Charity brand personality: can smaller charitable organizations leverage their brand's personality to influence giving

The importance of establishing a strong brand identity has been the focus for consumer brand managers for decades. Organizations develop and communicate a distinctive brand personality as a means of attracting consumers and cultivating long‐term relationships. While the concept of branding has gained recent attention as an important strategy for nonprofit practitioners, little empirical data exist on the role a charity's brand personality might play in attracting donors. A few recent studies of large national charitable organizations provide support that charities exhibit distinctive personalities. This study explores whether smaller, local scope charitable organizations, without the benefit of national brand recognition, also exhibit distinctive brand personalities and whether such brand personalities influence donors. Results from five charitable organizations, from four distinct categories of cause, find that brand personality traits that are both differentiating and relevant to donors influence charitable giving. The findings provide nonprofit practitioners with valuable insights for leveraging their brand's personality to turn donor awareness into commitment and establish a stronger market position. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceived value of charitable involvement: The millennial donor perspective

The importance of nonprofit relationship marketing continues to increase as organizations compete to attract and retain a younger loyal donor base. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of six determinants of charitable giving on millennial donor's perceived value received from their involvement with the charitable organization. A conceptual model and accompanying research hypotheses are tested on a sample of millennials from the U.S_(n = 227). Structural equation modeling is used to test the relationships in the model. Results suggest that five factors have a positive effect on donor's perceived value. Social recognition is found to be the most important factor, followed by attitude towards and trust in the charitable organization and attitude towards helping others. To a lesser degree, tax benefits and mitigation of guilt are also found to have an impact on donor's perceived value from charitable involvement. Although this study is limited to the examination of millennials, practical and social implications are noted for all donors. Organizations must recognize that donors are influenced by a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic factors when evaluating their value from charitable involvement. Most of all, donors seek a degree of social recognition from giving, so organizations are encouraged to provide ways for millennial donors to display or share their charitable involvement.     

Relational exchange in nonprofits: The role of identity saliency and relationship satisfaction

In practice and research pertaining to charitable giving, the emphasis has been on identifying the characteristics and motivations of donors, but few have asked why donors continue to support a particular nonprofit. This study examines the relationship between renewing donors and nonprofits and their impact on charitable giving levels using identity salience and relationship satisfaction as key mediators of nonprofit relational exchange. In a survey of 719 repeat donors in the United States, to a broad range of nonprofit organizations, identity saliency and relationship satisfaction are introduced as mediating constructs, and the results confirm that both constructs partially guide donor motivations and charitable giving. Theoretically, this suggests that the more a donor identifies with a nonprofit organization and the more satisfied the donor is in the relationship with the organization, the higher their intention to donate. This finding supports previous research in segmentation strategies and service‐dominant logic in the nonprofit sector. Managerial implications of this research include indication of a paradigmatic shift from relational exchange to transformational exchange (or value cocreation) in nonprofit organizations' approach to donor cultivation.     

A novel approach to legacy donations with long-term benefits supported by numerical illustrations

Philanthropic donors face challenges in matching the causes to which they donate, the time horizon—and thus impact—of their donations, and the charitable vehicles they choose for making contributions. Wealthier donors may elect to create their own foundations and customize their charitable support. Less wealthy donors have limited choices: they may contribute to a nonprofit's current operations or to existing nonprofit endowments. We present a novel approach for making charitable donations, blending aspects of each of these strategies. Our approach has potential long-term financial benefits, allows donors to control their charitable donations in a convenient and easy-to-implement manner, can be established through an existing nonprofit organization, expands opportunities for more donors because it requires a smaller corpus contribution with lower management costs than creating a foundation, provides tax savings in the United States and other countries (e.g., the UK, Canada, and Australia) comparable to other planned giving vehicles, and may be implemented during one's lifetime using donor advised funds or as part of a legacy plan through the donor's estate documents, which is when the long-term benefits accrue.     

Determinants of donation amount in nonprofit membership associations

Nonprofit organizations depend heavily on charitable giving. Using survey data of 2,517 nonprofit professional association members, this study examines the factors influencing the donation amounts given to those organizations. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis suggest that gender, length of membership, and individuals' intrinsic motivation are predictors of their decisions about how much to donate. However, level of satisfaction and extrinsic motivation do not predict members' extent of generosity. This study offers empirical evidence of the positive effects of nonprofit organizations' building mutual relationships with their members regarding donation amounts. The findings contribute to further understanding of the factors that drive donation amount.     

The state-of-the-art and future research directions in bequest fundraising by nonprofit organizations: A systematic literature review

The topic of fundraising is garnering increased attention from nonprofit practitioners due to the worldwide growth of the nonprofit sector and the subsequent competition for private funds. Despite this surge, academic literature on fundraising and bequest fundraising, in particular, has remained mainly limited to narrow aspects of the discipline. Based on a systematic review of literature published over the past 25 years, we synthesize various research perspectives into a comprehensive framework of studies linking the different issues highlighted by the authors. The purpose of this article is to consolidate the state of academic research on bequest fundraising by not-for-profit organizations. The literature review underscores how research efforts have not paid much attention to bequest fundraising from the NPO's perspective, although as it has become an increasingly important source of income for charitable organizations. The majority of studies focus on the Donor's perspective, striving to understand what drives the desire to leave a charitable bequest. The findings of the SLR show a gap in the knowledge of NPOs' internal mechanisms concerning the particular topic of charitable bequests; from these insights, the future research directions are proposed.     

Holier than thou: Investigating the relationship between religiosity and charitable giving

One's religiosity (or lack thereof) is the touchstone from which people view and interact with the world. The presumed positive impact of religiosity on charitable giving, however, may be an oversimplification. The present study takes a more nuanced approach to the subject and investigates the impact of 2 potential mediators (attitudes toward helping others, AHO, and attitudes toward charitable organizations) and 1 moderator (materialism) on the religiosity–charitable giving relationship. Study results suggest that religiosity has a positive effect on attitudes toward charitable organizations, AHO, and donating to charity. Religiosity was also found to have an indirect impact on charitable giving via AHO. Materialism interacted with AHO, such that the indirect effect of religiosity on charitable giving through AHO is attenuated as materialism increases. Implications of the present research for better understanding charitable giving are discussed.     

‘The giving layer of the internet’: A critical history of GoFundMe's reputation management,platform governance,and communication strategies in capturing peer-to-peer and charitable giving markets

GoFundMe, founded in 2010, has already profoundly impacted giving practices, introducing many laypersons to the empowering potentials and user-friendly affordances of peer-to-peer fundraising. Overall, GoFundMe's extraordinary success as a for-profit company in traditionally nonprofit charitable giving markets can be attributed to: normalizing their platform as the go-to destination for people seeking help; tasking the beneficiaries themselves with crafting appeals for support; restricting forms of support to money; deferring responsibility to donors to assess the legitimacy of appeals; and dominating the market by acquiring competitors and pursuing growth wherever possible. No charity could plausibly adopt such an operating model and GoFundMe's lean, hands-off, self-policing approach has attracted sharp criticism over the years. Nonetheless, the company has not humbly reined in their ambition but expanded it even further. This paper outlines three broad phases through which GoFundMe has defended their capture of “the giving layer of the internet.” Initially, GoFundMe espoused ideals of utopian disruption and soteriological solutionism, selling their platform as a “take-action button” and user-friendly means of empowering everyday citizens to improve the lives of others. Later, after attracting more divisive causes and criticisms of its revenue model, GoFundMe adopted forms of reputational repair and attempted neutrality, insisting that their for-profit platform could be accommodative to all worldviews and persons willing to embrace “positive precarization.” More recently, as “neutral” stances became untenable and fundraising success rates increasingly grim, GoFundMe pivoted toward strategies of state critique and civic capture. Specifically, GoFundMe have: more pointedly highlighted state failures; actively aligned themselves with social movements; shifted away from relying solely on peer-to-peer fundraising; and instead partnered more with established nonprofits. However, as GoFundMe's expansion inevitably means becoming entangled in sensitive political matters, the company's ambition to become the key intermediary in all charitable giving is facing acute challenges.     

我国企业慈善捐赠的障碍及政策选择

我国慈善事业的发展还处在初级阶段,企业慈善捐赠的积极性不是很高,企业慈善捐赠的水平仍然很低。企业慈善捐赠面临诸多障碍:索捐、迫捐、诈捐现象时有发生;政府在慈善捐赠中的角色定位不清;企业在享受税收优惠等激励方面限制太多;民间慈善组织的发展受到束缚。因此,转变慈善捐赠观念,完善有关慈善捐赠的法律法规,是我国慈善事业发展的当务之急。     

The estimates of philanthropic behavior and attitude in South Korea: Methodological consideration

Estimates on philanthropic giving are one of the major topics within nonprofit studies globally. South Korea has engaged in measuring philanthropic behaviors and attitudes since the early 2000s, however, little is known about the validity of the measures that are used to collect giving and volunteering data. This study aims to investigate the methodological matters of the empirical philanthropy datasets in South Korea. A total of nine datasets were identified that measure philanthropic behaviors and attitudes in South Korea. Among the nine datasets, six were used to analyze the methodological matters for the purposes of this study. This article discusses the challenges associated with research methods including definitional challenges, instrument design issues, and other research methodological issues on the identified philanthropic giving datasets in South Korea. Results of this study suggest insights for improving measures of charitable giving and volunteering in South Korea. The findings are significant because differences in approaches to measuring donation behavior produce substantial differences in reported estimates.     

Targeting wealthy donors: the dichotomous relationship of housing wealth with current and bequest giving

Identifying the charitable potential of current and prospective donors is a key component of successful fund‐raising, particularly in the areas of major gifts and planned giving. Previous research has provided support for the positive impact of two core financial factors, total wealth, and homeownership. Using data from the USA and Australia, this paper examines how the interaction of these two variables can generate negative effects on charitable giving. In particular, as the share of total wealth held in homeownership rises, both the likelihood and level of charitable giving falls. This relationship is consistent across current giving, planned bequest giving, and actual bequest giving and in both cross‐sectional and longitudinal models. These findings suggest that prospect research models incorporating asset type, as well as total wealth, may better predict likely donor potential. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Charity Ratings

How do charitable donors respond to the third‐party ratings that signal the quality of charities? I investigate this question using a novel data set from Charity Navigator, which provides quality ratings for 5,400 charities. Because Charity Navigator prominently displays a charity's star rating which is assigned based on its overall rating, one can identify the causal impact of a one star increase in ratings on charitable contributions with a regression discontinuity framework that exploits the threshold values of the overall ratings. I find that in general, the third‐party ratings have a minor and often insignificant impact on charitable contributions received by charities. However, for relatively small charities, a higher rating leads to an increase in charitable contributions received. In particular, for these charities, I find that a one star increase in ratings is associated with a 19.5% increase in the amount of charitable contributions received. This result is robust under alternative model specifications and highlights the role of the third‐party ratings in not‐for‐profit markets.     

Feeling poor,acting stingy: the effect of money perceptions on charitable giving

In research on philanthropy, much attention has been given to the impact of the actual economic costs of giving. This paper argues that the perceived psychological costs of giving should also be taken into consideration when seeking to understand donations to charitable organizations. It is already known that people differ in their attitudes towards money, and that money attitudes are mostly independent from income, but these findings have been largely overlooked in the study of philanthropy and altruism. This paper seeks to rectify that omission by investigating the relationship between charitable giving and money perceptions. The analyses show that, regardless of the actual financial resources held by a donor, the size of their donations is negatively affected by feelings of retention (a careful approach to money) and inadequacy (people who worry about their financial situation). We conclude that an understanding of money perceptions is an additional important factor in the understanding of charitable behaviour. Fundraising professionals should not only select potential donors based on their absolute financial capacities but also take the potential donor's own financial perceptions into account when asking for donations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The "Sect Effect" in Charitable Giving: Distinctive Realities of Exclusively Religious Charitable Givers

A bstract .   An examination of the charitable giving behavior of 16,442 households reveals intriguing patterns consistent with the club-theoretic approach to religious sect affiliation. The club-theoretic model suggests that individuals with lower socioeconomic standing will rationally be more likely to align themselves with exclusivistic sects. Because sect affiliation is also associated with more obligatory religious contributions, this approach generates novel predictions not anticipated by standard economic models of charitable behavior. Traditional analysis of charitable giving can mask the "sect effect" phenomenon, as low-income giving is dwarfed by the giving of the wealthy. However, the application of a two-stage econometric model—separating the participation decision from the subsequent decision regarding the level of gifting—provides unique insights. Basic socioeconomic factors have significant and opposite associations with different categories of giving, calling into question the treatment of charitable giving as a homogenous activity and supporting the understanding of sect affiliation, and potentially religious extremism, as rational choice phenomena.     

Segmenting the Belgian charitable sector: The impact of environmental factors on households' generosity

Research on charitable giving has known a renewed interest over the last years. Despite a recent evolution, the literature remains predominantly Anglo‐Saxon, and studies are consequently conducted in societies marked by a strong charitable giving culture. In that respect, donors are generally considered as isolated individuals, and the impact of social and environmental factors such as public policies, institutional specificities, and punctual events is often underestimated. Moreover, research on generosity often suffers from the absence of reliable data, free of desirability bias. Based on fiscal data of tax returns and gift tax returns provided by the official Belgian statistics bureau, this research investigates individual donating behaviors while considering the influence of environmental determinants on generosity. More specifically, we empirically assess the generosity of Belgian households over a period of 8 years marked by natural disasters, massive calls for public generosity, and changes in tax policies. Among other things, we qualify the results of previous research on the role of age and open the debate on the role of household composition as a variable for segmenting donors. Finally, we propose leads for future research in order to stimulate further academic effort on the topic.     

Understanding public awareness of nonprofit organizations: exploring the awareness–confidence relationship

• Public confidence has often been viewed as a critical indicator of legitimacy within the nonprofit sector. Indeed, confidence is believed to be among one of the sector's most important commodities. Surveys, however, have shown that the public does not always have much confidence in the performance of nonprofit organizations. Although this lack of confidence is certainly concerning, few studies have assessed whether the public actually has any awareness of what nonprofit organizations are, and no studies have examined the personal characteristics associated with more (or less) nonprofit awareness. Thus, by using individual‐level data from a survey of public attitudes toward nonprofits in San Diego County (n = 1002), the purpose of this study was to explore how individual characteristics relate to nonprofit awareness and to examine the extent to which awareness of the sector influences confidence in the performance of nonprofit organizations. The findings from the study indicate that nonprofit awareness varies by several individual‐level characteristics—with many of those likely to be the most dependent on nonprofit services being the least aware of the sector. The findings also indicate that awareness of the sector is the most significant predictor of confidence in the performance of nonprofits.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Money,markets, meltdown: the 21st‐century crisis of labour

Analyses of the global crisis that erupted in 2007 in bank failures, liquidity shortages and business bankruptcies have obscured the connections between the real and monetary economies. Money market fetishism dominates. In the past, theories of economic crisis assigned a key causal role to labour's growing strength. In Britain, the focus of debate was trades unions' allegedly unregulated power at workplace level, but labour's presence and influence in state, business and workplace institutions has since receded. This article attempts to re‐insert labour into the contemporary analysis of the crisis and highlights the shifting relations between states, capital and labour in the age of austerity.     

Exploring the role of charitable ethnocentrism and donation motives in international giving: Empirical evidence from Germany

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the drivers of international giving intention by examining the joint effect of ethnocentrism and donation motives. More specifically, this study analyzes the direct effect of charitable ethnocentrism on the intention to give to international causes. Additionally, the study investigates the moderating effect of charitable ethnocentrism on the relationships between donation motives and the intention to donate to international causes. This study's findings indicate that ethnocentric donors are less willing to donate to international causes. Moreover, the study results show that the effects of egoistic and tax-saving donation motives vary across different levels of charitable ethnocentrism: charitable ethnocentrism enhances the effect of the egoism motive on international donation intention, whereas the effect of the tax-saving motive on international giving intention is mitigated. Based on the empirical findings, this study discusses implications for theory and practice along with study limitations and avenues for future research.     

Donor recognition: A double-edged sword in charitable giving

Previous studies discover confounding results on how donor recognition affects individual charitable giving. To answer the questions of how different donor recognition schemes affect individual giving and what type is more effective as a marketing strategy to meet different fundraising goals, we conducted a field experiment in China with three donor recognition types: voluntary, involuntary, and mandatory donor recognition. We used social media to recognize donors and verified the field experiment results with naturally occurring data. We observed similar behavioral patterns in both samples. The results of this study explain the mixed results from previous studies, suggesting that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for recognizing donors. Decision makers of nonprofit organizations need to select the appropriate type of donor recognition based on their fundraising goals.     

Exploring individual predictors of variation in public awareness of expressive and instrumental nonprofit brands

Expressive and instrumental functions provide a way to classify activities that take place in the nonprofit sector. These functions also provide a way to better understand individual's philanthropic involvement with certain types of nonprofit organizations. Despite the usefulness of these classifications, only a few studies have explored demographic, social, and ideological differences in individuals' philanthropic involvement along expressive and instrumental dimensions; and, no studies have explored differences in public awareness of nonprofits along these dimensions. Such awareness, though, could likely be an important precursor to an individual's philanthropic involvement. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore whether variables known to be associated with variation in philanthropic involvement are also associated with variation in awareness of, what we categorize as, expressive and instrumental nonprofit brands. Using data from a survey of public awareness of, and attitudes toward, nonprofit organizations in San Diego County (n = 1002), our findings show that individuals are more aware of instrumental nonprofit brands than they are of expressive nonprofit brands. However, there are important individual differences to consider. We discuss the theoretical relevance of our findings and offer several practical recommendations for nonprofit administrators.