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.     

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.     

Surveying the major gifts literature: Observations and reflections

This article gives only cursory attention to generally accepted and widely known principles that provide the foundation and the context for the major gifts effort; instead, the author focuses more broadly and strategically on the critical importance of mission, quality, leadership, and prestige; the dichotomy between annual and major gift fundraising; and the need for an empirically derived and theoretically driven model of fundraising and philanthropic behavior to inform the major gifts effort.     

The moral of the gift

The author analyses the gift as a moral phenomenon. Based on a research on gift-giving in family networks, the article shows that one cannot apply to the gift the moral rules normally based on duty. A “true” gift must be free not only from economic obligation but also from moral duty, and in some way from any obligation. It is as if something more than what the rules prescribe were essential to the gift, as defined by social agents. This is why one can define the ideal-type of gift as a positive debt system voluntarily maintained by its partners.     

Do other-regarding preferences change with age? Evidence from a gift exchange experiment

A series of laboratory experiments investigate potential differences in other-regarding behavior by age of participant. Specifically, a gift exchange experiment is conducted with eighth graders, high school seniors, undergraduates, and working adults, all with similar observable demographic characteristics. All groups exhibit significant levels of gift exchange. Eighth graders exhibit significantly less gift exchange than other groups whereas the responses of other groups do not appear to differ. The findings indicate that other-regarding behavior is present, but still developing in adolescents and undergraduate subjects in gift exchange experiments exhibit similar behavior to adults with similar observable characteristics.     

Social Network Challenges to Reducing Consumption: The Problem of Gift Giving

Social networks are typically associated with recruitment tactics. In this article, I offer an additional perspective on social networks as a constraint to social change and an under‐recognized challenge to reducing consumption. I draw on 45 interviews with: voluntary simplifiers, religious environmentalists, and green home owners. Informants, failing to withdraw from gift‐giving networks, instead (1) negotiate a reduction in gift giving, (2) green gift giving, and (3) attempt to transform gift giving into a tactic for lifestyle change. Rather than viewing social networks as channels for cultural cohesion, I argue that we need to better conceptualize the way culture and networks are co‐constituted by tactics of influence within areas of contention.     

礼物交换:“崇高主题”还是“支配策略”?

上个世纪80年代,在法国学术界,围绕莫斯和布迪厄之间礼物研究的分歧展开了一场声势浩大的争论。本文试图对这一学术公案予以分析。礼物交换所彰显出的社会原则是莫斯和布迪厄社会理论思考的出发点。在莫斯那里,礼物主要体现出一种社会团结的意向;而在布迪厄那里,则直接指向了有关支配方式的思考,换言之,基于时间间隔,行为的策略和象征性支配成为可能。我们将这两种礼物研究范式分别称为社会范式和权力范式。     

A relational approach to responsibility in organizations: The logic of gift and Lévinasian ethics for a ‘corporeal’ responsibility

The main purpose of this article is to classify some of the main theories on responsibility in organizations using a relational approach, according to the logic of gift. Since the logic of gift can be quite ambiguous and ambivalent, it will be necessary to clarify what this logic means from a philosophical point of view. In order to reach this purpose, a Lévinasian approach to responsibility will be used. After having clarified the concept of responsibility here adopted, the article will focus on relationships and their meaning. I argue that many of the theories on responsibility in organizations lack of the complexity and pluralism that the logic of gift can provide for the comprehension of relationships of responsibility. After having mapped the main theories on responsibilities in organizations using the logic of gift, the article will propose an evolutionary path to develop existing or new theories according to this approach.     

The unacceptability of money as a gift

In four studies, subjects were asked whether money was an acceptable gift. In the first study, students stated that they would find it less acceptable to give their mothers a cheque than a gift token or a selected present; and that if they had to send a cheque they would spend more than twice as much on it as on the other sorts of gift. The second study confirmed these results on a larger, non-student sample of young adults, and also showed that it made no difference whether a cheque or cash was specified. In the third study, students were asked about the reasons why they would find it unacceptable to give or receive a cheque as a present. The most important reasons focused on the time and effort that ought to be spent on selecting a present, and the possibility that money sent as a gift might be used for mundane purchases. In the final study, mothers of students were asked about the kinds of presents they would find it acceptable to receive: they indicated that a cheque would be less acceptable than a selected present of a gift token, but they did not expect more to be spent on a cheque than on other gifts. Taken together, these results strongly confirm casual impressions that money is unacceptable as a gift in some contexts, implying both that the element of social exchange is crucially important in gift-giving, and that even in modern societies money is not a universally acceptable medium of exchange.     

Words speak louder than money

Should one use words or money to foster trust of the other party if no means of enforcing trustworthiness are available? This paper reports an experiment studying the effectiveness of two types of mechanisms for promoting trust: a costly gift and a costless message as well as their mutual interaction. We nest our findings in the standard version of the investment game. Our data provide evidence that while both stand-alone mechanisms enhance trust, a gift performs significantly worse than a message. Moreover, when a gift is combined with sending a message, it can be counterproductive.     

Olive Oil,Chocolates and a Bright Blue Sweater: Power Relations and the Implications of Gifts in the Field

This article seeks to examine and elucidate researcher-participant gift exchanges in the field, a topic given little attention in the relevant literature. The effects and implications of gift exchange on social research are analyzed. In one case, gift-giving in the field is perceived as a violation of the interviewer–interviewee context, while in the other, it is found to reflect asymmetry and mutual dependence between researchers and participants. The article addresses issues and concerns evolving from gift exchanges in the field, including attempts at balancing reciprocal relations, the implication of gift-giving on the establishment of research context, and on researcher-participant relations in the field.     

A note on the strategic aspects of the transfer paradox

It is well known that an agent can be hurt by accepting a gift, the donor of which is made better off. Why then does the recipient accept this welfare reducing gift? This paper examines the strategic aspects of the paradox. It shows that if the recipient refuses the gift, it would suffer an even greater loss of welfare since there is a mutually advantageous reallocation between the donor and a third agent. It is shown that the recipient does have a viable alternative strategy: it could destroy some of its endowment, raising its welfare level and reducing that of the potential donor.     

Gifts,commodities, and social relations: A Maussian view of exchange

Sociologists have drawn on anthropological studies of gift exchange systems to help develop models of exchange in social life. This paper presents a reconsideration of the relatively neglected Maussian view of gift and commodity exchange, drawing on both Mauss'sThe Gift and recent work by anthropologists who have extended his ideas. The Maussian model illustrates the partiality of some sociological models of exchange by showing that people, objects, and social relations form a whole that is created and recreated in different ways when people transact with each other in gift and commodity relations. The paper concludes with an illustration of the utility of Mauss's model, showing how it can extend recent sociological discussions of the social meaning of objects.     

Traditional Gift Giving Among Pacific Families in New Zealand

The Pacific population in New Zealand is socially disadvantaged and over-represented in adverse social and health statistics. A cohort of 1,376 mothers of Pacific infants were asked about traditional gift commitments and the effect that these commitments had on the financial situation in their household. Sixty-two percent reported that they and/or their partner usually gave to their family or church, with 66.5% of this group giving to family in New Zealand, 58% to family in the Pacific Islands, and 75.9% to their church. Fifty-nine percent of these mothers reported that this gift commitment made their household financial situation more difficult. Factors significantly associated with gift giving are discussed, together with implications of these findings for Pacific families living New Zealand.     

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.     

The Melancholic Name

How to think the gift of the name that announces the finitude of the named and the name itself, insofar as finitude is not reducible to the negativity of the concept and sense, a Gift to the other insofar as the other concerns us with his finitude? There is, as it were, a note of melancholy that adheres our finite existence, which also intimates the very gift that is given to the other. The whole question of the ethico‐political, understood here as being‐towards‐others, is at stake here. The article reads Schelling, Heidegger and Benjamin to think anew the place of language as gift and its concern with the thoughts of the political.     

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.”

     

Corporate philanthropy: Gift or business transaction?

Much of the terminology and behavior surrounding corporate philanthropy reinforces the perception of it as a form of business transaction, rather than gift exchange. While the analogy to a business transaction is accurate in many ways, this article illustrates what is lost by avoiding the metaphor of the gift in reference to corporate philanthropy. By exploring the cultural meaning behind the gift-exchange relationship, the author reveals the social functions of gift exchange in corporate philanthropy. Language that avoids this strong parallel deprives us of provocative insights into corporate philanthropy as a modern extension of complex relationships among individuals and institutions that have been practiced throughout history. The author develops these parallels in order to counterbalance the trend toward treating and thinking about corporate philanthropy strictly as a business transaction.     

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.     

Meanings of Chocolate: Power and Gender in Valentine's Gift Giving

Abstract  Valentine's Day as practiced in contemporary Japan constitutes a cultural puzzle. Comparison of Japanese and American Valentine's Days using data collected through interviews with twenty Japanese and twenty Americans reveals three customs peculiar to the Japanese holiday: an emphasis on chocolate; exclusively women-to-men gift giving; and the prevalence of giving "obligatory chocolate" within offices. Although chocolate companies' promotional activities go a long way toward explaining the first custom and arguably the second, women giving chocolate to male colleagues and supervisors is an adaptation of the original formula made by the participants themselves. Because Valentine chocolate is a highly symbolic gift with the message "I admire you," whether or not they receive chocolate matters to men. By imbuing the gift with meanings which men find difficult to ignore, women are able to enjoy a temporary power over men. The study strongly asserts the cultural freedom people possess in creating new meanings from available codes.