How Category Reporting Can Improve Fundraising
Edward Cartwright and
Amrish Patel
No 522, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics
Abstract:
Many fundraisers report donations using categories such as more than £ 1000, more than £ 10,000 etc. One naturally wonders how we should categorise donations and whether category reporting can raise more funds than simple uncategorised reporting. To shed light on these questions, we employ a signalling game framework in which both the donor’s donation and his bene…ts of being in a higher category are determined endogenously.Our analysis suggests that categorised reporting can always improve fundraising. Indeed, we show that both a high and a low category threshold can increase donations. Categorised reporting, especially with a high threshold, can though also lead to the existence of a low donation equilibrium. Fundraisers may then have to choose between: a safer low threshold and a potentially more lucrative high threshold where they would also have to try to coordinate individuals on the desirable equilibrium.
Keywords: fundraising; category reporting; signalling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D82 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2012-01-04
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
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http://hdl.handle.net/2077/28266 (text/html)
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Journal Article: How category reporting can improve fundraising (2013) 
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