Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Woods Bowman
DePaul University
Between 1994 and 1998, U.S. charities allocated 87% of their spending to
programs, with the balance going to general management and fund-raising
(General Accounting Office [GAO], 2002, p. 8).1 This figure, which is based on
self-reported information, may not be accurate because most charities, large and
small, assign a low priority to measuring functional expenses and allocate costs
among categories in a variety of ways (Wing & Hager, 2004). In any case, it is an
average; some charities spend a trivial amount on programs. Two examples:
Note: I am grateful to Ms. Jan Stinson, executive director of the Chicago Federal Executive
Board, and Mr. Tony Padgett, then of the United Way of Chicago, for their assistance in provid-
ing data used in this study, also to Dolores Kalayta for programming assistance, and Rich
Steinberg, Mark Hager, Wes Lindahl, Dan Tinkelman, and an anonymous referee for reading an
earlier draft and making helpful observations. I alone am responsible for remaining errors of
omission and commission.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2006 288-310
DOI: 10.1177/0899764006287219
© 2006 Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action
288
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[1] Identifying new donors may be more time consuming and thus
more expensive than contacting previous contributors. [2] An organi-
zation may conduct a telemarketing campaign simply to test-market
new fundraising ideas without any certainty that its campaign will
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290 Bowman
prove efficient and productive. [3] An organization may also achieve goals
other than raising funds—such as public education or recruitments of
volunteers—at the same time that it is conducting a fundraising cam-
paign. Those other benefits will not be reflected in the revenue received by
the charity. [4] A newly created charity or one advocating new programs
or new ideas may experience greater fundraising costs without any cer-
tainty that its campaign will prove cost effective. (Spitzer 2001, para. 11;
numbers in brackets added)
No one has written more often or more forcefully arguing the irrelevance
of fund-raising ratios than Steinberg (1983, 1986a, 1986b, 1988-89, 1990, 1991,
1992, 1994). He pointed out that optimizing donated funds requires balancing
costs and returns at the margin, whereas a fund-raising ratio (fund-raising
expense divided by total expenses) is an average that provides donors with
no useful information about marginal costs and returns. He (1994) illustrated
with the following example of alternative solicitation budgets:
The first budget of $10,000 will produce $50,000 in donations and pro-
vide a 500 percent ratio return ($40,000 actual net return). The second
budget of $100,000 will produce $200,000, a 200 percent ratio return
($100,000 actual net return). If a charity wished to maximize the rate of
return on its fund-raising investment, it would choose the first budget;
if it cared about maximizing its resources for providing charitable ser-
vices, it would choose the second. . . . Except by an incredible coinci-
dence, the level of solicitation that best supports service provision is
different from the level that maximizes the ratio of return or the level
that minimizes the fundraising cost ratio. (p. 14)
Steinberg (1986b) also argued that when the marginal contribution is very small
relative to total contributions, 100% of a marginal dollar will be spent on
programs, independently of the overhead ratio. Finally, as a technical matter,
large gifts and bequests cause volatility in aggregate contributions and, hence,
in overhead ratios. Coupled with a significant time lag between fund-raising
activity and receipt of a large gift, researchers should expect difficulty in detect-
ing a relationship between fund-raising expenses and giving (Lindahl, 1994).
Practitioners and scholars also caution against judging efficiency from
administrative expenses. The Maryland Association of Nonprofits asserted
that
Rooney, Hager, and Pollak (2003) gave evidence that (a) administrative costs
are inversely related to organizational size; (b) as organizations grow older,
their administrative expenses rise relative to total expenses; and (c) increas-
ing dependence on government grants as a source of revenue similarly
increases administrative expenses relative to total expenses.
The overhead ratio affects the price of buying a dollar of charitable out-
put, that is, price of giving (Callen, 1994; Okten & Weisbrod, 2000; Posnett &
Sandler, 1989; Tinkelman, 1999, 2004; Weisbrod & Dominguez, 1986). The
price of giving is typically defined as
where MTR is the donor’s marginal tax rate and OR is the overhead ratio for
the receiving charity, namely the sum of its fund-raising and general admin-
istrative expenses divided by its total revenue.4 However, comparing prices
of anything—whether commodities or giving to charity—is frustrating and
pointless. Debate over the overhead ratio recalls the classic question from the
early days of economics: Why are useless diamonds so expensive while nec-
essary water is so cheap? As with this example, there are many good reasons
why the price of one commodity might differ from another (e.g., diamonds
are scarce, water is plentiful); however, at the margin the quantity demanded
of any normal product or service always falls when its price rises, and vice
versa, other things being equal. It should be the same with charity.
Assume rational prospective donors consider the balance (trade-off)
between overhead ratio and absolute yield when they choose between two
charities. In equilibrium, for idiosyncratic reasons, some donors give to one
charity and some to the other. Now assume the two charities increase their
fund-raising budgets by the same amount. Their overhead ratios will change
relative to each other, except in the unlikely event that both raise money
in exactly the same proportion as before. Donors who find the trade-off in
the new equilibrium acceptable will continue to donate as before. Other
donors—marginal donors who just barely accepted the trade-off between
rate of return and absolute yield before the change—will switch to a less
“expensive” charity with a similar mission.
Researchers should be very cautious interpreting the results of cross-
sectional studies comparing donations to various charities with their overhead
ratios. Such comparisons are like comparing the prices of different goods such
as diamonds and water. Because administrative costs are inversely related
to organizational size (Rooney et al., 2003), an observed inverse relationship
between overhead ratios of various charities and their total donations may
simply be the result of scale economies in producing charitable services.
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292 Bowman
1. Prospective donors are rational and risk averse. This is the standard
model of an economic decision maker.
2. Donors, in the aggregate, have more information about any given
charity than a single individual, and their knowledge can be inferred
from their collective behavior. This assumption is borrowed from the
rational expectations model of securities pricing.
3. Charities solicit donations from various prospect pools in descending
order of their likely productivity. This is equivalent to assuming
diminishing returns to fund-raising expenses.
4. For any given level of programming there exists a unique optimal level
of administration. The assumption of an optimal level of administrative
cost is novel and requires explanation. There are two views of adminis-
trative costs. One view is that they are wasteful—featuring excessive
salaries, numerous perquisites, and unnecessary staff. Thirty-six per-
cent of the public strongly agrees or mostly agrees with the statement
that charities are wasteful.5 Another view holds that administration
enhances organizational capacity, which is a good thing. Chang and
Tuckman (1991) argued that robust administrative expenses enhance
the viability of organizations by giving them a cushion in case of fiscal
adversity. There is evidence that, on average, charities do not increase
marginal spending on programs when resources increase; however,
when resources decrease, charities cut programs (Roberts, Smith, &
Taranto, 2005). This is consistent with charities operating with a subop-
timal level of administrative capacity. These opposing views of admin-
istrative overhead imply the existence of an optimal level of spending
on administration relative to programs between the extremes—a level
that likely differs from organization to organization. Below the optimal
level of spending on administration, increased spending causes increas-
ing returns in organizational effectiveness, whereas above the optimal
level, increased spending is accompanied by diminishing returns in
organizational effectiveness. It is reasonable to suppose that changes in
effectiveness would be observable.
294 Bowman
will capture the differential drift in favor of local charities. In other words,
when the total number of dollars contributed increases, as it does in each of
the years studied, a positive coefficient on the local dummy indicates local
charities are capturing more of the additional dollars on average, and a neg-
ative coefficient indicates they are capturing fewer.
Intuitively, large donors should be more careful and more responsive to
changes in overhead ratios because they have more money at risk. Tinkelman
(1998) found this to be true for corporate and foundation philanthropy.
On the other hand, individuals may act differently from corporate entities.
People who give a lot of money to a particular organization may be strong
boosters, uninterested in overhead ratios. A new study, based on focus group
research, by Public Agenda (Arumi, Wooden, & Johnson, 2005), concluded
that “most small donors appear to base their giving on a gut-level interest in
a cause and a faith in the people involved. Very few of those interviewed care-
fully researched their giving decisions” (p. 5). Donor interest in overhead
ratios was not specifically plumbed; however, it would seem that small
donors especially rely on trust and instinct rather than objective metrics.
Without theory as a guide, it is an empirical question.
The exploratory hypothesis is stated in the positive; the null hypothesis is
that there is no relationship.
The same equations can be used to test this hypothesis as to test Hypothesis 1,
but with the universe restricted to large donors. If they are more responsive,
the absolute value of the coefficient on the price of giving in these regression
equations will be larger than corresponding coefficients in the full sample.
Unfortunately, with the CFC data, it is impossible to control for donor’s
income and marginal tax rate, so small differences may be masked by the
error term. Furthermore, the amount that nearly all donors give is very
small. It is possible that at very low levels of giving people care little about
organizational financial details such as overhead ratios. This experiment will
use a threshold for large donors of $500 (the 97th percentile).
Another question that these data might shed light on is whether local char-
ities have any special advantage because of their proximity to donors. To par-
ticipate in the CFC, local charities must document a substantial presence in
the local campaign area, whereas national and/or international charities need
have active programs in only 15 states, which may not include Illinois, the site
of the current experiment. During the study period, the number of local char-
ities participating in the Chicago CFC fluctuated between a high of 530 and a
low of 383, whereas the number of national and/or international charities
remained fairly close to 1,300. There are two possible proximity effects. On
the one hand, “[d]onors may have alternative means of monitoring local
organizations, as their service efforts may be more visible” (Tinkelman, 1999,
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296 Bowman
p. 140), which should make them more sensitive to changes in the price of
giving of local charities. In this case, the coefficient on the price of giving
when the sample is restricted to local charities should be larger in absolute
value than the coefficient on price of giving when it is restricted to national
and/or international charities. On the other hand, commitment to a local
charity might be stronger a priori because the donor may know the founder
or executive director, or because it is the only organization with a narrowly
defined mission that the donor cares about deeply. In other words, a donor
may be in a better position to monitor but may not have the inclination, and
so would be less responsive to changes in the price of giving local charities.
Again, theory provides no guidance, so this research resorts to the exploratory
hypothesis that there is a positive effect.
If this is true, the coefficient on the price of giving in a sample of local charities
should be less in absolute value than the coefficient on the price of giving in a
sample of national/international charities. The null hypothesis is no difference.
Finally, by drawing on other data sources, it is possible to explore the
question of whether other characteristics of a charity influence giving.
Theory is meager; however, Weisbrod (1988) proposed that total donations
are a metric for the output of public goods.9 People might feel more inclined
to donate to organizations that produce public goods because they are more
likely to experience some benefit. On the other hand, the free-rider effect
might be stronger, which would imply that they would be more likely to
withhold support. People might have a preference for large organizations
because they feel safety in numbers, or they might prefer small organizations
because their donation will have greater impact. Because theory does not
favor any particular option, the exploratory hypothesis is that organizational
characteristics exert a positive effect. This is difficult to test because major
variables such as mission, total donations, and size change over long peri-
ods, but very little from one year to the next. The best the current research
can do is to examine whether average changes in donations vary by organi-
zational characteristic, holding changes in the price of giving constant.
THE EXPERIMENT
298 Bowman
DONOR FILE
In 1999, there were 38,845 designations, 37,333 in the following year, and
35,824 in 2001. Because employees may make multiple designations, the
number of designations in any year exceeds the number of donors by 10,000
to 15,000 (see Table 1). Each record contains (a) an encoded donor identifica-
tion number to preserve anonymity while providing consistency over time,
(b) year of designation, (c) a code indicating lump-sum or payroll deduction,
(d) an account number for the designated charity, (e) the name of the desig-
nated charity, (f) a location code, and (g) the amount of the designation.
Unfortunately, the file has no demographic data about donors. According to
Table 1, in 1999 the average designation was $113, in 2000 it was $120, and in
2001, it was $129. There are major outliers, including several designations
exceeding $1,000 with one as high as $4,000. Many designations cluster
around $2. Because the smallest payroll deduction is one dollar per pay
period, the smallest designations were either lump-sum payments or partial-
year payments from newly hired or departing employees.
Account numbers associated with each charity were used to consolidate
the donor file, resulting in an almost unduplicated count of 2,095 designated
charities during 3 years. It is “almost” unduplicated because 31 charities had
multiple account numbers, such as the American Cancer Society, which had
four; multiple accounts were consolidated for analysis. If a charity partici-
pated in the campaign but received no contributions (i.e., it was not desig-
nated) in a given year, it was absent from the donor file for that year but may
have participated in subsequent campaigns.
CHARITY FILE
% Change
1999 2000 2001 1999-2000 2000-2001
Source: Unless otherwise noted, data are derived from donor records supplied to the author.
a. Data for 1999 and 2000 from CACFC donors guides.
b. Interpolated from 2000 and 2002 data; 2002 data from CACFC.
c. Calculated from data in this table.
d. Excludes unmatched account numbers.
29% of the participating charities. The most popular charity that year was the
United Negro College Fund, which received 2,020 designations. Second was
the American Red Cross with 1,344 designations. Notably, 847 designa-
tions were not for any particular charity, which were the third most-popular
option. In all, $102,691 (2.2%) of collections were undesignated (CFC, 2002).
Undesignated amounts are distributed to charities in proportion to the des-
ignations of all other employees. By not designating the charity to receive
their money, donors are in effect allowing their coworkers to vote on how
their gift should be allocated. However, because campaign costs are paid out
of gross receipts before allocations are made to designated charities, gifts not
designated to a particular charity merely help underwrite the campaign’s
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300 Bowman
MERGED FILE
Each record in the merged file contains the name of the participating char-
ity, and in each of 3 years its overhead ratio, its number of designations, and
the total amount designated.12 As many matches as possible were made elec-
tronically; however, hundreds of charities remained unmatched and the
account numbers had to be supplied manually by comparing the unmatched
names with charities that had account numbers. This laborious process
resolved more than one half of the unknown accounts. Still, it was impossible
to uniquely identify account numbers for 587 participating charities in the
donor file, even after close inspection described above. An unknown, but
large, number was undesignated and, hence, received no money. Gaps in the
data cause the N in various statistical tests involving the merged file to be less
than the number of designated charities in the charity file alone.
Chicago is the third largest campaign in the continental U.S. outside of
greater Washington, D.C., area.13 Table 1 gives summary data on the 1999, 2000,
and 2001 Chicago Area CFC campaigns. Although the number of employees
solicited declined between 1999 and 2001,14 the size of an average designation
climbed steadily from $113 to $129, which pushed up total collections. Year-
over-year differences between mean overhead ratios for participating charities
and designated charities are not significant at the p = .05 level.
The charity file contained no information on the National Taxonomy
of Exempt Entities (NTEE) categories, so I drew a 25% sample and manually
added to each record an NTEE code and data from GuideStar on total expen-
ditures and donations. Table 2 shows the codes of those charities that make up
at least 2% of designated charities. Advocacy and legal organizations, which
are 11% of designated charities, have the highest average overhead ratios
(15%). The most popular designated charities are either disease-related or
human services, comprising 30% of designated charities, 36% of the designa-
tions, and 35% of the dollars contributed. There is no relationship between the
overhead ratio and popularity, as measured by the number of designations.
Ranking the NTEE categories on these variables gives a Spearman rank order
coefficient that is statistically indistinguishable from zero (t = .32), which is
consistent with the proposition that the level of the overhead ratio (as opposed
to changes in the ratio) is not a critical factor in a typical decision to give.
The first analysis (Tables 3a and 3b) counts the cases in each cell of a 3 x 3
matrix where the rows indicate whether the number of designations to a
charity increased, stayed the same, or decreased, and the columns indicate
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% of % of % of Mean
NTEE Purpose Designated Charities Designationsa Dollars Overhead in %a
whether the charity’s overhead rate went down, stayed the same, or went
up. Rows and columns are arranged so that a negative relationship between the
corresponding variables is displayed by a preponderance of cases arranged
along the principal diagonal (northwest to southeast). Fortunately for
hypothesis testing, there is considerable year-to-year variation in overhead
ratios. The correlation between changes in overhead ratios for the years 1999
to 2000 and for 2000 to 2001 is –.341, which is significant at the p = .01 level
(two-tailed test). In other words, if a charity’s overhead ratio went up in a
given year, it was likely to go down the next year, which is an expected out-
come. Otherwise, overhead ratios would tend to be bimodally distributed.
If overhead rates were the only thing that mattered to donors, and theory-
based Hypothesis 1 is true, cells on the principal diagonal would be the only
ones populated; however, because the total number of designations declined
in both periods, there will be a bias toward the top row of the tables. If the
overall reduction in designations is concentrated in just a few charities, the
bias will be slight. Although only 44% of the cases in Table 3a and 50% in
Table 3b behave according to theory, the principal diagonals in both tables
are strong enough to produce negative correlations significant at the p = .01
level (−.12 in Table 3a and −.22 in Table 3b). There appears to be a bias toward
the top row in Table 3a, but not in Table 3b.
Next in importance to the principal diagonals are the central column and
row on each table. The central column shows all cases in which the overhead
ratio was constant. Nevertheless, about 8% of the charities experienced
changes in the number of designations without apparent stimulus. The center
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302 Bowman
Pearson χ2 = 20.0**
Spearman correlation = −.115**
Pearson χ2 = 59.0**
Spearman Correlation = −.224**
1999-2000 2000-2001
Coefficient SE Coefficient SE
1999-2000 2000-2001
Coefficient SE Coefficient SE
304 Bowman
factors that influence their giving decisions are much more important in the
aggregate. Signs on the dummy variable for local charities, used as a control
variable, tend to be negative; however, only one half are significant.
Tables 5a and 5b show estimates of the demand for charitable giving, as
measured by the total number of dollars designated to a charity, in each of the
two time periods. First differences in total dollars designated and the price of
giving are in Table 5a, whereas in Table 5b the first differences are between
the natural logs of total dollars designated and the price of giving. Again, the
preferred specification involves logarithmically transformed variables. In all
four equations, the price of giving coefficient is negative and significant at
the p = .01 level, offering further support for the theory as expressed by
Hypothesis 1. The price of giving coefficient in the transformed equations is
the elasticity of demand for charitable giving. In all cases, demand is highly
elastic, meaning that a change of 1% in the price of giving causes total desig-
nated dollars to change in the opposite direction by more than 2%. This effect
is caused, in part, by incumbent donors changing the level of their giving, but
also by marginal donors switching to “lower priced” providers of similar
charitable services. Signs on the dummy control variable for local charities are
negative only in the double log specification, one of which is significant.15
Because the corresponding price of giving coefficients on Tables 4b and 5b
are dimensionless, they can be compared without having to adjust for dif-
ferent scales. The average designation changed 70% between the years 1999
and 2000 in response to change in the price of giving.16 This is a large effect.
Because donors who give above-average amounts would have the most
impact, an effect of this size hints that above-average donors might be more
sensitive to changes in the price of giving than other donors, per Exploratory
Hypothesis 2. Unfortunately, this is not a direct test of Exploratory Hypothe-
sis 2 and must be regarded as inconclusive. A direct test of Exploratory
Hypothesis 2 uses a truncated donor file restricted to “large donors”—that is,
donors in the 97th percentile who gave $500 or more to any single charity,
namely about $40 per monthly paycheck or $20 per biweekly paycheck. There
were 409 large donors in 1999, 447 in 2000, and 462 in 2001. The maximum
number of large donors that any charity claimed was 89 in 1999, 64 in 2000,
and 82 in 2001. The average number of large donors per charity was between
two and three for all years (excluding those with 0) with standard deviations
near 5. Again, the dependent variable was the difference in the natural log of
number of designations, and the independent variable was the difference in
the natural log of the price of giving. The price of giving coefficient was –.69
for the period 1999 to 2000 and insignificant (t = 1.10), and .04 for the period
2000 to 2001 and insignificant (t = .05). Adjusted R2 were negative in both
cases. Perhaps large donors have strong personal reasons and are unaffected
by information about overhead ratios, or perhaps their incomes are suffi-
ciently high that $500 is of little consequence, or maybe the sample size is too
small and the error term is too large. In any case, a direct test does not support
Exploratory Hypothesis 2, so the regression results are not tabulated.
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1999-2000 2000-2001
Coefficient SE Coefficient SE
1999-2000 2000-2001
Coefficient SE Coefficient SE
306 Bowman
the natural logs of price of giving as the dependent variable with control
variables for size of organization and donations as a percentage of total rev-
enue. Total expenditures and donations were entered as a series of dummy
variables indicating the quartile to which a charity belonged (omitting the low-
est quartile) to detect possible nonlinearities. When parameter estimates were
calculated stepwise, only the price of giving coefficient entered in the period
1999 to 2000 and the price of giving coefficient and local dummy entered in
2000 to 2001. The adjusted R2 did not materially improve. Consequently, the
results are not tabulated.
CONCLUSIONS
ratio changed. This could be brand loyalty, consumer ignorance, the result of
offsetting effects of omitted variables, or just a statistical anomaly. Second, the
popularity of the “not-designated” option hints that people give just to be giv-
ing, not necessarily to support a particular mission. Perhaps, as Andreoni’s
(1990) “warm glow” theory suggests, the act of giving itself increases a donor’s
utility, independent of the use to which his or her gift is put. Alternatively,
social pressure may be responsible.17 More research is clearly needed.
Organization characteristics, like size and reliance on donations, appear
to be largely irrelevant. However, what is relevant? Do donors use informa-
tion on overhead ratios they are given? If not, why? Did these donors have
prior association with the charities they designated to receive their gifts?18 If
so, what kind? Were they influenced by marketing campaigns that targeted
federal employees during the CFC campaign? If so, what techniques were
particularly successful? Why? More research is needed on these questions.
We have probably gone as far as possible with data in the public domain.
Further progress in our understanding of these issues requires custom tai-
lored experiments that probe how donors form their perceptions of charities,
what information is most relevant to giving decisions, under what circum-
stances donors explicitly seek information, where they search, and how far
in advance of making a gift they begin their search.
Notes
308 Bowman
logarithmic transform of fund-raising expenditures and the lagged ratio of administrative costs
to total costs.
8. Charity “watchdogs” (e.g., American Institute of Philanthropy, Wise Giving Alliance,
Charity Navigator, Maryland Association of Nonprofits) do not agree on a method of calculation.
See Bowman and Bies (2005, p. 43).
9. A pure public good is one that is nonrival and nonexcludable. Nonrival means that more
than one person can consume the good without interfering with anyone else’s enjoyment of the
same good at the same time. Nonexcludabilty means that a person cannot be excluded from con-
suming the good if they do not pay.
10. In 28 large cities that have Federal Executive Boards, it wears the mantle of the Local
Federal Coordinating Committees (LFCC). Chicago is one of these cities.
11. The organizations themselves develop this information subject to LFCC verification
using IRS 990 informational returns. Although eligible charities are required to submit audits,
these documents are not used in verification.
12. Account codes in the donor file were not the same as charities’ identification numbers
published in the Donor Guide, which complicated the process of merging them. An attempt was
made to merge based on charities’ names; however, it was not effective because of multiple
account codes (see Donor File above), and minor differences (e.g., and in one file, & in another).
Furthermore, the donor file contained only the first 40 characters of a name, and different char-
ities might have the same first 40 characters; this was a frequent source of confusion between
national/international charities and their local chapters.
13. The greater Washington, D.C., area consists of the Capital Area Campaign plus cam-
paigns in eastern Virginia and central Maryland. Other campaigns larger than Chicago’s are San
Diego and San Antonio.
14. The number given for 2001 in the Detail Location: Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) Results
(Combined Federal Campaign, 2002) is incorrect according to Jan Stinson, executive director of
the Chicago Area Federal Executive Director, who recommended averaging the 2 years adjacent
years (personal communication with author, February 24, 2006).
15. Experiments measuring demand should hold the conditions of supply constant; how-
ever, if we are willing to assume that the Chicago CFC contributes only a small portion of the
income of all participating charities, then receiving charities can expand their output at nearly
zero marginal cost, which is equivalent to holding conditions of supply constant. Under these
conditions, the estimated price of giving parameter measures only demand effects, and is not
distorted with supply effects.
16. Let total dollars designated to a charity be D = NG, where N is the number of designations
and G is the average size of designation. If we let ∆ indicate a change in a variable, then ∆D/D =
∆N/N + ∆G/G. Dividing this equation through by ∆P/P, gives the price of giving coefficient on
Table 5b ([∆D/D]/[∆P/P]) on the left and, on the right, the price of giving coefficient from Table 4a
([∆N/N]/[∆P/P]) plus (∆G/G)/(∆P/P). Thus, (∆G/G)/(∆P/P) = 1.54 – 2.24 = –.70. The percentage
change is found by multiplying the decimal fractions by 100.
17. “Warm glow” is simply a name Andreoni (1990) gave to a mental state to explain why
donors might gain utility without reference to the impact their gifts are likely to have on the
beneficiaries. In mathematical terms, social pressure serves the same function as warm glow.
18. Brown and Lankford (1992) showed that donations of money and time are complementary,
which implies that, other things being equal, volunteers are more likely to give than nonvolunteers.
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Woods Bowman, an associate professor in the graduate program in Public Services Management at
DePaul University, is an economist.