IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v71y2025i4p3216-3231.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Online Fundraising Increase Charitable Giving? A Nationwide Field Experiment on Facebook

Author

Listed:
  • Maja Adena

    (Research Area Markets and Choice, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, D-10785 Berlin, Germany)

  • Anselm Hager

    (Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany)

Abstract

Does online fundraising increase charitable giving? Using the Facebook advertising tool, we implemented a natural field experiment across Germany, randomly assigning almost 8,000 postal codes to Save the Children fundraising videos or to a pure control. We studied changes in the donation revenue and frequency for Save the Children and other charities by postal code. Our geo-randomized design circumvented many difficulties inherent in studies based on click-through data, especially substitution and measurement issues. We found that (i) video fundraising increased donation revenue and frequency to Save the Children during the campaign and in the subsequent five weeks, that (ii) the campaign was profitable for the fundraiser, and that (iii) the effects were similar independent of video content and impression assignment strategy. However, we also found some crowding out of donations to other similar charities or projects. Finally, we demonstrated that click data may be an inappropriate proxy for donations and recommend that managers use careful experimental designs that can plausibly evaluate the effects of advertising on relevant outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Maja Adena & Anselm Hager, 2025. "Does Online Fundraising Increase Charitable Giving? A Nationwide Field Experiment on Facebook," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(4), pages 3216-3231, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:4:p:3216-3231
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2020.00596
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.00596
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2020.00596?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:4:p:3216-3231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.