Today is world Kindness day - view our academic research on altruism and kindness!

World Kindness Day is an international observance on 13 November. It was introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement a coalition of nations kindness, civil society/  NGOS.

 for references to recent academic research on altruism see

Stanford University Center for Alturism and Compassion research.

this has a compassion database.which has reference and links to recent articles. Some are in full text.

Also related to kindness is charity. Here are some academic resources related to reasons, nature and extent of charitable giving.

The Catalog of Nonprofit Literature 2.0  maintained by the US based foundation center contains more than 33,000 records, the majority of which include descriptive abstracts.It includes books, articles and reports added to their collections.

PRO: Philanthropy Resources Online from the IUPUI University Library. PRO is a digital library of primary and secondary sources that supports teaching and learning about philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.  it provides free access to over 500 journals and books (focussing on historic materials) relating to the activities of charitable organisations in the USA.

Who gives and why?

The Charities Aid Foundation conducts recent research into charitable giving.This includes the World Giving Index which traces global trends and UK Giving which traces donor motivations and giving trends. Its charities hub has monthly news letters and reports which you can sign up to.

TSRC - University of Birmingham researches third sector organisations and volunterring. It publishes reports on participation and the role of charities. Explore these recent working papers.

The Institute for Volunteering research publishes some free papers online

Which  charities are effective?

The Charities Register is  maintained by the Charities commission. It gives names, addresses, purposes and details of the financesof UK based charities. It is also possible to browse charities by income sources, expenditure

Giving what we can is a UK based organisation/ charity which examines what it believes to be the most effective. Consult the site for further details.

Charity Watch is a USA based charity watchdog which conducts regular asessments. Read news and reports on its website.It has charity ratings on its website

Charity Navigator  has ranking s and ratings of USA charities. Charity Navigator's rating system examines two broad areas of a charity's performance; their Financial Health and their Accountability & Transparency.