Quality Certifications for Nonprofits, Charitable Giving, and Donor's Trust : Experimental Evidence

In an experiment, we test the impact of quality certificates on donations to a charity. When presented with a quality certificate, participants chose higher donations by approximately 10%. This effect is significant for donations out of prize money and actual own money donations, and not significant but positive for own money intended donations. Moreover, this effect persists over time. We also find a negative but not significant effect of information about certificate fees. We find that the certificate increases trust in the nonprofit organization. There is some evidence pointing to the causal role of trust for donation probability