Donors Choosing Recipients Themselves Are More Generous

Donors tend to be more generous if they can choose the recipients or purpose of their donations by themselves. This is confirmed by a field experiment the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the University of Bonn arranged. The experiment was conducted in 57,325 households in Germany. The findings indicate that it is worth while for charitable organisations to give their donors a certain scope for decision-making.

The experiment was conducted by ZEW and the University of Bonn in cooperation with a German charitable organisation which supports primary health care in five developing countries. Within the winter mailing campaign in 2007/2008, two different letters were sent to a total of 57,325 households. Like in the previous years, one group of potential donors were simply asked to donate to the organisation. The households in the other group were given an additional option to choose one or more countries as recipients of their donation. The response rate in both groups was around 12 percent. 3.4 percent of the households with the choice of the donation’s recipients used this option. On average, they donated 160 euro, i.e. 25 euro more than the donors who did not choose a country.

Previous donation campaigns confirm the findings that people donate more money if they can choose the recipients of their donation themselves. Statistics from 2005 and 2006 show that households, which chose a certain country as recipient of their donation in winter 2007/2008, gave less money in previous years when they did not have the option of choosing the recipients.

"The experiment’s findings are especially interesting for charitable organisations. The findings indicate that the amount of donations can be increased if potential donors have to option to choose the recipients," says Bodo Aretz who conducted the experiment at ZEW.

For further information please contact

Dr. Bodo Aretz, Phone: +49 (0)621/1235-367, E-mail: aretz@zew.de