Will You Trust Me?: How Individual American Donors Respond to Informational Signals Regarding Local and Global Humanitarian Charities

When making charitable donations, individuals would like to have some assurance that their resources will be used appropriately, but they do not necessarily have the time to research charities thoroughly. Charities have thus joined voluntary regulatory programs to signal trustworthiness and good governance. We conduct a survey experiment to explore if individual donors in the United States are more willing to give to a charity participating in a voluntary regulatory program. Because voluntary programs vary in their institutional design, we further test whether the provision of third-party auditing (to ensure that charities abide by program rules and obligations) enhances donor confidence in the voluntary program. Finally, we explore whether individuals seek to circumvent information problems by donating to local charities as opposed to overseas charities. We find that charity membership in a voluntary program does not influence people’s willingness to donate significantly, but that location of operations is significant.     

Learning as a process of personal-social transformation: volunteering activity in health and social care charities

This paper explores how people learn about global societal challenges as they work towards them in collaborative activity. It focuses on the activity of volunteering within UK health and social charities and draws upon the approach of Transformative Activist Stance to conceptualize learning in this environment as a form of individual and social transformation. The study is a multiple qualitative case study, which includes three charities that address complex health and social challenges. By exploring how volunteers learn about and address complex societal challenges findings show the transformative opportunities this process offers for volunteers, the charity, and the wider community.     

The Effects of the Facial Expression of Beneficiaries in Charity Appeals and Psychological Involvement on Donation Intentions

To increase the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns, many human‐need charities include pictures of beneficiaries in their ads. However, it is unclear when and why the facial expression of these beneficiaries (sad versus happy) may influence the effectiveness of charity ads. To answer these questions, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of the facial expression on donation intentions, while considering the moderating role of psychological involvement with charities. It found that psychological involvement with charities moderated the impact of the facial expression on donation intentions in that seeing a picture of a sad versus happy person increased intentions to give among participants with lower levels of psychological involvement, whereas the reverse was true for highly involved participants. The moderating effect of psychological involvement was fully explained by the perceived efficacy of one's donation. The findings not only contribute to our understanding of the effect of the facial expression of people pictured in charity appeals on donation behavior, but also suggest that nonprofits should tailor their ads to target potential donors with various levels of psychological involvement with charities.     

Were UK Culture, Sport and Recreation Charities Prepared for the 2008 Economic Downturn? An Application of Tuckman and Chang’s Measures of Financial Vulnerability

UK charities experienced rapid growth during the middle years of the first decade of the new millennium. The issue investigated in this study is whether the charities took the opportunity to strengthen their financial positions before the economic recession of 2008–2009. Having evaluated, and established the empirical robustness of, Tuckman and Chang’s measures of financial vulnerability, they are used as the basis for constructing a Charities Financial Exposure Index (CFEI). Variants of the index are applied to a panel of more than 300 large UK charities in the Culture, Sport and Recreation sector for the period 2002–2007. The findings are that by 2008 these charities were in a stronger financial position than they had been in 2002 and were therefore better prepared to face the onset of the so-called credit crunch recession.     

Charity,Volunteering Type and Subjective Wellbeing

We examine the impact of volunteering and charitable donations on subjective wellbeing. We further consider if the model of the volunteering work (formal vs. informal) and the geographical location of the charity organisation (local vs. international) people donate to has any impact on subjective wellbeing. Using UK’s Community Life Survey data, we find that volunteering and engagement in charity are positively associated with subjective wellbeing, measured by individual life satisfaction. We show that while there is a positive effect of volunteering and charity on life satisfaction, the level of utility gained depends on the type of charity or volunteering organisation engaged with (i.e. local or international). Specifically, donating to local (neighbourhood) charities as opposed to international/national charities is associated with higher wellbeing. Similarly, engaging in informal volunteering, compared to formal volunteering, is associated with higher wellbeing. To explain our results, we use the construal-level theory of psychological distance, which suggests that people think more concretely of actions and objects that they find spatially and socially close.

     

Involving Young People—Empowerment or Exploitation?

The principle that children should be heard as well as seen—that they have a right to be consulted over decisions affecting them and to have their views taken into account by the adults working with or for them—now has general currency. One consequence is that increasing numbers of children and young people are now appearing on conference platforms or are included on the executive councils of charities or participate in working parties. Such events are often effective, but sometimes they can be embarrassing or counter-productive to all concerned. Amanda Allard considers the lessons to be learnt from a successful initiative to involve young people in policy advocacy.     

Regulating Small and Medium Charities: Does It Improve Transparency and Accountability?

Internationally, there has been a steady increase in the number of countries instigating charity regulation. Public interest theory suggests that regulation increases organisational transparency through reducing information asymmetry, protects (or encourages) a competitive market, and leads to a distribution of resources which is in the public interest. While these arguments may explain charity regulation, the cost of compliance can be an issue for small- and medium-sized charities. Therefore, regulators tend to take a light-handed approach to small and medium charities’ information provision. This paper ascertains the impact of a light-handed enforcement regime on small and medium charities’ reporting, analysing the financial reporting practices of a selection of 300 small- and medium-sized charities registered with the former New Zealand Charities Commission against the Charities Act 2005 requirements and hence the rationale for this regulator. It uses this analysis to predict how the regulator’s activities might impact future reporting practices of charities.     

Surviving mission drift: How charities can turn dependence on government contract funding to their own advantage

The widespread contracting out to British charities of welfare services previously furnished by the state has resulted in many charities operating in fields well outside those specified by their original missions. Challenges connected with charity mission drift have received a great deal of (mainly negative and critical) attention in the nonprofit practitioner literature in recent years, yet no academic research has been completed into exactly how charities respond managerially and operationally to government‐induced mission drift. This empirical study attempted to fill this important gap in knowledge about charity management through in‐depth case studies of three charities known to have experienced substantial mission drift during the last decade, focusing on the styles and types of approach the organizations had adopted in their dealings with government funding agencies. It emerged that the three charities accepted mission drift as a fact of life. Rather than simply supplying contract services to government bodies, the charities were highly proactive in seeking to initiate, direct, control, and assume overall strategic responsibility for state‐funded activities.     

FUNDRAISING INTERMEDIARIES INHIBIT QUALITY‐DRIVEN CHARITABLE DONATIONS

Charitable donations are frequently raised by an intermediary, which accepts donations and subsequently sends the proceeds to the chairty—for example, a workplace campaign for United Way, a 5‐km walk for Susan G. Komen, or buying cookies from a local troop for the Girl Scouts. These fundraisers can greatly increase donations received by a given charity, but how do they affect what types of charities we support? This article shows intermediary fundraisers can make donors insensitive to differences in charity quality: Unattractive charities can receive the same financial support as an attractive charity. In a series of across‐subject experiments, when donations are framed as going directly to the charity, unattractive charities receive fewer and smaller contributions relative to attractive charities; however, when donations for the same charities are collected by (meaningless) intermediary fundraising campaigns, donations become indistinguishable across charities. The fundraising campaign does not affect donor recall of charity identity or evaluation of charity quality; it simply precludes donors from using these data in the donation decision. Follow‐up experiments suggest the results are driven by information overload. (JEL A13, C91, C93, D61, D64, H41)     

Improving direct mail fundraising through segmentation research

Currently, fundraising for medical research (and most other charities) seems to be conducted more on the basis of intuition or trial-and-error guesswork than it is guided by strategic planning. The efficacy of segmentation research is examined, from the more traditional demographic segmentation techniques to newer segmentation schemes, including motivational segmentation and “geodemographic” segmentation. The methods are compared on their ability to identify active, high-value donors and generate insights to help formulate more effective appeals from the better understanding of donor groups provided by the segmentation results.     

Returns on Fundraising Expenditures in the Voluntary Sector

There has been much interest of late in the relative efficiency of various forms of fundraising activity. It is the purpose of this article to establish the typical returns that might be expected to accrue from a variety of fundraising methods. Based on a postal survey of the United Kingdom's top five hundred fundraising charities, this article presents the average returns for nine different forms of fundraising. The authors also examine whether differences in returns between charities can be explained by size or sector effects.     

NPO,Internal Controls,and Supervision Mechanisms in a Developing Country

The premise of this paper is that effective supervision and proper internal control system (ICS) can promote accountability and transparency, and this will attract more donors. However, in a developing country like Malaysia, it is common that proper accounting standards are not available, the laws are not enforced, and charities often struggle for survival. Debates on regulating nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have been sensitive to many and are often left unresolved, and some quarters believe that NPOs should be left to handle their own affairs. This paper provides evidence from a survey of 60 charities on the status of their ICS. It briefly describes the current state of regulations in Malaysia and makes a case for better monitoring of the sector, as this might be the reason NPOs are lacking in their ICS. We propose what type of regulation and assistance can be provided by the authorities to this sector, not only in Malaysia but also in other developing countries facing similar challenges.     

Conversion Ratios, Efficiency and Obfuscation: A Study of the Impact of Changed UK Charity Accounting Requirements on External Stakeholders

Key stakeholders in the UK charity sector have, in recent years, advocated greater accountability for charity performance. Part of that debate has focussed on the use of conversion ratios as indicators of efficiency, with importance to stakeholders being contrasted with charities’ apparent reluctance to report such measures. Whilst, before 2005, conversion ratios could have been computed from financial statements, changes in the UK charity SORP have radically altered the ability of users to do this. This article explores the impact on the visibility of such information through an analysis of the financial statements of large UK charities before and after the 2005 changes. Overall, the findings suggest that, despite the stated intention of increasing transparency in respect of charity costs, the application of the changes has resulted in charities ‘managing’ the numbers and limiting their disclosures, possibly to the detriment of external stakeholders.     

全球化背景下的清真寺功能评估

提供宗教礼拜场所是清真寺的基本功能，内含“六大信仰”的宣传和“五大功修”的实践，在不断协调人神关系中凸现清真寺传播与实践伊斯兰神学精神的实质，并派生出基本建筑元素“变与不变”的发展规律；清真寺还具有教育、科研、慈善、司法、外交、社区服务等一系列衍生功能，渗透着伊斯兰“世俗关切”的情怀，解决了人与人之间的关系；功能发生变异又折射出清真寺在宗教与政治夹缝中生存的尴尬境遇，“涉寺事件”就是“各种权力精英”依赖圣寺、名寺的象征资源优势来达到“政治动员”目的结果，背离了伊斯兰的和平本质与清真寺的禁武精神；在全球化背景下对清真寺功能作客观评估，也是对全球治理中“伊斯兰因素”作深入思考：清真寺功能衍变将对全球文明对话的理论与实践产生深远影响、清真寺的变异功能仍会以“涉寺事件”的方式加大解决阿拉伯一伊斯兰问题的难度、清真寺伊玛目能否坚守“和平与禁武”的基本精神也会对国家和地区的非传统安全产生一定的影响、清真寺的衍生功能已在解决美欧穆斯林移民问题的具体实践中发挥了特殊而积极的作用。     

The antecedents of donor commitment to voluntary organizations

The past decade has seen a rapid growth in the number of regular or so‐called committed giving schemes. Charities have been increasingly eager to solicit donors onto a low‐value monthly donation, collected automatically from their bank account or credit card. Although the initial costs of donor acquisition are higher than for cash donations, charities find that committed givers are less likely to lapse and therefore offer substantially higher lifetime values over time. In this article, we examine to what extent these individuals are truly committed, that is, whether they are more committed than occasional cash givers and the factors that might drive that commitment. The results of a series of ten focus groups conducted on behalf of five large national charities are reported and a model of the antecedents of commitment hypothesized. Implications for fundraising strategy are explored.     

Using the lessons learned from US and English law to create a regulatory framework for charities in evolving democracies

The evolving democracies of Eastern Europe and the former USSR republics are keenly interested in establishing charities. They have little law on this issue because their former governments did not encourage the development of charities. This article compares US and English regulation of charities and proposes a regulatory framework based on what the authors believe are the best attributes of both. Although the framework is based on the common law system, it can be adapted to the civil law systems of the Eastern European nations and the former USSR republics. The article includes such issues as developing a body of law, tax relief and creating a regulatory agency.Mr Hopkins is a lawyer with Powers, Pyles & Sutter, 1275 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007, and author ofThe Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations (1992a).Ms Moore is also a lawyer, 5908 N. 35th St., Arlington, Virginia 22207.The authors would like to thank Mssrs Kersi Shroff and Stephen F. Clarke, Senior Legal Specialists, American-British Law Division, Library of Congress, and Mr. William H. Morris, an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson, Washington, D.C., for their kind assistance during the researching of this article.     

Images and narratives of autism within charity discourses

This research explores awareness of issues and debates concerning images and narratives about disability amongst autism charity brand-management professionals and their counterparts in the creative industries. These include the role of charities in service provision, the social model of disability, and disability stigma. It describes and analyses past and recent charity advertisements in both the United Kingdom and the United States, with attention to the historical context of these and the views and practices of charity and advertising professionals and autistic self-advocates, using David Hevey’s three-stage framework for disability representation by charities. The research concludes by considering emerging counter-narratives, which suggest ways charities may escape the perceived need to produce pathos or fear as part of such campaigns.     

Grant monitoring by charities: The process of grant-making and evaluation

This article presents the results of a survey of grant monitoring in 170 UK charities. The monitoring and evaluation process is modelled and the extent to which donors follow this is explored. Although over 70 per cent of donors monitored grants, a much smaller percentage proceeded to evaluate results. Reasons for this and an indication of how the processes are carried out are presented.     

Charity Appeals Using Celebrity Endorsers: Celebrity Attributes Most Predictive of Audience Donation Intentions

We compare the relative influence of different celebrity endorser attributes on respondents’ intentions to donate to a fictitious charity. The celebrity endorser attributes we modeled are expertise, admirability, likeability, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. We examine the moderating effects of audience sex, and general attitudes toward charities. Finally, we examined the mediating effects of perceived endorser fit with the endorsed charity. Our results find that endorser expertise and admirability are significant predictors of audience donation intentions. Audience general attitudes toward charities are a significant moderator of the influence of endorser expertise and admirability on donation intentions. We discuss the implications of our findings for researchers and practitioners.

     

How Funding of Non-profit Social Organizations Affects the Number of Volunteers

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In recent decades, significant changes have occurred to how charities and non-profit organizations are funded. However,...