Philanthropy in a Small Island State
By Pimpernel Maria Sieders Preston
The European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP) PhD Workshop at the University of Heidelberg served as a perfect introduction to my first international academic conference last year and inspired my participation in the ENROP PhD Circle this year. ERNOP members have profoundly shaped my research including my previous supervisor, Professor Tobias Jung, who serves as President of ERNOP. ERNOP as a network was new to me but philanthropy as a topic had long permeated my career in inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations across continents, countries and small island states.
Philanthropy had nevertheless never been academically researched in the small island state of Malta so my thesis began by mapping its landscape and progressively focusing on the most prominent foundation led by the President of the Republic, the Malta Community Chest Fund Foundation (MCCFF). My thesis specifically asks how MCCFF as the “national piggy bank for good causes” (Duca, 2017, p. 63) endeavoured to fulfil the roles outlined in its mission and the responsibilities outlined in its objectives. My case study methodology incorporates methods of mapping reviews, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with presidents, commissioners and chairpersons that were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Philanthropy in a Small Island State
Preliminary findings show Malta ranks as the most philanthropic country in the European Union while also its smallest island state and the tenth most philanthropic country in the world while also its tenth smallest in size, according to the latest World Giving Index (Briffa & Agius, 2021; Charities Aid Foundation, 2024). Malta’s philanthropy is also growing as voluntary sector income doubled in a decade from €120 million in 2013 to €214 million in 2023 (National Statistics Office, personal communication, 27 September 2024).
Philanthropy is worth studying in small island states like Malta because they can serve as local microcosms for global macrotrends yet allow research to be conducted at a manageable scale in readymade social laboratories (McMahon & Baldacchino, 2023, p. 93; Veenendaal & Corbett, 2015). Philanthropy has nevertheless only been studied as part of other social phenomena such as charity (Calleja-Ragonesi et al., 2014), confraternity (Ciappara, 2020), almsgiving (Refalo, 2008) or the voluntary sector (Azzopardi et al., 2022; Gatt, 2023) on the island.
Philanthropy in a Small Island Institution
Preliminary findings show that MCCFF epitomises national trends as its income increased almost six-fold in a decade from €3 million in 2012 to €17 million in 2022 alongside its state subsidies increasing twelve-fold from €0 to €12 million in that time (Malta Community Chest Fund Foundation, 2012, 2022). MCCFF’s expenditure increased ten-fold from €2 million in 2012 to €21 million in 2022 as its medical spending increased almost twenty-fold from €1 million in 2012 to over €19.5 million in 2022 (Malta Community Chest Fund Foundation, 2009, 2012, 2022).
Philanthropy is worth studying in foundations like MCCFF because they highlight tension points between the state or statespeople and civil society as complimentary, independent or challenging forces (Adloff, 2016, p. 63; Anheier et al., 2018, p. 4). MCCFF indeed fills state gaps in healthcare services with 97 percent of its grantmaking covering healthcare costs in 2020 and 93 percent in 2022 (Malta Community Chest Fund Foundation, 2020, 2022). MCCFF has nevertheless only been researched in a University of Malta postgraduate thesis from thirty years ago which compared nonprofit mission communication between MCCFF and Id-Dar tal-Providenza (Zammit, 1997).
Philanthropy in a Small Island Statism
State Philanthropy Theory is worth applying to a small island state for the first time to analyse how or why states or statespeople may engage in philanthrostatism as part of small island statism. Preliminary findings show Malta’s state was the largest donor to the voluntary sector making up 63 percent of its income from 2013 to 2023 (National Statistics Office, personal communication, 27 September 2024) and state funding more than doubled from €61 million in 2013 to €134 million in 2023 (National Statistics Office, personal communication, 27 September 2024). Preliminary findings also show Malta’s state funding is most heavily concentrated in MCCFF who received €119 million between 2017 and 2024 according the Finance Minister Clyde Caruana in 2025 (Balzan, 2025).
Organisational Hypocrisy Theory is worth applying to a small island state institution for the first time to analyse how or why MCCFF may engage in contradictory discourses, decisions and actions to meet conflicting demands. Preliminary findings show MCCFF is registered as a public benefit foundation but not as a voluntary organisation as legally mandated and it survives as a statutory foundation but presents as a community foundation – highlighting key tension points that this thesis is currently theorising to better understand.
“Foundations face two fundamental tensions: the tension between promise and outcomes, leading to unfulfilled potentials due to the benign fallibility syndrome; and the tension between complementing government on the one hand, and, on the other, being independent of it, even challenging the status quo”
(Anheier et al., 2018, p. 4)
Pimpernel Maria Sieders Preston is a lecturer in the Faculty for Social Wellbeing at the University of Malta and can be contacted at . She is a DPhil Student supervised by Professor Maria Pisani at the University of Malta and previously by Professor Tobias Jung at the University of St Andrews. She obtained her MPhil from the University of Cambridge and BSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
