How to Design the Ask? Funding Units vs. Giving Money

Johannes Diederich, Raphael Epperson and Timo Goeschl

No 731, Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Unit donations are an alternative fundraising scheme in which potential donors choose how many units of a charitable good to fund, rather than just giving money. Based on evidence from an online experiment with 8,673 participants, we demonstrate that well-designed unit donation schemes can significantly boost giving above and beyond the standard money donation scheme. A decomposition of the underlying mechanisms shows patterns consistent with the conjecture that unit donations increase impact salience and leverage donors’ cognitive biases by changing the metric of the donation space. The potential increase in donations likely outweighs the complications of designing a unit scheme, but requires expert handling of the choice of unit sizes.

Keywords: aid effectiveness; charitable giving; framing; restricted choice; unit donation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Related works:
Working Paper: How to Design the Ask? Funding Units vs. Giving Money (2022)
Working Paper: How to Design the Ask? Funding Units vs. Giving Money (2022)
Working Paper: How to Design the Ask? Funding Units vs. Giving Money (2021)
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