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Director, Center on Wealth and Philanthropy Professor, Department of Sociology Boston College 516 McGuinn Hall Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 (617) 552-4070 Fax (617) 552-3903 email: paul.schervish@bc.edu |
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Paul G. Schervish is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy (CWP) at Boston College. Schervish was appointed a Fulbright Scholar for the 2000-2001 academic year at University College Cork in the area of research on philanthropy. For the 1999-2000 academic year he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. He received a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of Detroit, a Masters in sociology from Northwestern University, a Masters of Divinity Degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Schervish directed the "Study on Wealth and Philanthropy," an examination of the strategies of living and giving among 130 millionaires, and the study, "The Contradictions of Christmas: Troubles and Traditions in Culture, Home, and Heart." Along with John J. Havens, Associate Director of CWP, he is currently directing "Dilemmas and Decisions Surrounding the Accumulation and Distribution of Financial Resources" funded by the T. B. Murphy Foundation Charitable Trust, and "The Emerging Material and Spiritual Determinants of Charitable Giving by Wealth Holders," funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Schervish and Havens, in conjunction with Bankers Trust Private Banking completed the Deutsche Bank Private Banking "Wealth with Responsibility Study/2000," a study of 112 wealth holders with net worth in excess of $5 million regarding their charitable giving and volunteering, attitudes about social issues, socially responsible investing, trust and estate planning, and the transfer of values to heirs. Along with John Havens he released the report, "Millionaires and the Millennium: New Estimates of the Forthcoming Wealth Transfer and the Prospects for a Golden Age of Philanthropy," which estimates the wealth transfer over the next half century to be between $41 trillion and $136 trillion. With Mary A. O’Herlihy, CWP Research Associate and Director of Publications, and John Havens, Schervish recently completed "The 2001 High-Tech Donors Study," which interviewed high-tech wealth holders about their philanthropic attitudes and practices. He was recently named to the NonProfit Times’ sixth annual "Power and Influence Top 50," a list which acknowledges movers and shakers in the non-profit world. He joins such notable figures as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, AOL Time Warner Foundation Executive Director David Eisner, and Millard Fuller, Founder and President of Habitat for Humanity International. This marks Schervish’s third consecutive appearance on the list. The Nonprofit Times notes that: "Numbers are just figures until Paul Schervish puts them in context. His passion for donor behavioral research, with John Havens, has brought true insight into how people give." Schervish has published in the areas of philanthropy, the sociology of money, the sociology of wealth, labor markets, unemployment, biographical narrative, and the sociology of religion. He is completing work on "The Modern Medici: Strategies of Philanthropy among the Wealthy" (Jossey-Bass). Schervish is the editor of and contributor to "Wealth in Western Thought: The Case for and against Riches" (Praeger, 1994). He is principal editor of "Care and Community in Modern Society" (Jossey-Bass, 1995) and the principal author of "Taking Giving Seriously" (Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, 1993) and of "Gospels of Wealth: How the Rich Portray their Lives" (Praeger, 1994). Schervish also serves regularly as a speaker and consultant on how to surface and analyze the moral biographies of wealth holders, on the motivations for charitable giving, on the demographic patterns of wealth and charitable giving, and on the spirituality of financial life. |
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