Increasing charitable giving in the developed world

Charitable giving has continued to increase in economic importance in the developed world. For instance, in the United States, more than $335 billion—over 2 per cent of US GDP, was contributed to philanthropic organizations in 2013 alone. According to the World Giving Index, around 50–60 per cent of households in the developed world give to charity. The supply of charitable dollars is met by a high demand—billions are spent on fundraising activities annually. Field experiments have allowed us to learn about the different motivations of potential donors, as well as to identify the best strategies that non-profit organizations can use to attract funds. In this article, we discuss the work in this field to date. Then we suggest using selection into ‘the ask’ as a promising new direction for future research. We discuss strategies that charities can use in practice to take advantage of new research findings. Finally, we complement our discussion by presenting new evidence on giving behaviour in a door-to-door field experiment we conducted with over 1,000 households in a mid-sized city in the United States.