Different or Equal Treatment? Donor Priority Strategy and Fundraising Performance Assessed by a Propensity Score Matching Study

Many nonprofit organizations apply a priority strategy to their donors instead of treating donors equally. The underlying assumption of this strategy is that different and preferential treatment of donors according to their donation amount positively affects fundraising performance. We conducted a propensity score matching study to analyze the fundraising strategies of seventy‐three cultural organizations in Germany. The empirical findings are discussed and complemented by qualitative data from twenty interviews with fundraising managers and private donors. The results show that, in terms of fundraising performance, nonprofit organizations that apply a donor priority strategy outperform organizations that treat donors equally. A donor priority strategy ultimately leads to a 125 euro higher total revenue per donor and an 87 euro higher profit per donor due to cost savings via better use of fundraising resources.     

Stakeholder Performance Measurement in Nonprofit Organizations

According to recent findings, nonprofit organizations should address the relationships of nonprofit service quality, satisfaction, loyalty, and organizational identification when planning and evaluating donor surveys. This article presents a donor satisfaction barometer that can be used to gain insights into the strength of these key relationships and thereby establish a basis for calculated relevant indices. With such indices, nonprofit organizations can compare stakeholder performance over time and benchmark themselves against other organizations. Data from 2,599 blood donors to one section of the German Red Cross, collected through the proposed donor satisfaction barometer, show that service quality drives satisfaction, and donor satisfaction and organizational identification both exert significant positive effects on donor loyalty. Therefore, nonprofit organizations should use a combined strategic approach that improves both donor satisfaction and organizational identification to increase donor loyalty. The successful application of the donor satisfaction barometer also suggests its value for other nonprofit industries and offers important insights for managers.     

Profiling Donors of Blood,Money, and Time

Understanding donor profiles is crucial for donor relationship management. Whereas previous research has focused on profiling blood, money, or time donor segments separately, we define seven donor profiles based on their former donation behavior for blood, money, and time donation and compare them to non‐donors. Relying on representative data from the German Socio Economic Panel, we use an extensive set of characteristics that include sociodemographic, psychographic, health‐related, and geographical measures and simultaneously investigate profiles of donors for single and multiple donation forms and non‐donors by means of a multinomial logistic model. Our results reveal valuable insights for donor acquisition and retention strategies of nonprofit organizations along the identified profiling characteristics of donor segments. By this, our findings help nonprofit organization managers to better target single and multiple donors across three donation forms.     

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.     

Event‐Related Attributes Affecting Donation Intention of Special Event Attendees

The practice of increasing donations through special events has significant financial implications for charitable organizations. However, little is known about how such events can be organized to increase individuals’ donation intention beyond their event attendance. In this case study, a post‐event survey was conducted with attendees of a professional golf tournament operating as a special event to identify event‐related attributes that affected their intention to donate to the cause supported by the event. The results indicate that attendees’ donation intention was positively associated with their event satisfaction, perceived contributions of the event to the cause, and sense of camaraderie at the event. Furthermore, the effects of event satisfaction and camaraderie were stronger for attendees whose primary motivation for attending the event was unrelated to cause support. These results support hypotheses drawn from social exchange theory and provide implications for charitable organizations engaging in special events.     

Funding Civil Society? Bilateral Government Support for Development NGOs

Research on the determinants of foreign aid tends to focus on the relationship between donor country priorities and recipient state characteristics, but donors also make decisions about which organizations and programs within countries will receive assistance. Although NGOs increasingly have been recipients of foreign aid, few data are available to investigate which organizations within a given country receive that funding. Donors may prioritize structural characteristics of NGOs or their local ties—or they may seek a combination that blends concern about efficiency and accountability with an interest in developing national civil society. We use original data from Cambodia to explore whether aid is likely to go to managerial organizations (professionalized NGOs and NGOs that utilize modern management tools) or to organizations that are embedded in the domestic context. We argue that managerialism provides legitimacy for NGOs by signaling capacity and accountability to donors, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We argue that local embeddedness also confers legitimacy by aligning community ties and networks to rights-based development, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We find general support for the managerialism argument, but donor agencies do not prioritize direct funding for “indigenous” NGOs—not even among those with high levels of managerialism.     

Membership Benefits Matter

Professional associations have provided various benefits to their members to bolster member retention and recruitment. This study explored factors that could influence members’ behavioral intentions in professional membership associations by surveying 13,229 members from eighteen associations. More specifically, this analysis focused on the effects of members’ perceptions of the personal and professional benefits offered by associations with which they are affiliated and their satisfaction with those benefits. Our results suggested that members’ perceptions of personal and professional benefits positively correlated with their intentions to renew and recommend membership. If a member perceived a higher level of benefits, he or she would demonstrate a greater likelihood of satisfaction with the benefits and therefore be more likely to renew membership or recommend it to others. This study could advance understanding of the factors that influence members’ behavioral intentions while also providing professional associations with strategies for retaining existing members.     

The Influence of Commitment,Trust, Satisfaction,and Involvement on Donor Retention

Due to certain developments in the business of fundraising, there exists an increasing necessity to theoretically and empirically analyze donor behavior. This article examines donor retention from the donor’s point of view. It concretizes four antecedents and their relationships with one another. The influencing variables investigated are commitment, trust, satisfaction, and involvement. The empirical analysis conducted in Germany among donors of four representative social non-profit organizations shows that all variables have an influence on donor retention, although some of them only indirectly.     

Testing the Effectiveness of Fundraiser Job Titles in Charitable Bequest and Complex Gift Planning

Traditional fundraiser job titles are often institution centered, focusing on the benefits of fundraising as “institutional advancement” or “institutional development.” Such institution‐centered job titles may not be as effective with donors given the modern shift toward donor‐centered philanthropy. Alternative job titles can be gift centered (for example, “major gifts”) or donor centered (for example, “donor advising”). A survey of 3,188 respondents tested sixty‐three job titles in four charitable scenarios: a charitable bequest gift, a gift of stock, a gift of real estate, and a charitable gift annuity. Measured by which person donors would be more likely to contact to discuss each donation, the worst‐performing titles were the traditional institution‐focused fundraiser job titles, in particular those using “advancement,” “institutional advancement,” or “development.” This was also true when examining only respondents who had made large gifts ($500+) to a charity. Traditional institution‐focused job titles are both the most commonly used and the worst performing. Nonprofit managers may do well to consider the donor's perspective when selecting job titles for fundraisers rather than following traditional industry practices.     

Effects of Reputation,Relational Satisfaction,and Customer–Company Identification on Positive Word-of-Mouth Intentions

By combining the growing body of knowledge on organizational reputation and organization—public relationships with insights from marketing literature on customer–company identification, this study develops and tests models of customers' positive word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. Specifically, this study examines the effects of organizational reputation and relational satisfaction on customers' positive WOM intentions, and the critical mediation role of customer–company identification in such effects. The proposed models illustrate tenable data-model fits, and the results indicate that organizational reputation and relational satisfaction predict customers' positive WOM intentions. More important, customer–company identification mediates the influence of organizational reputation on positive WOM intentions. The findings of this study suggest that, to promote customers' positive WOM intentions, companies need to obtain a favorable reputation held by customers and cultivate a satisfactory relationship with customers, while fostering customer–company identification.     

Information Source Reliance and Charitable Giving Decisions

This study examines the relationship between donor reliance on information and donors’ subsequent charitable giving decisions of both time and money. To examine this relationship, we utilize data from an original survey of residents in San Diego County, California (n = 1,002), asking donors about their charitable activities and the information sources that they use to facilitate their charitable decisions. Our findings reveal that relying on information from both nonprofit accrediting agencies and personal experiences positively influences donors’ decision to give time to nonprofit organizations (that is, volunteer), but has no significant impact on decisions to give money. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Majority size and conformity behavior in charitable giving: Field evidence from a donation-based crowdfunding platform in Japan

A charitable donor typically imitates the majority contribution of other donors. This study examines the relationships between majority size and this so-called donor’s conformity behavior, by empirically investigating the impacts of multiple earlier donations on the donation of a subsequent donor to JapanGiving, a donation-based crowdfunding platform in Japan. This analysis is possible because the platform’s webpage displays the previous donation amounts in chronological order, thus allowing us to examine the modal amount of more recent donations. By using data on 9989 actual donations, our dynamic panel analysis suggests that when the number of most recent continuous modal donations increases, the likelihood that a subsequent donor matches the modal amount increases. This result supports the notion that a donor’s conformity behavior is more likely to occur when a greater proportion of other donors give a similar amount. Furthermore, the effects of continuous modal donations are strongly observed for low monetary ranges. We interpret that initiating further cooperation among a large number of less cooperative other donors would become harder, or individuals would obtain an excuse for less cooperation due to the others’ behaviors. Finally, we discuss how our findings connect economic studies of charity and social psychology studies of conformity and could help improve the effectiveness of fundraising by charities.     

The Effect of Social Information on Giving from Lapsed Donors: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Using data from an experiment carried out by a large nonprofit organization, this paper finds that lapsed donors who received a solicitation letter referencing a relatively high donation made by another donor (high social information) were more generous in giving, but overall less likely to make a donation, relative to the baseline (low social information) group. After using the propensity score matching to correct for pretreatment differences in the two experimental groups, the estimated effect of high social information on the average donation amount is an increase of $14.95 (45 %). However, high social information is also found to reduce the probability a lapsed donor will give by 4.1 %. Thus, high social information can have potentially offsetting effects when applied to lapsed donors. Nonprofits should consider this trade-off when employing social information fundraising techniques to solicit donations from lapsed donors.     

Beneficiaries’ participation in development organizations through local partners: A case study in Southern Africa

In a case study of one European non‐governmental organization (NGO) (data obtained from 10 staff members in Europe and Southern Africa, and 19 representatives of local partner organizations) we investigate whether the involvement of the partners in local and ‘northern’ policy‐making affects their perception of the governance quality of their organizations and that of the European donor organization, as well as the perception of the NGO's staff members. The answer is positive as to the local organizations, but local partners (as representatives of the eventual beneficiaries) are hardly involved in decision‐making at donor level. Finally, the presence of specific participation mechanisms seems to be more affected by beneficiary country factors than by activity‐related influences.     

Security Sector Reform and Development Assistance: Explaining the Diffusion of Policy Priorities among Donor Agencies

This paper employs a world society theoretical framework to examine the recent trend among foreign aid donors to focus on security sector reform as an aid priority. Through a comparative qualitative case study based on interview data collected from aid officials and development workers in Canada, Sweden, and the United States (n = 41) in 2006–2007, this paper finds that the extent to which the security sector reform agenda is integrated into donor policy and programs is mediated by catalytic policy processes linked to intergovernmental organizations and the degree of donor agency autonomy from the rest of government. These findings are used to illustrate how common processes of globalization in world society shape similar approaches to foreign aid among donor agencies despite disparate domestic contexts. These processes lead to convergence of donor policy around security issues and at the same time can account for decoupling of practice from world society policy models.     

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, JOB CONDITIONS, AND WELL-BEING: Self-Concept Explanations for Gender-Contingent Effects

Using data from a representative sample of adults age eighteen to fifty‐five who reside in Toronto, Canada, and are employed in the paid labor force, this study asks: Are the health benefits of education, income, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work different for women and men? If so, do mastery and self‐esteem contribute to those differences? Results show that women and men derive different personal benefits from socioeconomic status and job qualities: (1) education, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work are associated more positively with the sense of mastery among women, (2) job autonomy is associated more positively with self‐esteem among women, (3) education, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work are associated more negatively with depressive symptoms among women, and (4) job autonomy and nonroutinized work are associated more positively with global health among women. Moreover, the patterns in (1) and (2) explain the gender‐contingent effects in (3) and (4). In addition, unexpected suppression effects reveal that, among men, education is associated negatively with mastery and self‐esteem—but only after adjustment for job conditions. I interpret the findings in the context of the disadvantaged status thesis and speculate about status‐related social comparison processes.     

Determining the Optimal Donation Acceptance Policy for Nonprofit Stores

Many nonprofits derive a considerable amount of their financial support from the resale of donated items. Given the razor‐thin margins at which many of these organizations operate, it is critical that they maximize the proceeds that come from the sale of these items. To do so, nonprofits require policies that guide their donation acceptance decisions so as to optimize revenue generation. This article presents research about how to determine the optimal donation acceptance policy for Habitat for Humanity. Habitat affiliates sell donated material at their ReStores, or discount home improvement centers, and the revenue from the ReStores directly supports the building of new homes. Several constraints limit the revenue that the ReStores derive from the donated items, including the supply rate of items from donors, the demand rate of items from customers, and the space limitations of the ReStores. We developed a two‐step method to determine the optimal acceptance policy—the daily amount of donations to accept to maximize revenue. This approach increases revenue by up to 20 percent and additionally provides insights into pricing options, marketing strategy, and optimal store size.     

The Influence of Managed Care on Job-Related Attitudes of Social Workers

This study explores the relationships between the levels of conflict that social workers experience when interfacing with managed care organizations and outcome variables including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intentions. A total of 591 social workers practicing in mental health agencies in New York State completed self-administered and anonymous questionnaire packets that included several measures: Level of conflict that workers experience when interfacing with managed care organizations (CMC), job satisfaction, organizational commitment, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intentions. Results showed that CMC had statistically significant correlations with organizational commitment and with emotional exhaustion. The author discusses the role of social work schools and agencies in offering new educational opportunities and training in order to improve workers' skills, which are necessary for communicating and negotiating with managed care organizations.     

His and Hers: Economic Factors and Relationship Quality in Germany

Research has linked economic factors to relationship quality in the United States, primarily using cross‐sectional data. In the current study, 2 waves of the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics data (n = 2,937) were used to test the gendered association between economic factors and relationship satisfaction among young German couples. In contrast to U.S.‐based studies, the findings showed striking gender differences in the association between economic factors and relationship satisfaction for Germans. In cross‐sectional models, women's relationship satisfaction was positively associated with receiving government economic support, and men's satisfaction was positively associated with poverty status and negatively associated with being a breadwinner. Longitudinal models revealed that changes in poverty status are associated with women's satisfaction, but men's satisfaction remains tied to their role as family provider. These unexpected results suggest that men's satisfaction is positively associated with a more equal division of labor market activity between partners.