Natural philanthropy: a new evolutionary framework explaining diverse experimental results and informing fundraising practice

Abstract

Philanthropic decision-making is important both for its potential to provide insight into human behaviour and for its economic significance. In recent years, investigations of charitable-giving behaviour have expanded substantially, including explorations from a variety of disciplinary perspectives such as economics, marketing, sociology, public administration, anthropology, evolutionary biology, political science and psychology. These investigations have resulted in a wealth of experimental results with each investigation accompanied by a discussion of potential theoretical implications. Most commonly, the various theories employed are helpful with regard to the narrow result of the investigation, but are not always useful in explaining the wider universe of results. Taking a comprehensive view of charitable-giving behaviour is thus limited to either employing a wide assortment of overlapping theoretical models, selectively applying each to fit individual phenomena, or merely referencing an ad hoc assortment of potential motivations. This circumstance suggests the value of a more unified, comprehensive approach to understanding the complete range of experimental and empirical results in charitable giving. This article proposes a comprehensive framework for philanthropic decision-making using a simple evolutionary approach incorporating interrelated fitness-enhancing strategies. The framework is then used in an extensive review of experimental and other empirical results in philanthropic decisionmaking. This review supports the framework proposition that giving depends on the tangibility of a gift's impact on altruism (direct or code), reciprocity (transactional or friendship) and possessions relative to its alternatives. Five example principles of fundraising practice demonstrate the practical applicability of this proposition: advance the donor hero story (tangibility of direct or code altruism); make the charity like family (friendship reciprocity); provide compatible publicity and benefits (transactional reciprocity); minimize perceived loss (possessions); and manage decision avoidance (relative to its alternatives). Understanding philanthropic behaviour from this perspective provides explanation and guidance for a wide range of charitable-giving behaviours and fundraising practices even in areas less amenable to traditional experimental investigation, such as charitable bequests and major gifts.

If Someone Else Pays for Overhead, Do Donors Still Care?

“…When donations go entirely toward program spending, donors might hence have a higher perceived personal impact. From a rational accounting perspective, this distinction should be irrelevant, but by framing the connection between the donor’s gift and the resulting benefit differently, although the objective benefit remains the same, the tangibility of the benefit is viewed differently (James, 2017). If this theoretical argument holds, we should corroborate the finding from Gneezy et al (2014) and therefore hypothesize:…”

Applying a stakeholder management approach to ethics in charitable fundraising

“…Financiers expect financial return; donors generally expect none, or little, making gifts for a number of possible reasons (see Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011). Focusing on the needs of donors has support theoretically: whether Schervish & Haven's identification theory of care (Schervish & Havens, 1997; Schervish & Havens, 2002); focusing on social identities (e.g., Drezner, 2009; Shang et al, 2008); thinking in terms of reciprocity (e.g., Adloff, 2016; Alborough, 2017); or using an evolutionary framework (James, 2017), there is excellent reason to believe that caring about what your donors care about makes good sense for fundraising. There is also empirical evidence that focusing on the interests of donors helps foster longer term relationships (Waters, 2008, 2010) and is associated with people being more likely to take action on making a gift (James, 2016).…”

Avoiding the ask on social media: investigating how process-related factors influence SNS donation avoidance

“…emotions), outcome expectations are also critical to individuals before they make decisions and behave in a certain way (Bandura, 1982). In the domain of charitable giving, two types of expectations have been identified: altruistic outcome expectation and egoistic outcome expectation (James, 2017; Konrath and Handy, 2018; Liu et al , 2018). Altruistic outcome expectation refers to expecting that one's actions will help other members of society, while egoistic expectation refers to expecting that one's behaviors will bring personal benefits.…”