The empirical literature on the determinants of charities donation income, distinguishing the charitable cause, is small. We extend the literature in several ways. First, we focus on overseas development charities allowing us to give more consideration to the particular characteristics of this...

The empirical literature on the determinants of charities' donation income, distinguishing the charitable cause, is small. We extend it by paying particular attention to development charities, capturing both charity and donor characteristics in a single framework. Using a newly constructed panel...

Charitable giving is an important source of funding for overseas development and emergency relief. Donations in the UK are about a quarter of the size of government development aid. There has been strong growth over time, reflecting the activities of development charities and the public response...

The empirical literature on the determinants of charities donation income, distinguishing the charitable cause, is small. We extend the literature in several ways. First, we focus on overseas development charities allowing us to give more consideration to the particular characteristics of this...

In a large natural field experiment, we explore the effect of providing donors with the opportunity to choose the target country for their donations. We find that only a small fraction of donors use the option, which might reflect a reluctance to consider tradeoffs when those concern important,...

We study how other-regarding behavior extends to environments with uncertain income and conditional commitments. Should fundraisers ask a banker to donate "if he earns a bonus" or wait and ask after the bonus is known? Standard EU theory predicts these are equivalent; loss-aversion and signaling...

Charitable donations are often made through intermediaries who can fund themselves from these same donations. Donors who purchase charitable output through an intermediary incur a principal-agent problem with unobservable prices. We compare charitable giving in an experiment with and without...

We present evidence from a natural field experiment and structural model designed to shed light on the efficacy of alternative fundraising schemes. In conjunction with the Bavarian State Opera, we mailed 25,000 opera attendees a letter describing a charitable fundraising project organized by the...

Social comparison nudges that employ descriptive norms were found to increase charitable giving. This paper finds that individuals who receive a descriptive norm donate significantly more when they have to guess the descriptive norm beforehand. We argue that guessing draws attention to the norm...

Charity rating agencies often focus on overhead cost ratios in evaluating charities, and donors appear to be sensitive to these measures when deciding where to donate. Yet, there appears to be a tenuous connection between this widely-used metric and a charity’s effectiveness. There is evidence...