‘Shopping for Change’: <Emphasis Type="Italic">World Vision Canada</Emphasis> and Consumption-Oriented Philanthropy in the Age of Philanthrocapitalism

According to Charity Intelligence Canada, in 2014, at least 21 Canadian non-profits published a gift catalogue featuring a range of “products”^a that donors could “purchase” for people in need. These charity gift catalogues, along with other shopping-inspired fundraising initiatives, represent a significant shift in the philanthropic arena towards philanthrocapitalism. Using two World Vision Canada campaigns as exemplars, this article offers a critical analysis of what the author calls “consumption-oriented philanthropy”^b—a class of charitable giving that is heavily guided by market principles without involving a consumer product. Unlike purchase-triggered donation campaigns (in which a charitable donation is made when a consumer product is purchased), consumption-oriented philanthropy does not require the purchase of a for-profit commodity; instead, consumption-oriented philanthropy reformulates aid recipients or charitable aid itself into symbolic commodities. By re-framing charitable aid as a pseudo-shopping experience, however, consumption-oriented philanthropy ushers in an entirely different set of values, expectations, and logic that shapes the way in which donors understand and engage in philanthropic giving.     

ROUND GIVING: A FIELD EXPERIMENT ON SUGGESTED DONATION AMOUNTS IN PUBLIC‐TELEVISION FUNDRAISING

Direct‐mail fundraisers commonly provide a set of suggested donation amounts to potential donors, in addition to a write‐in option. Standard economic models of charitable fundraising do not predict an impact of suggested amounts on charitable giving. However, our field experiments on direct‐mail solicitations to over 10,000 members of a public television station tell a different story. We find that changing one of the suggested amounts in an ask string from $100 to $95 reduces the number of gifts greater than or equal to $90 by more than 30%. This contrasts with our finding that in three independent comparisons, increasing the entire vector of suggested amounts by 20%–40% reduces the probability of giving by approximately 15%, with little effect on the average size of the gift. Both manipulations lead to a larger proportion of write‐in donations, even as they reduce the number of total gifts. We propose a simple behavioral theory to explain the data: many donors prefer to give round numbers, and donors incur a cognitive cost when choosing to give a nonsuggested amount. (JEL C9, H4)     

Developmental job patterns of working-class women

Employment histories culled through in-depth structured interviews with 40 working-class women are analyzed according to a developmental framework that challenges the objectively focused male definition of job/career advancement. In conjunction with institutional criteria for employee mobility, paid work is viewed as a developmental life task. Based on the “morphogenesis” concept, which emphasizes sequential familial adjustment to individual role expansion, a subjective career path describes how respondents negotiate dual roles and subsequently instill order into generally chaotic employment patterns. This article discusses stage-specific personal, domestic, and occupational concerns pertinent to maximizing paid work potential.     

Fundraising encroachment on public relations: A clear and present danger to effective trustee leadership

When fundraising encroachment occurs, strategic publics who can affect a charitable organization's success and survival are rarely brought to the attention of trustees because public relations practitioners are denied access to these leaders, and the manager who does have access—the fundraiser—is trained and rewarded to concentrate on donor publics. A national survey documents fundraising encroachment in five of the six major types of charitable organizations. Although only 23 percent of the respondents (N = 175) reported structural encroachment, 40 percent agreed that the senior fundraisers in their organizations had more say in policy decisions than the senior public relations officers. Small but significant correlations were found between encroachment and the extent to which the public relations department has the knowledge and expertise to practice two-way models of public relations and communications support.     

The major gift donor relationship: An analysis of donors and contributions

Securing major gifts for nonprofit organizations can involve considerable cost. This study examines the relationship developed between 233 major gift donors and the development office at Northwestern University over a five-year period. The results show that the cultivation and solicitation process is usually long, measured in years rather than months, and the extent of the effort varies by type of donor and category of gift. Vignettes describing one of the relationships from each of the five most important categories are presented.     

SELECTIVE RECOGNITION: HOW TO RECOGNIZE DONORS TO INCREASE CHARITABLE GIVING

Recognizing donors by revealing their identities is important for increasing charitable giving. Using a framed field experiment, we show that all forms of recognition that we examine increase donations relative to the baseline treatment, and recognizing only the highest or only the lowest donors has the strongest and significant effect. We argue that selective recognition creates tournament‐like incentives. Recognizing the highest donors activates the desire to seek a “positive prize” of prestige, while recognizing the lowest donors activates the desire to avoid a “negative prize” of shame. We discuss how selective recognition can be used by charities to increase donations. (JEL C93, D64)     

Can welfare and labour market regimes explain cross‐country differences in the unemployment of young people?

No single institution can reduce (long‐term) youth unemployment. Welfare and labour market institutions function as “bundles”, through multiple inter‐institutional synergies. Based on a focused literature review for theory and on cluster analysis for empirics, the author identifies five such regimes across the EU‐27 and estimates their effects on the youth unemployment ratio and on long‐term youth unemployment. The most helpful institutional arrangement for young people in the labour market would be a combination of strong dual apprenticeship embedded in a corporatist labour market regime with high levels of social security, active labour market policy, and spending on education and childcare.     

Phrasing the Charitable Bequest Inquiry

This paper reports interest levels associated with twenty-three different phrasings of a request to leave a gift to charity in a will among 9964 survey respondents. Previous research suggests that a review of one’s life story may be an important component of bequest decision-making. Other findings suggest that mortality reminders may increase support for social norms and the pursuit of symbolic immortality. The attempts to reference symbolic immortality tested here were not effective. However, results supported avoiding extraneous death terms (“that will take effect at my death”) and using social norms (“many people like to leave a gift to charity in their wills”). The strongest support arose for the addition of the phrase “to support causes that have been important in their/your life/lives” to explain either the respondent’s or the social norm exemplars’ intent in making such a gift. Among common terms, “a gift to charity in your will” generated greater interest than substitute terms such as “bequest,” “leave a legacy” or “remember your favorite charities.”

     

Understanding the donor experience: Applying stewardship theory to higher education donors

This study sought to discover how stewardship strategies and involvement impact organization-public relationship (OPR) outcomes for higher education donors at three different levels of giving. The first study to compare annual donors, major gift donors with one endowment, and major gift donors with two or more endowments suggests that each donor type experiences stewardship and OPR differently. Specifically, as donors deepen their giving relationship with an institution, they experience stewardship and OPR outcomes more positively. Additionally, involvement only slightly contributes to this relationship between stewardship and OPR outcomes. Findings also reveal that stewardship may include only three strategies, including a new concept called respect. Implications for fundraising practice and theory are made.     

Gift-giving and deadweight loss

Although economic theory asserts that cash is often superior to gifts in-kind for maximizing welfare, there has been no empirical consensus on whether in-kind gift-giving destroys or creates value—i.e., whether recipients value gifts less than, as much as, or more than givers pay for them. The present study introduces a simple but important methodological innovation. Whereas prior studies focused exclusively on recipients’ estimates of the costs of gifts, we obtain more objective information on actual market prices. We also compare gifts in-kind to gift cards. We find a deadweight loss that averages more than 7 percent of the market price on gifts in-kind, and more than 14 percent on gift cards.     

What Works at Work? Toward an Integrative Model Examining Workplace Campaign Strategies

Many US employees are regularly asked to give charitable donations through work. The techniques used to solicit workplace donations vary. Drawing on a nationally representative survey, the study used a sample of donor responses to examine the effectiveness of several widely used campaign strategies: donor choice, company matching, public recognition, and solicitation support. The theoretical framework built on workplace research by Barman (2007) and established charitable giving mechanisms (Bekkers and Wiepking 2011a, 2011b). The research question was, “Do workplace campaign strategies lead employees to participate and to make (larger) donations in the workplace?” The positive outcomes of the strategies, aside from donor choice, were limited, suggesting that tried‐and‐true workplace fundraising strategies warrant additional scrutiny. The findings are meaningful to campaign managers seeking to identify approaches that generate workplace giving. For researchers, the results confirm growing attention to the importance of purpose‐based giving in comparison with community‐based giving.     

Welfare‐to‐Work Services: A Person‐Centered Perspective

Services designed to assist job seekers to leave public assistance and gain employment are well established throughout the U.S. Many of these programs are created and delivered by professionals of higher socioeconomic class backgrounds, but many program participants are of lower social class status. This situation can create “cross‐class” difficulties in the design and delivery of effective job‐search services. The author argues that using a person‐centered perspective, with the deliberate inclusion of genuineness and empathy in all phases of programming, may neutralize cross‐class variables and increase the effectiveness of interventions. Examples from programs emphasizing person‐centered concepts are offered.     

Objecting relations: the problem of the gift

This paper focuses on informants' accounts of gifts displayed on their living room mantelpieces drawn from a recent study exploring domestic display in Cardiff. The mantelpiece is an ideal space for looking at a particular category of salient objects: gifts on show in the home. An interpretation of narrative accounts is located within existing theoretical and empirical studies of gift exchange to reconsider the complex enmeshment of this traditional relation in everyday practices. An equivalence between the mantelpiece and the ‘gifts’ it presents in the home as taken‐for‐granted, inherited practices and materials leads to a final discussion focusing on the apparently democratised yet still gendered character of everyday gift practices. In conclusion, a consideration of the gendering of the gift questions whether this traditional, problematic method of accounting for and maintaining relations is desirable.     

SECRET SANTA REVEALS THE SECRET SIDE OF GIVING

This article shows how a secret Santa gift exchange offers unique insights into the nature of generosity and charitable giving. In a dictator experiment modified with features similar to a secret Santa gift exchange, I find that individuals contribute less when their gifts are allocated such that each person gives to fewer recipients. The results are inconsistent with both altruism and warm glow, suggesting that players are motivated by something in addition to these conventional models of generosity. Several alternative models of generosity are shown to be consistent with the experimental findings, all of which imply that, in addition to any positive externalities, giving can also carry a negative externality. ( JEL H41, C92, D62)     

The gift-exchange and reciprocity of women in donor-assisted conception

This paper explores the rhetoric of gift‐exchange as it pertains to the donation of ovarian eggs (oocytes) and participation in surrogate pregnancy arrangements. It does so by drawing on the analysis of interviews with New Zealand women engaged in these practices. Contrary to the view that women's reproductive gift‐giving is intrinsically coercive and exploitative, the narrative accounts of donors involved in this research tend to suggest that women's moral identities as ethical subjects are created in the donative process. Despite this, many anxieties and contradictions involving the exchanges of women involved in donor‐assisted reproduction remain. This paper discusses some of these complexities in light of perceptions and theorisations of the gift relationship.     

“You Still Need to Give Her a Token of Appreciation”: The Meaning of the Exchange of Money in the Sexual Relationships of Out-of-School Adolescents in Rural Southwest Uganda

This article challenges the pervasive assumption that exchanging gifts and money in adolescent sexual relationships is transactional. Data were derived from a multi-method, qualitative sexual health needs assessment of 31 out-of-school adolescents in rural southwest Uganda. Grounded theory analysis allows contextual meanings of exchange to emerge. Adolescents have developed gendered courting and exchange models that parallel marital relationships in this cultural context. Whereas exchange is considered transactional and immoral in some types of relationships, in adolescent relationships, it is not. Young women are not ashamed of, or stigmatized by, the exchange; they are proud of it. The exchange signifies several things: self-respect and a partner's willingness to wait for the relationships to become sexual and, therefore, that they are valued and respected by their partners. This demonstrates commitment from a partner, whose role is as a provider. To expect no gift or to have sex for pleasure are the hallmarks of the worst kind of woman—a malaya. “Need” is the only acceptable rationale for extramartial sex for any woman in this sexual value system. Interventions promoting longer courting and sustained support for one partner would encourage a delay in debut for young women and encourage greater monogamy in young men.     

Supporting public financial management in conflict‐affected situations: Adapting to change in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

This article traces the introduction of public financial management (PFM) processes and systems in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) since they came under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). A number of factors combined make for an extremely challenging context for external actors to catalyse change: non‐existent formal central government functions at the time the PA was established, major restrictions in the movement of goods and people, ill‐designed donor budget support and a very asymmetric distribution of power that favours the status quo. An unelected government, donor‐dependency and a suffocating and chronic (yet low‐level) conflict are increasingly de‐incentivizing long‐term institutional reform. Such a complex problem requires multi‐faceted solutions. This article describes a dual delivery model adopted by the Palestinian Governance Facility (PGF) encompassing adaptive interventions that support longer‐term PFM improvements combined with the introduction of a selective workstream targeting service delivery. This focuses on the management of external medical referrals, which emerged as a political problem. A flexible development assistance delivery model can allow reform areas not anticipated at project design to be tackled as they emerge on the political agenda and open the space for political capital. A constant examination of contextual issues and re‐programming of project activities are offering lessons from which to learn and adapt. The ideal coalition involves flexible, aligned donors and relevant “institutional entrepreneurs” from within local organizations, with direct access to politicians. If high‐level government buy‐in falters, a coalition of technocrats may help construct and broker problems from which to gain political access.     

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.     

Measuring employment vulnerability in Europe

Two of the most notable trends in labour markets in Europe are the rise in the number of atypical job contracts (e.g. fixed‐term contracts and temporary work) and the increase in job turnover. The concept of “employment vulnerability” can be used to describe these trends, which weaken the employer–employee relationship. In this article, the authors measure this employment vulnerability, for individual European countries, by creating two indices – an “employer‐related vulnerability index” and a “job‐related vulnerability index” – which are then aggregated to form an overall employment vulnerability index.