When the government gives a grant to a private charitable organization, do the donors to that organization give less? If they do, is it because the grants crowd out donors who feel they gave through taxes (classic crowd out), or is it because the grant crowds out the fund-raising of the...

From experience, fund-raisers learn to become more efficient solicitors. This paper incorporates fund-raising technology into the theory of charitable giving. A full characterization of the solicitation strategy that maximizes donations net of fund-raising costs is provided. The strategy...

We present a theory of charitable fund-raising in which it is costly to solicit donors. We fully characterize the optimal solicitation strategy that maximizes donations net of fundraising costs. The optimal strategy dictates that the fund-raiser target only those individuals whose equilibrium...

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...

Commercial firms are increasingly tying the sales of their products with donations to a charitable cause. Apart from a charitable motive, offering these charity-linked bundles could be a strategic instrument for firms to increase profits. We report the results of an experiment that investigates...

Matching schemes, where a party matches the contribution of others, reduce the effective price of a good and aim to foster its demand. We review the empirical literature on the effectiveness of these schemes in the context of public goods, especially in the field of charitable giving. As...

We assess the impact of different crowdfunding designs on the success of crowdfunded public goods using a lab-in-the-field experiment. Our design treatments aim to increase the efficiency of crowdfunding campaigns by raising aggregate contributions and decreasing possible coordination problems...

Matching schemes, where a party matches the contribution of others, reduce the effective price of a good and aim to foster its demand. We review the empirical literature on the effectiveness of these schemes in the context of public goods, especially in the field of charitable giving. As...

Ineffective fundraising lowers the resources charities can use for goods provision. We combine a field experiment and a causal machine-learning approach to increase a charity’s fundraising effectiveness. The approach optimally targets fundraising to individuals whose expected donations exceed...

Ineffective fundraising lowers the resources charities can use for goods provision. We combine a field experiment and a causal machine-learning approach to increase a charity's fundraising effectiveness. The approach optimally targets fundraising to individuals whose expected donations exceed...