Cover Image

How to design the ask?: funding units vs. giving money

Show other versions (4)

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 significan...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Epperson, Raphael (Author) , Diederich, Johannes (Author) , Goeschl, Timo (Author)
Format: Article (Journal)
Language:English
Published: 2025
Edition:Online ahead of print
In: Management science
Year: 2025, Volume: 71, Issue: 4, Pages: 2830-2846
ISSN:1526-5501
DOI:10.1287/mnsc.2021.00157
Subjects:
Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
Online Access:kostenfrei
kostenfrei
Get full text
Author Notes:Raphael Epperson, Johannes Diederich, Timo Goeschl
Description
Summary: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. Managers need to weigh the potential fundraising benefits of a unit scheme against some important challenges, such as expert handling of the choice of unit sizes. - - This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. - - Funding: Funding by Heidelberg University [Field of Focus IV under the Excellence Strategy] and the Austrian Science Fund [Grant SFB F63] is gratefully acknowledged. - - Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.00157.
Item Description:Online veröffentlicht: 20. Juni 2024
Gesehen am 17.02.2025
Physical Description:Online Resource
ISSN:1526-5501
DOI:10.1287/mnsc.2021.00157

Similar Items