Small is Beautiful - Experimental Evidence of Donors' Preferences for Charities

This paper studies the effect of information about a charity’s size on individuals’ donations to that charity. We conducted a framed field experiment with a non-student sample, in which subjects had the opportunity to donate to various charitable causes. The results show that if subjects are to choose between large organizations with high annual revenues and small organizations with low revenues, they prefer the small organizations, supporting thereby the predictions of the impact philanthropy model.

Borgloh, Sarah, Astrid Dannenberg and Bodo Aretz (2013), Small is Beautiful - Experimental Evidence of Donors' Preferences for Charities, Economics Letters 120 , 242-244