High-Capacity Donors' Preferences for Charitable Giving Academic Article

abstract

• How can charities solicit high-capacity donors to provide the funds for matching grants and leadership gifts? In conjunction with Texas A&M Universitys fundraising organizations, we conducted a field experiment to study whether high-income donors respond to nonpersonal solicitations. We also designed the experiment to test the impact of allowing for directed giving on the giving behavior of high-income donors and their willingness to direct their donations toward overhead costs. High-income donors are not responsive to letters or emails, regardless of whether they have the option to direct giving; we cannot conclude, therefore, that giving behavior is different for those who could direct giving compared with those who could not. Our results highlight the difficulties of motivating some high-income donors, especially when only impersonal communication is used.

authors

• Eckel, Catherine

published proceedings

• NONPROFIT AND VOLUNTARY SECTOR QUARTERLY

altmetric score

• 11.03

author list (cited authors)

• Alston, M., Eckel, C., Meer, J., & Zhan, W.

citation count

• 3

complete list of authors

• Alston, Mackenzie||Eckel, Catherine||Meer, Jonathan||Zhan, Wei

publication date

• December 2021

publisher

• SAGE Publications  Publisher

keywords

• Alumni Giving
• Charitable Giving
• Field Experiments
• High-income Donors

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1177/08997640211003251

start page

• 1262

end page

• 1273

volume

• 50

issue

• 6

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/08997640211003251