Consumption in lieu of Membership: Reconfiguring Popular Charitable Action in Post-World War II Britain

The year 1947 saw the opening of Oxfam’s first permanent charity shop on Broad Street in Oxford. It was the prototype of what was soon to become a national franchise of Oxfam shops and it marked the genesis of widespread popular engagement with charity in the form of consumption. Donations and purchases of goods in this second-hand shop space were not simply a financial means to a humanitarian end, these shops offered active engagements with the charity; engagements that shaped donor and shopper knowledge of the organisation and that cemented a particular form of charity participation. This interdisciplinary analysis contributes to an emerging body of historical and geographical scholarship that is exploring the intersection between charitable action and consumption by beginning to fill a lacuna of research on the development of charity shopping as a key form of popular philanthropic action.

     

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.     

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 Corporate Support of a Charity on Public Perceptions of the Charity

A quasi-experimental design (N = 517) was used to investigate the effect on audience response to a supported charity if corporate support is featured in an advertisement. The results indicate that corporate support of a charity appears not to influence audience attitudes and donation intentions for the charity. A small portion of the audience may be motivated to donate when learning of a large corporate donation to the charity. The level of individuals’ favorability for the charity was the strongest predictor of their attitudes and intentions. Gender was also a predictor of more positive charity attitudes, with females reporting more positive attitudes than males for three of four charities. Managerial implications and areas for future research are discussed.     

Policy Experiments,Democratic Ownership and Development Assistance

In an effort to enhance the impact of development aid, recipients are called on to provide democratically sustained ‘ownership’ for development policies, and donors to align their interventions with these ownership‐dictated strategies of their partners. This article illustrates the weaknesses of such an approach. From a political‐economy perspective, severe tensions exist between concepts of democratic ownership, on the one hand, and the experimental and iterative organisation of a society's encompassing interests in democratic settings, on the other. These tensions are even more pronounced in emerging democracies, making democratic ownership as a prerequisite for aid effectiveness an illusion, and provoking the re‐emergence of traditional donor‐recipient problems.     

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.     

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.

     

Sexual and Reproductive Health Knowledge Among Men and Women Aged 15 to 49 Years in Metropolitan Tehran

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) knowledge is an important predictor of an individual’s sexual behavior; however, little is known regarding this issue among Iranians. This study assessed sexual and reproductive health knowledge among men and women aged 15 to 49 years in Tehran. A total of 755 men and women aged 15 to 49 years were recruited using multistage, random cluster sampling in June 2014. An illustrative anonymous questionnaire endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) was used to collect the data. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed. The results showed that men and women were moderately knowledgeable about sexual and reproductive health (mean score of SRH knowledge = 39, range: 26 to 52); however, myths and misperceptions prevailed in different aspects of SRH. For example, only 45% of women and 38.7% of men accurately knew that a person infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can look healthy. Friends were identified as the primary or secondary source of knowledge about puberty and sex-related issues. A multivariate analysis showed that being female (coefficient = 0.139, p < 0.001) and being married (coefficient = 0.180, p < 0.001) were significant predictors of better SRH knowledge, while being young (age group 15 to 24) was a significant determinant of poor SRH knowledge (coefficient = ?0.161, p < 0.001) when other influencing factors were controlled. Culturally appropriate and age-specific comprehensive education is recommended, particularly for men, the unmarried, and the younger generation in Iran.     

Principals and Agents: An Investigation of Executive Compensation in Human Service Nonprofits

This study proposes a revised agency theory for the nonprofit sector, distinguishes between the extent of agency and the extent of monitoring, and compares the magnitudes of the two impacts. Using panel data for 1998–2003, the paper tests whether monitoring by principal-stakeholders such as donors, clients, the government, and the board reduces the opportunity for executive misconduct such as extravagant spending on compensation and perquisites. Given the theory, the findings show that two effects influence CEO salaries. First, while nonprofit endowments provide a fiscal cushion in tough financial situations, by offering “organizational slack” they also increase the CEO’s opportunity to steal or raise her compensation (i.e., agency effect). Second, donors utilize monitoring mechanisms such as auditing or direct observations, which limit the opportunity for misconduct and reduce executive pay (i.e., monitoring effect). In the final analysis, the monitoring effect is greater than the agency effect, which implies that even if agency problems are present, the monitoring that donors provide offsets them.     

Reconstructing a Sense of Relational Agency in Family Therapy

The concept of agency is relevant in family therapy. As family therapists we approach each family member as a full agent, which means that what each person thinks and feels, makes sense, and that each person contributes in a significant way to the construction of a relationship. A person's sense of relational agency is constructed in relationships through processes of relational influence. Thus, agency is a relational construct and is dependent on bidirectional transactions in a relationship. A person's sense of relational agency refers to the belief a person has about being able to influence another person, that this influence is significant for the other, makes a difference for the other, and contributes to the construction of the relationship. Many family members who enter therapy have lost their sense of relational agency. In this paper we discuss ideas how to reconstruct family members’ sense of relational agency in therapeutic practice.     

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)     

New Styles of Community Building and Philanthropy by Arab-American Muslims

Among Arab-American Muslims, secular ethnic and humanitarian giving, focused on ‘results’ and ‘measurable impact,’ is displacing religiously inspired giving, that is driven by ‘charity’ and ‘love of mankind.’ This trend is supported by evidence of the way donors position themselves and philanthropic organizations appeal to their donor base. The case is supported by qualitative data drawn from interviews with key informants and from trend data on giving. I propose a new model of giving based on identity and giving, using Grounded Theory methods. This model challenges our understanding about the connection between community and philanthropy and proposes that philanthropy can create ‘community.’     

Eliciting Donor Preferences

Most charity organizations depend on contributions from the general public, but little research is conducted on donor preferences. Do donors have geographical, recipient, or thematic preferences? We designed a conjoint analysis experiment in which people rated development aid projects by donating money in dictator games. We find that our sample show strong age, gender, regional, and thematic preferences. Furthermore, we find significant differences between segments. The differences in donations are consistent with differences in donors’ attitudes toward development aid and their beliefs about differences in poverty and vulnerability of the recipients. The method here used for development projects can easily be adapted to elicit preferences for other kinds of projects that rely on gifts from private donors.     

Volunteers in charity retailing: Recruitment and training

Volunteer activity has received considerable research attention in recent years. There is, however, little academic research to date into volunteer issues in charity retailing. This article examines volunteers in charity shops and reports, in particular, on how volunteers are recruited and trained in the charity retailing. This article examines volunteers in charity shops and reports, in particular, on how volunteers are recruited and trained in the charity sector. The authors conclude that in an increasingly competitive market, charity retailers need to reexamine their recruitment and training policies in order to attract and retain a diverse core of volunteers.     

Roma Press Center – 20 years of making a difference

ABSTRACT

The Roma Press Center (RPC) is the first Roma news agency in Hungary with the goal of reducing prejudice against the Roma. Their profile has been changed throughout the years, since the technological developments of the media and the political and economic changes of the country challenged their way of effectiveness. Until recently, the RPC was always about reacting to the negative stories about the Roma and balancing this image in the media. In the last 3 years, RPC changed its attitude by becoming a proactive media organisation which directly participates in shaping the public discourse about the Roma with their work. The interview with the two decisive characters of the RPC tells about this process.     

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.     

Care networks in play: Understanding death of a parent as a contributing factor to homelessness

Offering an understanding of specialized service needs of those becoming homeless because of the death of a parent or parental figure, this project is set in Detroit’s urban context, where residents face economic hardship and intergenerational poverty. In this study, we analyze the voices of practitioners (n = 5) and men (n = 5) who have experienced parental death as a contributing factor to homelessness in Detroit, Michigan. Findings include the following: (1) the impact of death and dying experiences on these men and (2) the role of care networks in these men’s lives, particularly when these men have and lack “default” caregivers after death of a parent. This community-based research project was a result of a partnership between a local agency serving persons experiencing homelessness, where the practitioner initiated the project with the researcher. The paper concludes with implications for social work practice.     

Common Agency in Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations

Most theories of nonprofit organizations and nonprofit leadership recognize the multitude of stakeholders—including board members, donors and volunteers, funders, the media, and policy makers—that organizational leaders must contend with in doing their work. For nonprofits engaged in advocacy, demands from stakeholders may be even more challenging to meet. Although stakeholder theory recognizes the effect of various groups on an organization, it does not explain how leaders manage the preferences of their often‐competing stakeholders while they make choices for the organization. This study develops a common agency framework, evaluating the roles of three groups crucial to nonprofit advocacy organizations: the organization's board of directors, elected officials, and donors/members. The common agency framework is then illustrated with interviews with leaders of nonprofit advocacy organizations in California. Findings suggest that the leaders of these groups have a significant amount of discretion in guiding their organizations’ activities and operations.     

Objectification as negotiation: reexamining the agency of targets

Why and under what conditions do individuals participate in their own physical objectification? Literature across disciplines acknowledges such conditions exist but has limited capacity to specify when and how a person might participate in her own objectification. This article argues that a target of objectification, under certain conditions, can accept objectification in pursuit of another goal. This conception is counterintuitive given that existing approaches sometimes treat the targets of objectification as lacking agency. However, by obscuring this agency such accounts further the same objectification they highlight as problematic. This article offers a positive model of objectified targets’ agency. This model, called “Negotiated Objectification,” serves as an analytical tool that scholars can leverage in feminist academic debates over objectification. The utility of the model is illustrated using three examples: FEMEN’s topless protests; the politics of the Muslim headscarf; and women’s body writing in support of the Israel Defense Forces. The article concludes by considering the implications of women’s agency in each case for debates over the role of agents under objectification.