Taking from charity? Political contributions and the market for charitable funds

Stephanie Karol

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 230, issue C

Abstract: How do charities respond to cyclical increases in competition from political campaigns? This paper is the first to estimate the elasticity of charities’ fundraising expenses to political contributions, and the first to use charity-level data to estimate the cross-elasticity of private charitable giving to political contributions. When political donations rise, they lead the average charity to cut back on fundraising. This is costly: political contributions crowd out private charitable giving at a rate of $0.37 per dollar. After netting out the negative effect of political contributions on fundraising, political giving crowds charitable giving in, rather than out. Substantial heterogeneity is documented across cause areas.

Keywords: Charitable giving; Political contributions; Charitable fundraising (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D64 D74 H42 L3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:230:y:2025:i:c:s0167268124004918

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106877

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