dr. Arjen de Wit, MSc

Arjen de Wit is an Assistant Professor at the department of Sociology at VU Amsterdam, where he mainly studies social productivity, nonprofit revenues, volunteering, and philanthropy. 

A ‘socially productive’ activity can be defined as any contribution of time – either paid or unpaid – that contributes to a social or public good. In his research on social productivity, Arjen studies, amongst others, the effects of volunteering for the well-being of the volunteer, and the value of unpaid activities for people on social assistance benefits. Of particular interest are new forms of social productivity, including online activities and informal helping. This research aims to contribute to public discussions about the value of paid and unpaid work in a post-capitalist society. 

Arjen is also involved in a research project on the effects of unrestricted income on the work of charities. While most income from philanthropic funders and governments are earmarked, there is increasing interest among funders to give more flexible funding. By studying the effects of unrestricted funding, this research contributes to actionable knowledge for charities and philanthropic funders on the benefits and downsides of unrestricted funding in different contexts. 

Arjen teaches Sociology courses at both the Bachelor and the Master level. While he is trained as a quantitative researcher and has ample experience with analysing longitudinal survey data, Arjen increasingly applies interpretative and computational methods.  

Arjen did his PhD at the Center for Philanthropic Studies on the effects of government subsidies on charitable giving to nonprofit organizations, which resulted in the dissertation "Philanthropy in the welfare state: Why charitable donations do not simply substitute government support" (January 2018). A summary of the dissertation (in Dutch) is available here.

Some of his research in 1 minute:

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