeline. However, following Zoom’s explosive adoption by a multitude of global users, and most particularly students with a minor age status, widespread concerns about the platform’s security and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) precipitated calls for reevaluation of the platform’s use and a temporary ban by the New York City Schools Chancellor until critical security issues were addressed (Mlot, 2020; Singer et al., 2020; Whittaker, 2020; Yuan, 2020; Zimmerman, 2020). After substantial overhauling of their security features, which Zoom cataloged through frequent press releases, they were once again granted approval in New York City Schools on May 6, 2020 (NYC Department of Education, 2020; Zoom for Education, 2020). ⁶

In addition to providing virtual connection access, increased philanthropic activity was evident among educational technology companies whose core products are curricular or content oriented, and many companies offered similarly attractive discounts and free versions of their products. As noted previously, hundreds of educational technology programs offered free or discounted access to their products for students, teachers, and parents, with many such offers expressed as an extended “free trial” or time delimited through the end of the initially impacted 2019 to 2020 school year (Shaffhause, 2020). These corporate educational applications, programs, and platforms were made temporarily available at a free or reduced rate to educators, districts, and students directly, and they varied widely in aim and content. Some companies offered personalized and gamified math, STEM, or reading lessons for PK-12 students (e.g., ST Math, XtraMath, Achieve3000; The Coding School); certain e-reader platforms temporarily removed licensing fees for digital libraries (e.g., Epic!, Follett Learning); while still others focused on offering digital administrative functions like student monitoring systems, remote technology support systems, teacher training tools, and behavioral or academic assessments (e.g., LanSchool, The Learning Accelerator, Netop, Promethean). ⁷ For example, beginning mid-March through the fall of 2020, Amazon Future Engineer offered free access to Amazon sponsored computer science courses with temporary access to free course materials (Amazon Day One Staff, 2020). MIND Research Institute offered their ST Math program and associated materials to parents, schools, and districts for grades K-8 for free through June 30, 2020, with extensions granted for families to continue accessing for free through December 31, 2020 (ST Math, n.d.). And for the duration of the 2019 to 2020 school year, BrightFish Learning made its reading platform free for grades 2 to 12 (BrightFish Learning, n.d.). These instances of pipeline philanthropy were united by at least two features: (1) the corporate entities existed as for-profit companies whose business models included a fee-based structure and depended on customer conversions to subscription or contract; and (2) their core products or services consisted partially or exclusively of digitally distributed goods prior to the onset of COVID-19, consistent with overarching objectives to move certain curricular or programmatic aspects of education more permanently to online or hybrid spaces.

These responses from the selection of companies above expressed an explicit relationship between the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and their decision to (temporarily) discount or freely donate their core products and services for public purposes. Some observers noted that such philanthropic action, particularly by educational technology companies whose business models depend on paid contracts with schools, districts, and families, revealed a possible tension in philanthropic behavior on the one hand, and the capacity to remain profitable on the other. One observer of these trends succinctly noted, “Education companies are offering free resources amid the Coronavirus. How do they shift to paid? Vendors are considering how to make that shift in sensitive ways that don’t alienate districts” (Davis, 2020). Rather, this behavior can be interpreted as a project of pipeline philanthropy, one that weaves philanthropic behavior and action together with strategic corporate operations.

Where Have We Seen This Before. . .

There are two cases with particularly strong resonance to the COVID-19 corporate responses. First, and arguably the philanthropic relationship that provided the precedent for in-kind technology donations to districts and schools, is Apple’s “Kids Can’t Wait” initiative. The second, which is ongoing and implicated in distance learning precipitated by COVID-19, is the Google Workspace for Education initiative. The “Kids Can’t Wait” initiative was launched by Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs after the computing company won a contract with the Minnesota Education Computer Consortium (MECC) in 1978. The MECC contract, won after only 2 years in business, inaugurated a decades-long relationship between Apple and K-12 U.S. schools—a purchasing relationship between schools and Apple, Inc. that Jobs cited as fundamental to the proliferation and success of the Apple II (Morrow, 1995; Watters, 2015). Jobs recognized schools as a locus of access for introducing computers to kids as future customers and noted the potential to “change their life” (Morrow, 1995). Jobs became determined to rapidly increase the number of computers students could access—claiming “We wanted to donate a computer to every school in America,” (Morrow, 1995)—as a mechanism to bypass the slow rate at which school bureaucracies were making purchasing decisions. Acknowledging the financial loss that such a philanthropic action would incur for the company, Jobs began working with California Congressional Representative Pete Stark to propose a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, revising the code “to encourage contributions of computer equipment to elementary and secondary schools” by allowing for corporate tax deduction through the introduction of H.R. 5573, ⁸ the “Computer Equipment Contribution Act of 1982.” While Jobs’s lobbying efforts toward formal federal legislative action initially failed, passing the House but stalling in the Senate, Apple’s home state of California passed AB 3194, which provided state corporations a 25% tax credit against earned income for any computer equipment they donated to K-12 schools (Watters, 2015). According to proponents, including Governor Jerry Brown, the corporate tax credit would support the acquisition of devices by schools otherwise unable to afford them, supporting students in developing computer literacy skills deemed increasingly necessary. With the backing of this attractive tax deduction, Apple donated over 9,000 Apple computers to schools eligible for their “Kids Can’t Wait” program, effectively distributing their nascent product—with accompanying, incentivized teacher training—into the hands of nearly every young student in California for a mere $1 million. In a Smithsonian interview, Jobs himself articulated that, “One of the things that built Apple II’s was schools buying Apple II’s,” and he went on to claim that he had “helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world” (Morrow, 1995). Jobs’s statements illustrate a clear connection between the success of the company’s first major product and the philanthropic purchasing relationship with schools that embedded Apple computing devices into nearly every U.S. school building. In the decades following the initial MECC contract and Apple’s Kids Can’t Wait initiative, Apple dominated sales to K-12 and higher educational institutions, only losing its position to Dell in 1999 (Norr, 1999; Silver & Wuerthele, 2018).

Google, Inc.′s meteoric rise within the competitive education market since their entrance in 2006 tells a similar story. Google joined the flurry in 2006 when the company announced they would begin offering their suite of products—Google Apps—at no cost to educational institutions (Google, 2006). Google Apps for Education—which would later become G Suite for Education in 2016, and Workspace for Education in 2021—boasted “80 million educators and students around the world” prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Vamvakitis, 2019). By offering one of its core products for free to educational institutions from the outset, Google initiated pipeline philanthropy. The initial free offering allowed the company to draw a route for seamless integration with its low-cost—but still paid—Chromebooks, which were introduced commercially in 2011. Google moved quickly, and by 2012 claimed that “hundreds of schools in 41 states across the United States are using its Chromebooks in one or more classrooms” (Temple, 2012), moving from 500 districts in the U.S. and Europe in 2012 (Lardinois, 2012) to 30 million individual users in 2019, all the while advocating for “one-to-one” laptop programs as the instructional ideal (Vamvakitis, 2019). The increasing ubiquity of Chromebooks in classrooms around the world, and in the U.S. especially—where they made up nearly 60% of all computers purchased by K-12 schools between 2016 and 2018 (Molnar, 2019)—appears tightly linked to the launch of Google Classroom in 2014, which claimed use by 40 million students and educators as of 2019. ⁹ The Google Classroom feature of Workspace for Education completed a comprehensive educational technology ecosystem, and while educational institutions may continue to access “Education Fundamentals” for free, paid editions offering advanced functionality were released in 2021. Here again, the offering of free products draws on a civic mission for public purpose, where Google claims to be “Helping expand learning for everyone,” stating they “believe that everyone—educators and learners at every age and stage—deserve the tools and skills that set them up for success in building the future they want for themselves” (Google, for Education, n.d.). Categorizing this corporate behavior as explicitly philanthropic is complex, but the stated public purpose and free-to-paid lifecycle of the corporations’ embeddedness in education makes this a clear illustration of pipeline philanthropy. I return to the position of pipeline philanthropy within Corporate Social Responsibility after briefly situating the form within existing conceptions of philanthropy in education.

Philanthropy in Education

Robust studies of philanthropy in education have primarily focused on two dominant forms: traditional “field-oriented” philanthropy and new “outcome-oriented” venture philanthropy, both conducted primarily from non-profit foundations and wealthy individual donors (e.g., Colvin, 2005; Reich et al., 2016; Saltman, 2011; Scott, 2009; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). As noted at the outset, scholars and the public have increasingly critiqued the role of philanthropists and philanthropic foundations in education, but these critiques have largely omitted analyses of philanthropic corporate activity in education. An understanding of these existing forms of philanthropy, which have been more comprehensively critiqued elsewhere, is necessary in order to situate pipeline philanthropy and the role of corporate action for public purposes more broadly. While pipeline philanthropy mirrors venture philanthropy insofar as it works to embed private enterprises and logics into both the financial models of schools and their ongoing operations, I contend that literature evaluating venture philanthropy in education does not adequately attend to future relationships between corporate entities acting in a philanthropic capacity and non-profit education recipients, or the explicit embedding of products and services through in-kind donations. Philanthropic involvement in the K-12 education sector is certainly not a temporally unique phenomenon. Historians have chronicled the prolific engagement by philanthropic actors in the education sector, particularly as it relates to the bureaucratization of the public education system during the Progressive Era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the explicit focus on technical and industrial training for Black students in the rural south. ¹⁰ This form of grant-making, a “scientific philanthropy” rooted in efficiency and public purpose, has subsequently come to be known as traditional philanthropy, which takes a field-level approach in relation to the newer philanthropic form of “venture philanthropy” (Scott, 2009; Tompkins-Stange, 2016).

In contrast to traditional philanthropy, scholars recognize a “new” philanthropic form increasingly present in the educational landscape: venture philanthropy (Frumkin, 2003; Quinn et al., 2014; Saltman, 2011; Scott, 2009). This represents a new group of givers, dramatically outspending traditional philanthropists (Colvin, 2005). Venture philanthropy is classified by its “high-engagement” and “outcome-oriented” grantmaking practices (Frumkin, 2003; Tompkins-Stange, 2016) with ‘“significant due diligence on potential ‘investments,’ close monitoring of outcomes, accountability for results and impact, and direct involvement of funders with day-to-day management of grantee organizations, including assuming roles in board governance and providing technical assistance” (Quinn et al., 2014, p. 956). Such high engagement is characterized by the introduction of “evaluative frameworks” that require regular reporting on accountability metrics and milestones intended to measure organizational performance relative to contractually agreed upon goals (Frumkin, 2003; Quinn et al., 2014). The language and rhetoric employed by venture philanthropists and philanthrocapitalists “convey[s] a sense of urgency and speed,” (Ball, 2003, p. 86) and identifiably mirrors the corporate, business-sector language of venture capitalism, deploying the metaphor of “investment” in place of “grant,” and “social return on investment” in place of “deliverables,” among other similar linguistic adjustments (Frumkin, 2003; Horsford et al., 2019; Scott, 2009). Sarah Reckhow (2010) notes, “The emphasis on grants as ‘investments’ puts new pressures on grantees to demonstrate some type of measurable returns” (p. 290), introducing a form of performativity to be enacted by the recipients, “a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgments, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change—based on rewards and sanctions,” (Ball, 2003, p. 216). Here, the venture philanthropists and their respective foundations “control the field of judgment,” determining what “count[s] as valuable, effective or satisfactory performance and what measures or indicators are considered valid,” (Ball, 2003, p. 216). The measurement, metrics, and milestones outlined as a fundamental component of venture philanthropy position recipients of funding in new proximity to their benefactors, where failure to comply with or adapt to sufficient operational and outcome orientation may result in the absence of funding, leading to ultimate exit from the field.

Proponents of venture philanthropy—members of the media, the public, politicians, philanthropists, and recipient organizations—along with philanthropy in education more broadly, identify massive inadequacy by public schooling to meet the needs of students, and believe schools are not delivering on their promise as “the great equalizer” of society or effecting their capacity for positive social change—failing to “level the playing field” (Colvin, 2005; Hess, 2005; Reckhow, 2013). Bill Gates, in particular, has lamented the obsolescence of the American high school, which by his estimation fails to provide career readiness and is an “economic disaster” (Colvin, 2005, p. 22; Reckhow, 2013; Saltman, 2011). Frustrated with the unacceptably slow pace of change by public agencies in response to identified achievement disparities, foundations aim to improve ineffective bureaucracy or subvert it altogether by underwriting organizations with “innovative capacity,” supporting catalytic, rapid change to remake public schooling (Colvin, 2005; Reckhow, 2010). Philanthropic capital often aims to promote “innovation,” particularly where it bolsters non-district organizations unencumbered by governmental bureaucracy (Colvin, 2005; Reckhow, 2010). With regards to the achievement gap, select large foundations have concentrated efforts on “remedying the ills of urban school districts that have largely been abandoned by the middle and upper classes,” (Colvin, 2005, p. 27), strategically utilizing their resources and influence toward spaces they perceive as most vulnerable and underserved, where they may have the greatest impact (Reckhow, 2010). Through this reasoning, more resources injected into the cash-strapped education system works to promote a “net-good” outcome and “social return on investment,” even where it observes its own limitations in contributing to long-term systemic change (Reckhow, 2010). For the venture philanthropists described above, a “return on investment” is primarily cultural, characterized by the successful embedding of an organizational logic that precipitates measurable societal outcomes associated with certain metrics identified and valued by the philanthropic entity. For the corporate philanthropists I turn to next, a “return on investment” might also be characterized by broader changes to cultural and organizational logic. But an expanded sales pipeline, an increased customer base, and a short- or long-term expansion in revenue is a modality of return that is either irrelevant or indirect at best for the philanthropic foundation. However, the line between venture philanthropy and pipeline philanthropy is often blurred by the actors who take part. In several cases, corporations participate in pipeline philanthropy, actively donating and discounting their core product, while corporate executives also maintain and operate philanthropic foundations engaged in grant-making. This is to say that a company and its wealthy members may certainly be operating multiple philanthropic forms and logics simultaneously.

Corporate Social Responsibility Through Strategic Philanthropy

Corporations performing pipeline philanthropy draw upon similar language and rationale to venture philanthropists for justifying their strategic philanthropic actions. The attentiveness to vulnerable and underserved populations, opportunities for innovation, and orientation toward career readiness demonstrate a shared and dominant reform logic that places value on the expertise and resources of wealthy, corporate actors. In the limited, though growing body of scholarly work that critically attends to philanthropists and philanthropic action in education, the primary focus of inquiry is often the nature and behavior of philanthropic individuals and foundations, as synthesized above. This emphasis is understandable given the historical and contemporary relationships between such actors and schools, and these scholars have done well to demonstrate their isomorphic influence over institutional aspects of schools (Reckhow, 2010, 2013). Less addressed in relation to education, however, is the nature and behavior of corporate actors, particularly where corporate actors develop philanthropic or partner relationships with public entities to address societal issues. Alex Gurn (2016) notes that “corporations have aggressively encroached into the gaps in provisions to public education, addressing problems that hyper-concentrated wealth has helped to engender” (p. 1). Expanded philanthropic corporate behavior in public education, and in this case pipeline philanthropy, may be partially interpreted through the development and expectations of Corporate Social Responsibility, which I situate here.

Corporate behavior, communication, and actions during the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic articulated certain commitments and alignment by various companies, often enacted through decisive adaptations of company operations that worked to reflect the social environment and participate in responsible or ethical behavior. Reactive and strategic corporate activity of this type is primarily discussed in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and business ethics literature, particularly as it relates to transforming business practices toward sustainability and engaging in certain responsible or philanthropic behavior as a civic or moral duty, as well as for strategic brand/reputational improvement and marketing purposes (Brakman Reiser & Dean, 2023; Pérez, 2009; Shaw & Post, 1993; Sturchio & Galambos, 2014). However, the ethical and moral obligations or duties of profit-seeking firms are highly debated (Orts & Smith, 2017; Urban, 2014), with contention regarding whether and how businesses should provide social or political benefits outside of commercial transactions (Hsieh, 2017). That businesses act ethically and responsibly appears to be both an increasing desire of many consumers and members of the public, as well as aligned to the advice of marketing and business operations professionals. Indeed, expectations by the public that businesses ought to provide certain benefits serves to grant institutional and attitudinal legitimacy to practices of pipeline philanthropy and CSR more broadly (Saunders-Hastings, 2022a, 2022b). Yet definitions of “Corporate Social Responsibility” are varied and contested across disciplines, and even within business management literature itself. Given both the descriptive and normative implications that producing such a definition elicits (Crane et al., 2008), CSR is better understood as a discourse (Saunders-Hastings, 2022b). ¹¹ For the purposes of situating pipeline philanthropy, CSR can be understood where “The social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time,” (Carroll, 1979, p. 500), in which “discretionary spending [is] in furtherance of an explicit measurable social objective consistent with relevant social norms and laws” (Dunfee, 2008, p. 348). The discussion of CSR and its more specific techniques within management, marketing, and business scholarship is particularly illuminating, and this literature often casts the adoption and deployment of certain practices as overt and strategic toward stabilizing and growing customers. In many cases, the authors and marketing researchers compile and evaluate the efficacy of certain techniques—strategic philanthropy; cause-related marketing; sponsorships, ¹² etc.—as the primary purpose of their study, reporting the degree to which a company might expect certain customer retention and growth depending on the selection and deployment of one CSR strategy over another.

Much like philanthropic foundations, philanthropic corporations frequently engage in strategic philanthropy (Brakman Reiser & Dean, 2023). However, the issue of “return on investment” for corporate entities and venture philanthropists participating in education philanthropy is divergent. When deployed in CSR practices, strategic philanthropy describes “the synergistic use of organizational core competencies and resources to address key stakeholders' interests and to achieve both organizational and social benefits,” (McAlister & Ferrell, 2002, p. 690). Corporate strategic philanthropy is characterized by clear alignment between the central purpose of the company and the object of the philanthropic action to “develop synergy between business and philanthropic acts,” (McAlister & Ferrell, 2002, p. 693). More cynically, Gurn (2016) claims:

Corporate philanthropy creates opportunities for social entrepreneurs to innovate in new markets, strengthen constituent relationships, and enhance image or reputation. By applying business strategy to philanthropic partnerships, charitable endeavors and community relations are harnessed as means to boost the bottom line or create ‘competitive advantage’ (p. 4).

Pipeline philanthropy is nestled within the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility, and most clearly within a strategic philanthropy model. Corporate actors participating in pipeline philanthropy nearly always align the core organizational competencies of their corporation with a social cause or recipient organization, drawing clear connections between the relevance of their donation—their product or service contributed as in-kind donation—to the perceived needs of their recipients. Returning to an earlier example, Zoom’s temporary removal of the 40-min time limit for affected schools—which I interpret as a philanthropic discounting of an otherwise premium and paid product—demonstrates the alignment of Zoom’s organizational competencies regarding the deployment of their proprietary service with the perceived needs of impacted school recipients.

Pipeline philanthropy should likewise be considered a distinct sub-strand of strategic corporate philanthropy because many, and perhaps most such philanthropic actions work on two planes, rather than one. This type of philanthropic corporate activity expands the sales pipeline and customer loyalty by embedding the product directly in a potential customer base and reaps the ancillary benefits of potential customers who observe such action and identify the participating corporation as aligned to their values of corporate responsibility. Where broader strategic corporate philanthropy is primarily invested in procuring customers outside of their philanthropic efforts—the users or purchasers of the corporations’ products and services who are compelled by the observed philanthropic commitments of the corporation in question—corporations that conduct pipeline philanthropy are capturing those directly implicated within the philanthropic action as current and future customers. Put differently, the recipients of pipeline philanthropy are themselves the customer base targeted for expansion.

Assessment of Democratic Implications

The difference between the potential financial gains of the corporate pipeline philanthropist and the broader organizational changes sought by the venture philanthropist surface one meaningful distinction between the two sets of philanthropic actors. Increasingly, scholars have critiqued large, private philanthropic foundations as plutocratic threats to democracy, examining the policy and field-shaping influence certain private organizational actors wield, particularly over public institutions (e.g., Reich, 2013; Reich et al., 2016; Saunders-Hastings, 2022a; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Those concerned with the expanding influence of private foundations have identified the absence of internal democratic decision-making structures, the lack of transparency in foundation decision-making, the continued concentration of wealth by grant-making institutions, and the centering of individual or plutocratic voices in policy making (Pevnick, 2016; Saunders-Hastings, 2018). Many of these outlined critiques are germane to the behavior of philanthropic corporations, with the necessary addition of potential, direct financial gain as a longer-term consequence of philanthropic action. In evaluating the benefits and risks of pursuing or accepting certain philanthropic relationships with corporations, several factors must be considered and weighed to understand the short- and long-term implications of such a relationship. Given the potential impact of corporate philanthropic action in the form of pipeline philanthropy, it is crucial that decision-makers—district administrators, school administrators, and in some cases teachers and families—and those affected by such decisions—students, families, teachers, schools, and the broader public—participate in the critical assessment of corporate philanthropic relations, regardless of the formal degree of their influence over decision-making. Below I outline a few potential benefits and risks associated with corporate and school relationships characterized by pipeline philanthropy that should factor into such an evaluation process across a broad spectrum of actors.

Potential Benefits

I recognize three potential and non-exhaustive benefits of corporate pipeline philanthropy in the educational sector. Such relationships may: (1) provide supplemental resources to under-resourced communities and schools; (2) allow for the availability of innovative and/or experimental 21st century technology (or other products and services); or (3) meet the preferences and perceived needs of students, families, and teachers where the school or district does not. I discuss these below.

In many cases, critical or highly prized resources—ranging from stable internet to EdTech curricular content to individual laptops for each student—are unavailable or entirely inaccessible to families and schools due to financial and other resource constraints. The fragmented and decentralized nature of U.S. schooling results in a system that unevenly disburses decision-making, financial resources, and regulatory power to localities. Disparities in school financing—due to local taxation mechanisms, minimal state support, and other political contestations—result in catastrophic inequities for students (Ladd, 1999; Murray et al., 1998). Wide disparities in the resources available leave poorer districts with limited short-term recourse to address their paucity of funding without seeking external or extra-governmental solutions, absent more comprehensive school financing policy solutions. In statements and marketing materials, corporate philanthropic actors identify their role in contributing in-kind products and services as an effort to provide material products and services where the (financial) limitations of the educational or schooling-adjacent entity might otherwise prevent their acquisition. The corporate actor, through their philanthropic donation of in-kind products or services, may fill a resource gap by providing those materials otherwise outside the recipients’ reach. A second potential benefit of the direct donation of particular products or services is increased opportunities for access to innovative and experimental technology by the school community. This relates again to the paucity of resources in many educational environments, with budgets that prioritize necessary, rather than innovative or experimental items. The influx of free or discounted innovative technology may allow students and schools access to state-of-the-art products and services that are purchased by and available to better-resourced peer institutions. Finally, and relatedly, the direct donation of core products and services—particularly those by technology companies that manufacture or sell devices and products—might work to more nimbly meet certain perceived needs of the 21st century, those desired by students, parents, and teachers themselves, but left unfulfilled by bureaucratic structures and procedural decision-makers due to existing constraints or differing priorities.

Ultimately, these benefits point to an aspirational equalizing function played by corporations, in which their pipeline philanthropy works to supply or supplement the existing resources of certain recipients with donations of their own specific products and services that work to bring the recipients closer to the inventory or services maintained by those schools and families with greater financial means. For the corporation, the potential benefits around an increased customer base and expanded sales pipeline seem self-explanatory, but some may also recognize a broader societal benefit achieved when those corporations who prioritize responsibility and practice philanthropic action as a form of redistribution—though they may not explicitly identify it as such—may best their competitors as a result of their publicized behavior, and precipitate shifts toward greater “responsibility.”

Potential Risks

However, the initiation of a corporate pipeline philanthropy relationship poses a set of potential risks to the recipients of the donation and other risks that may stretch well beyond the confines of the recipients themselves. I outline these risks as (1) shifts in decision-making power away from structures of democratic accountability; (2) embedding particular products and corporations with limited oversight and evaluation; and (3) unrestricted influence over the purpose of education and educational priorities.

There has been substantial criticism raised by scholars regarding the inherent tensions between the structure and operations of philanthropic foundations and expectations of democratic accountability in public institutions (Pevnick, 2016; Reich, 2013, 2016; Saunders-Hastings, 2018, 2022a). Corporate philanthropy—and pipeline philanthropy in particular—presents an analogous set of concerns. Corporate grant makers, much like philanthropic foundations, are not obligated to operate according to democratic logic and processes. Decision-makers are not elected, governance structures are left strictly to the corporation and their shareholders or board members, and corporate decisions, whether about core products or philanthropic enterprises, are not subject to formal public comment. Rather, as indicated earlier, philanthropic actors are often incentivized and protected by the state through tax deductions, and by “laws and attitudes that privilege the wishes of the donors” (Saunders-Hastings, 2018, p. 150), often providing legal enforcement for the conditions set out in philanthropic agreements. These concerns echo critiques about the broader privatization of state functions, and the democratic legitimacy of offloading or contracting to private and particularly profit-seeking entities to provide public goods like education (Cordelli, 2020; Gurn, 2016; Mettler, 2011). By inviting or tacitly condoning philanthropic corporations, the state—public school governance, in this case—loses some degree of authority or power over the administration and design of public goods. While the corporation itself, as a profit-maximizing entity, is beholden to market accountability, its philanthropic activity is not. A corporation’s philanthropic activity might fall flat or come under scrutiny, yet such a philanthropic “failure” may not bear directly upon the corporation’s (financial) success in the marketplace. The product and corporation may still succeed and continue to profit whether the philanthropic action fails, or the donated products fall short of their providers’ promises.

The entrance of actors that are not accountable to the public through democratic means—such as a philanthropic corporation or foundation—into a public institution such as schools may compromise the integrity of the democratic system. Where certain actors are not subject to existing bureaucratic processes due to the formal or informal categorization of their contribution as a donation, they may enjoy undemocratic and outsized influence over operations and priorities. Here, an in-kind gift appears to be a type of Trojan Horse, one that may belie the complexity of its nature. In the case of pipeline philanthropy, a philanthropic corporation might bypass certain bureaucratic structures, such as transparent Requests for Proposal and other evaluation processes that govern the awarding of certain contracts, instead gaining entry to the recipient’s operational universe without public or rigorous evaluation due to the initial nature of their involvement. The administrative and financing inconsistencies that leave some districts with fewer resources than others provide powerful and enterprising economic actors with opportunities to exploit “wide gaps between the jurisdictions, powers, and attentions of American agencies” (Hacker et al., 2022, p. 17). While such an insertion may not be nefarious, bureaucratic weakness and inconsistency in already resource strained districts pairs with minimal regulations in place to prevent such public-private partnerships, allowing for ample and often state-sanctioned involvement by profit-seeking corporate actors into the provisioning of public education (Gurn, 2016). Once the corporation has penetrated the schooling environment and embedded their specific product or service into the schooling ecosystem—as illustrated by the case of Google Workspace for Education and Chromebooks—that action carries momentum, and further standardization that works toward product and service uniformity becomes increasingly appealing—extrication, less so. Likewise, the donated products and services, and their granting corporation, may not be subject to processes of routine evaluation once the donation has been received and embedded, with limited formal oversight due to the free or discounted nature of the donation. Once embedded, a product or service that was permitted entry with limited to no oversight and evaluation, may be particularly difficult to disentangle, achieving staying power less as a result of its high appraisal, and more as a consequence of desired simplification. When the “free trial” ends, or additional products and services do not arrive for free or at a discounted price, the recipient may find themselves saddled with a high price tag if they wish to ensure uniformity across their ecosystem.

Lastly, there is an implicit and transformational power retained by corporations through the embedding of certain products, particularly technology products, that shifts and enables certain other educational activities and priorities. Such donations might enable an increased emphasis on “blended,” “technology enabled,” or digital learning, which displaces more traditional or perhaps culturally relevant pedagogical practices, and further transitions learning spaces online. Likewise, donations might emphasize a certain content area—computer science, for instance—that comes to be offered, or even mandated, in place of existing curriculum—such as visual or performing arts—or other civic or democratic educational aims, such as those of active political participation through discourse and deliberation. Through this philanthropic action, issues of common concern—like the priorities, structure, and purpose of public education—may come to be disproportionately directed and influenced by private, wealthy actors (Saunders-Hastings, 2022a). In addition, it may be that by donating particular products, devices, or curriculum as in-kind gifts, implicit pressure is exerted on the recipient to utilize such things, for the recipient to do their level best to make use of the “gift” they have been given, particularly where there is a clear or conditional directive. Where donations are in-kind, rather than, say, fungible cash, Emma Saunders-Hastings (2022a) contends such giving “often expresses a lack of respect for beneficiaries’ (paradigmatically, poor peoples’) ability and entitlement to make their own choices about what would improve their lives” (p. 98), and is paternalistic insofar as it does not permit the recipient agency over determining their own priorities. As Saunders-Hastings points out, philanthropists—corporate or otherwise—frequently place legally enforceable restrictions and conditions on their donations, effecting paternalistic and unequal relations between the giver and the recipient, violating democratic ideals of relational egalitarianism. The isomorphic pressure exerted through pipeline philanthropy by the corporation drives toward an increasingly homogeneous field in which recipients and education more broadly comes to contain the same products, services, and priorities (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). In many ways, this explains the near ubiquity of Chromebooks and/or iPads in K-12 settings, the increasing availability of computer science curriculum, and the relationship between access to technology, the accumulation of 21st century skills, and career readiness objectives.

As such, the influence of corporate actors over the purpose of education may go underrecognized. Due to the perceived “good will” and best intentions of the corporation and the needs of the schooling community, the connection between certain philanthropic acts that donate or gift products, the transition in education that incorporates and transforms in response to these embedded donations, and the increased market share of the philanthropic corporation may remain under-analyzed. Certainly, the corporate activity theorized here as pipeline philanthropy might be perceived by the public as a type of legitimate and ethical behavior, fulfilling expectations that corporations act responsibly and according to certain moral duties. Likewise, there are many cases in which recipients are actively and often directly asking for specific donations—such as the Chromebooks, mentioned above—making use of platforms such as DonorsChoose to solicit the donation of these very items. In many ways, such a direct response is tied to one of the potential benefits outlined above, in which corporate donors respond to the desires and requests of the educational community, or the public at large. However, there is an alternative reading of this scenario that considers the ways these corporations produce this desire or need. Where high-paying jobs require certain technical training and familiarity with particular products, and increased public and political attention focuses on providing students with opportunities to attain said jobs—to escape poverty, to achieve their goals, to save the world—the articulated solution appears to further embed corporate tools into the schooling environment. And here, the (philanthropic) corporation arrives to complete this loop: to freely—for a short time, anyway—embed their products and services in support of these (newly) articulated and increasingly “necessary” 21st century goals. Or in the case of COVID-19, to continuously make possible, or perhaps permanent, a version of (online) learning that secures its own ubiquity. By placing certain products and services in the literal and proverbial hands of schooling communities corporations implicitly and often explicitly hold increasing power and influence over where and what students access and learn, operating nearly always outside of democratic structures and with less rigorous assessment than they deserve as a highly influential actor.

Conclusion

The identification and theorization of pipeline philanthropy as a distinct philanthropic form invites further interrogation. In this paper I have demonstrated that pipeline philanthropy is a corporate philanthropic model that appears as both largely unaccountable to the democratic public and acts as a powerful mechanism of corporate influence over the institutional priorities and shape of public education. The onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020 and the swift and highly public responses by corporations to offer free or (temporarily) discounted versions of their core products or services to schools and individuals impacted by the abrupt shift to virtual learning offered a proliferation of observable instances. Because pipeline philanthropy is not contained to the contemporary moment, to the United States, or to technology companies, existing in contexts beyond education, it serves as a portable concept to understand philanthropic corporate action in the COVID-19 era and beyond. This conceptualization invites future empirical work to examine instances in non-U.S. or transnational global contexts, particularly where philanthropic relationships contain multinational technology corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and state actors. While I have offered a theoretical rendering and assessment of the potential benefits and risks a relationship of pipeline philanthropy may precipitate, there are opportunities to conduct further empirical research into the prevalence, longevity, network connectedness, and success of this philanthropic form. As I have demonstrated, this relationship is readily observed between technology companies and public educational institutions where corporations initiate or sustain relationships with educational actors—students, parents, teachers, districts—through the philanthropic donation or discounting of core products and services, allowing the companies to embed themselves directly into educational spaces. While such philanthropic relationships may work to attend to articulated and perceived needs in school communities, the increased entanglement and influence of corporate actors into the realm of public education is cause for wariness and critique, particularly where corporations and their decision-making entities escape public oversight and structure the priorities and purposes of education. As the power and influence of corporate actors across the political landscape appears to grow unfettered, a keen interrogation of philanthropic corporate behavior in education, where it otherwise may be met with public support and invitation, may allow for a bolstering of regulation over the involvement of corporations in public institutions, such as education, and more rigorous mechanisms for evaluating the services provided by private actors in public spaces.