The topic of fundraising ethics has received remarkably little scholarly attention. In this paper, we review the circumstances that precipitated a major review of fundraising regulation in the UK in 2015 and describe the ethical codes that now underpin the advice and guidance available to fundraisers to guide them in their work. We focus particularly on the Code of Fundraising Practice. We then explore the purpose and rationale of similar codes and the process through which such codes (...) are typically constructed. We highlight potential weaknesses with the current approach adopted in fundraising and conclude by offering a series of normative perspectives on fundraising ethics that could be used to review and revise the current code and potentially improve the quality of future fundraising decision making. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 11 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 47-66.

There is an important research tradition concerning the financial implications of social and environmental ethics. This study investigates the short- and long-term financial performance of ventures with explicit environmental commitments seeking to raise funds in equity crowdfunding (ECF) markets. Our results indicate that environmental orientation positively influences short-term funding performance, though only when accompanied by the costly signal of robust corporate governance mechanisms. In the long run, environmental orientation also positively impacts performance, albeit with only weak statistical significance when observed (...) alone. Governance again serves as a positive moderator, but its effect is less significant relative to the short term. However, environmental orientation does feature a strongly significant positive impact on long-run performance when combined with a successfully conducted initial ECF campaign. (shrink)

Social pressure on companies is leading to a growing concern about the corporate relationship with the community. On the other hand, the progressive reduction on governments' grants leads nonprofits to diversify their sources of revenue and to turn to companies for funds. However, there has been a change in this relationship. Their margin for cooperation is now broader, and the level of involvement is deeper. This results in the formation of alliances between them. Based on the literature and the results (...) of a series of interviews with marketing managers at nonprofits and companies, this paper analyses the opportunities and risks associated to this type of partnerships, with a special emphasis in the nonprofits' needs and mission. Secondly, we describe how Spanish nonprofits are hedging the risks. Finally, guidelines and information sources are provided in order to reduce the uncertainty contingent to this type of alliances. (shrink)

“Brave the Shave”, a campaign by the UK charity Macmillan Cancer Support, encourages people to seek sponsorship to shave off all their hair and share the event on social media. Brave the Shave has...

Everyone has an opportunity to contribute to climate solutions. To help people engage with this opportunity, it is critical to understand how climate organizations and fundraisers can best communicate with people and win their financial support. In particular, fundraisers often rely on practical skills and anecdotal beliefs at the expense of scientific knowledge. Fundraisers could be motivated to achieve a substantial boost in funding for climate solutions, if there is evidence of the financial gains that science-based fundraising makes available. (...) In this Perspective, we provide a preliminary foray into such evidence. We bring together findings from philanthropic research and climate psychology to identify what factors can help captivate donors. Then, through an experimental study of a charitable appeal for a climate charity, we show how putting these factors into practice may contribute toward an increase in donated money. This provides optimism that evidence-based fundraising can inspire donors to contribute much-needed resources toward climate solutions. (shrink)

Gender has been shown to affect the persuasiveness of help-self and help-others appeals in fundraising: men prefer help-self appeals, and women help-others appeals. This gender difference has been attributed to world-view differences. Women have a care-oriented world-view and men a justice-oriented world-view – at least in masculine cultures. In feminine cultures, however, both men and women have a care-oriented world-view. The present study investigated whether in the feminine, Dutch culture the culturally adapted help-others appeal was more persuasive than the (...) culturally unadapted help-self appeal for both men and women. Results showed that the culturally adapted help-others appeal was the most persuasive appeal for men and women, who were both found to have a relatively care-oriented world-view. (shrink)

Some recent studies have shown that physical objects present in the environment can affect altruism. This effect was demonstrated in the context of fundraising for animals. Different banks were placed near the cash register in eight bakeries with a message explaining that the solicitation was for animal welfare. The banks were either in the shape of a dog, a cat, a cow, a pig, or a classic cube. Results showed that more donations were given with the dog and cat (...) banks, whereas no difference in donations was found among the three other banks. (shrink)

Given narrow operating margins, health care organizations are increasingly relying on philanthropy to fund operations. Since individuals provide the majority of philanthropic support, many organizations have expanded their “grateful patient fundraising” programs to include current inpatients, both established donors as well as persons of wealth. While this is legally permissible under HIPAA, it raises substantial ethical concerns for potential coercion of vulnerable patients, as well as unequal care stemming from preferential treatment and provided “amenities.” While some have drawn the (...) analogy to the additional comforts provided to first-class airline passengers, this analogy is flawed because of the potential clinical impact of the opportunities and services provided, especially to merely potential donors. From an ethical perspective, such programs should only provide non-clinical amenities to established donors, and at the same time strive for maximal transparency whereby all patients are assured of equal care and are fully informed of the specific benefits associated with any potential donation. (shrink)

Coastal protection is crucial to human development since the ocean has many values associated with the economy, ecosystem, and culture. However, most ocean protecting efforts are currently ineffective due to the burdens of finance, lack of appropriate management, and international cooperation regimes. For aiding bottom-up initiatives for ocean protection support, this study employed the Mindsponge Theory to examine how the public’s perceived economic and cultural values influence their willingness to support actions to protect the ocean. Analyzing the European-Union-Horizon-2020-funded dataset of (...) 709 respondents from 42 countries, we discovered that perceived economic values have negative effects on the tendency of ocean protection supports (i.e., food, transportation, renewable energy, oil and gas, and recreation). In contrast, certain perceived cultural values can help increase the willingness to do so (i.e., mental well-being and sense of identity). However, the effects of perceived cultural values are only moderately reliable. These findings suggest that designing cultural information delivery campaigns can help promote coastal reserve supports, such as fundraisings and preserving the oceans from the community. (shrink)

Public welfare fundraising has been used to collect donations for medical supplies and has played an important role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper studies online crowdfunding donations from the Alumni Association of Wuhan University to North American alumni; donation data are used to investigate how individuals' donation behavior is affected by the previous donation amount and information provided by the fundraising platform. First, our results show that one's donation amount is positively affected by the (...) previous donation amount. Second, the donor's positive sentiment in the message that he or she leaves, as measured by either natural language processing or a manual rating, can affect the subsequent anonymity and messages but not the subsequent donation amount. Third, anonymous donations are much smaller than non-anonymous donations. (shrink)

Corporate Philanthropy is multi-dimensional, differs between sectors and involves both individual and organisational decision-making to achieve business and social goals. However, the CP literature characteristically focuses on strategic decisions made by business leaders and ignores the role of employees, especially those in lower status and lower paid positions. To redress this imbalance, we conducted a qualitative study of employees’ involvement in CP processes in ten workplaces in the South East of England to identify whether and how they are involved in (...) CP decision-making and to capture their perspective on the nature of CP and the benefits generated by such activities. We specifically chose to study workplaces where employees are involved in the actual execution of the CP strategy, prioritising companies with a visible presence on the high street. The results illustrate the benefits of involving employees in CP decision-making, which we argue derives in part from the ‘liminal-like states’ that typify CP activities organised by shop floor staff, involving the temporary overturning of hierarchies, humanising of workplaces and opportunities for lower level staff to prioritise their personal philanthropic preferences and signal their charitable identity to colleagues and customers. Whilst the data also suggest that CP decision-making remains predominantly top-down and driven by profit-oriented goals, we conclude that employees should be involved in choosing charitable causes as well as in designing and implementing workplace fundraising, in order to maximise the advantages of CP for the company and for wider society. (shrink)

When people think about how a situation might have turned out differently, they tend to imagine counterfactual alternatives to their actions. We report the results of three experiments which show that people imagine alternatives to actions differently when they know about a reason for the action. The first experiment ( n = 36) compared reason - action sequences to cause - effect sequences. It showed that people do not imagine alternatives to reasons in the way they imagine alternatives to causes: (...) they imagine an alternative to an action more than an effect, and to a cause more than a reason. The second experiment ( n = 214) and the third experiment ( n = 190) both show that different sorts of reasons have different sorts of effects on how people imagine alternatives to actions. People imagine an alternative to an action (the protagonist went to a ball) less often when they know the reason for the action was an obligation (he had to participate in fundraising) compared to when they know about a weaker reason (he wanted to meet a famous violinist) or no reason. The second experiment shows the effect for a social obligation and the third experiment replicates and extends it to a health obligation. We interpret the results in terms of the possibilities that people keep in mind about actions and their reasons. (shrink)

The HIPAA Privacy Rule is notoriously weak because of its incomplete coverage, numerous exclusions and exemptions, and limited rights for individuals. The three areas in which it provides the most protection are fundraising, marketing, and research. Provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act, pending in Congress, and the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to amend the federal research regulations, awaiting final regulatory action, would weaken the privacy protections for research. If these measures are adopted, the HIPAA Privacy Rule would have (...) so little value that it might not be worth the aggravation and burden. (shrink)

Background: Using the power of Internet, crowdfunding platforms are currently changing the traditional landscape of fundraising. Social media-based IT platforms in particular are bringing the creators of crowdfunding projects closer than ever to potential investors. A large variety of factors function as determinants of individuals' intention to participate in crowdfunding and have an intertwined impact on funding as the ultimate project goal.Objectives: For a better understanding of investor behavior in social media-based crowdfunding projects, this paper covers identifying, analyzing, and (...) classifying general and specific factors of investor motivation, based on the literature in the field.The main focus is the relationship between the affordances provided by social media-based crowdfunding platforms and the psychological determinants of investor motivation in innovative start-up projects.Methods: Using IEEE Explore, Clarivate Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Scopus, we conducted a systematic review of the existing research on the emerging role of crowdfunding as a disruptive technology in financing the start-up innovative projects. The paper explores the main determinants of investor motivation and aims to streamline the success factors in crowdfunding campaigns.Results: A total of 1,216 publications were identified after searching the aforementioned databases and, upon refining the results, 515 articles were considered for the final sample. After reading the titles and abstracts, the sample was reduced to 78 articles that were read in-depth and synthesized in accordance with the defined research questions. The selected articles were clustered into three main categories: general studies, determinants of investor behavior, and success factors.Conclusions: In the new global economy, crowdfunding platforms have become the nexus between the emerging creators of innovative products and services and the necessary funding sources. This connection is possible via a cumulative collection of contributions from multiple investors recruited from the audience of the selected platform, without time or space constraints. However, the determinants of the investment decision are very different in the case of social media-based crowdfunding platforms compared to determinants in the mainstream environment. This paper surveys these motivators and reveals how platform features can be used to persuade individuals to make a financial contribution toward the success of a project. (shrink)

Wider diversity in board member characteristics has been advocated as a means of improving organizational performance by providing boards with new insights and perspectives. With data from 240 YMCA organizations, a board diversity index was constructed and compared to multiple measures of board member diversity. Results revealed higher levels of social performance and fundraising results when board members had greater occupational diversity. Gender diversity compared favorably to the organization's level of social performance but a negative association surfaced for level (...) of funds raised. The diversity in board member age groupings was linked to higher levels of donations. (shrink)

School boosters are tax-exempt organizations that engage in fundraising efforts to provide public schools with supplementary resources. This paper argues that prevailing forms of school boosting are defeasibly unjust. Section 1 shows that inequalities in public education funding in the United States violate John Rawls’s two principles of domestic justice. Section 2 argues that prevailing forms of school boosting exacerbate and plausibly perpetuate these injustices. Section 3 then contends that boosting thereby defeasibly violates Rawlsian principles of nonideal theory for (...) rectifying injustice. Thus, boosting should be presumptively either made illegal or substantially reformed. Finally, Section 4 responds to potential objections. (shrink)

Medical crowdfunding has become a popular choice worldwide for people with unaffordable health needs. In low-income and middle-income countries with limited social welfare arrangements and a high incidence of catastrophic health spending, the market for medical crowdfunding is booming. However, relevant research was conducted exclusively in North America and Europe; little is known about medical crowdfunding activities inother contexts. As a first step towards filling this knowledge gap, this study depicts the realities of medical crowdfunding in a middle-income country China (...) through empirical investigation and ethical analysis. We examine 100 randomly selected medical campaigns from a major Chinese crowdfunding platform and analyse the relevance of the previously identified ethical concerns to the Chinese context. The empirical findings show that Chinese campaigns have low and uneven success rates, require legally the participation of charitable organisations and focus on financial distress and family values in appealing for donations. In addition, the ethical analysis suggests that medical crowdfunding in China shares several ethical concerns raised in developed countries such as the veracity of claims and privacy violation. More importantly, our research reveals the inadequacy of current evidence and the lack of indicators to evaluate ethical issues in practice. Additional research is needed to better understand this fundraising practice across different social and cultural contexts. (shrink)

Motivated by controversies surrounding the continued employment of poverty porn in humanitarian business, we initiated two 2 × 2 × 2 experiments to examine the extent to which humanitarian ads that utilize poverty porn images weaponize fundraising. Informed by negative state relief and Affect Intensity Theory, the two investigations explored the effects on study participants of the inclusion within ad appeals of images of starving children, ad spokespeople of disparate gender and ethnicity, and different types of message frame. A (...) 2 (protest emotive vs. informative message) × 2 (male vs. female announcer) × 2 (White British or Black African ethnicity) between-subjects eye track experiment ( n = 236) revealed that an informative message with a White female announcer attracted the most attention. Next, a survey ( n = 667) was completed, which recorded participants’ levels of affect intensity, advertising skepticism, and donation intention. The results suggested that a White British female announcer was more likely to engage potential donors than a male and/or non-White spokesperson. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of how poverty porn might work in practice. (shrink)

BackgroundSocial media has globalised compassion enabling requests for donations to spread beyond geographical boundaries. The use of social media for medical crowdfunding links people with unmet healthcare needs to charitable donors. There is no doubt that fundraising campaigns using such platforms facilitates access to financial resources to the benefit of patients and their caregivers.Main textThis paper reports on a critical review of the published literature and information from other online resources discussing medical crowdfunding and the related ethical questions. The (...) review highlighted the benefits of crowdfunding as well as the under-exploration of the risk of having patients’ desires and human rights undermined during online fundraising campaigns. Majority of these campaigns get initiated on behalf of the patients, especially the very sick and dependant. The ethical questions raised relate to the voluntariness of informed consent and the possibility of patients being used as a means to an end. Vulnerability of patients may expose them to coercion, undue influence, manipulation, and violation of their human rights. The success of these campaigns is influenced by the digital skills, pre-existing social networks and, the emotional potency. Healthcare is a public good, and online market forces should not determine access to essential health services. The benefits of crowdfunding cannot be subverted, but it can perpetuate unintended injustices, especially those arising from socio-economic factors.ConclusionsPolicymakers ought to monitor the utilisation of crowdfunding sites to identify policy failures and unmet essential health care needs responsible for driving individuals to use these platforms. The upholding of human rights and the fundamental respect of the individual’s wishes is a moral imperative. The need for an ethics framework to guide different stakeholders during medical crowdfunding needs further examination. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, large food banks that collect, warehouse, and redistribute food have become institutionalized across Europe. Although food banks gained increased visibility as important food relief mechanisms during the covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the crisis also highlighted their structural weaknesses and the fragility of the charity-based emergency food system. In particular, many European food banks faced higher costs, lower food stocks, uneven food donations, and lower numbers of volunteers and personnel as demand for food relief (...) increased sharply. Also, many food banks lacked personal health and safety equipment for front-line staff and volunteers, many of whom were vulnerable or aged, thus forcing the closure of some charities due to health concerns. Yet, the impact of the pandemic was uneven across the continent as the covid pandemic strengthened some food banks while others were weakened. To explore these dynamics in detail, this paper utilizes in-depth interviews and surveys of key food bank operators in the Netherlands, Norway, and Greece to analyze how and why European food bank systems fared so differently from the pandemic. In short, the findings in this paper reveal how the Norwegian food bank system leveraged its position to increase fundraising and visibility, while the Netherlands food bank system suffered from long-term structural weaknesses, and the Greek food bank system was further embroiled in government tensions that threatened its existence. The preexisting structure of food bank systems, broader political economy, and historical context significantly impacted how food relief networks fared during the pandemic. (shrink)

This paper describes a community event organized in response to the appropriation and overreliance on the psychiatric patient “personal story” within mental health organizations. The sharing of experiences through stories by individuals who self-identify as having “lived experience” has been central to the history of organizing for change in and outside of the psychiatric system. However, in the last decade, personal stories have increasingly been used by the psychiatric system to bolster research, education, and fundraising interests. We explore how (...) personal stories from consumer/survivors have been harnessed by mental health organizations to further their interests and in so doing have shifted these narrations from “agents of change” towards one of “disability tourism” or “patient porn.” We mark the ethical dilemmas of narrative cooptation and consumption, and query how stories of resistance can be reclaimed not as personal recovery narratives but rather as a tool for socio-political change. (shrink)

Currently, the Internet information and communication network has become an integral part of human life. People use social networks such as Twitter, VKontakte, Facebook, etc., to establish global contacts, exchange opinions, gain knowledge, etc. The active participation of not only individual users, but also information organizations in the entire world space makes it necessary to develop measures that correspond to modern trends in the development of information and communication technologies to ensure national security, in particular, the organization of events related (...) to countering the strengthening of ideas of extremism and terrorism. Countering the spread of aggressive information on the global network is an urgent problem of society and government agencies, this task is solved by filtering unwanted Internet resources. However, terrorist and extremist groups rationally use web technologies to perform various functions, including information dissemination, propaganda, fundraising and extremist missions. In such a situation, the Internet poses a threat to national security. In this paper, we investigate the issue of creating semantic analysis models to identify extremist messages in the Kazakh language. For the study, a proprietary text corpus was assembled and models based on bigrams and word input methods were proposed. According to the results of experiments, the proposed model shows the highest indicators for evaluating machine learning methods. (shrink)

Complexity sciences are one of the most mediatized scientific fields of the last 40 years. While this domain has attracted the attention of many philosophers of science, its normative views have not yet been the object of any systematic study. This article is a contribution to the thin social science literature about complexity sciences and proposes a contribution focused on an analysis of the origins, models, and organization of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), cradle of the field. The paper defends (...) the thesis that the notion of “complex adaptive systems” bears a project of naturalization of society through numerical and evolutionary lenses by promoting a Darwinian and capitalist view of the economy. At the same time, such a view has been embodied in the very way of functioning of the institute, which was conceived as an agile organization in a competitive environment and which relies on a fundraising philosophy that tends to commodify science. From a theoretical viewpoint, this text is anchored in the field of Science and Technology Studies and particularly in the coproductionist paradigm, which theorizes the dynamic entanglement of science and society. In terms of empirical sources, the article is based on interviews conducted by the author, and on the SFI's scientific publications as well as institutional archives. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Publications are primarily a means of communicating scientific information to colleagues, but they are much more than that. Publications in peer reviewed journals are proof of academic competence, are used as a crucial component in evaluation criteria for academic promotion and fundraising and increase the prestige of research centres and universities. The urgent need for publications has also led to abuses in authorship. In the past the single‐author article was the rule, but over the past decades, the average (...) number of authors on scientific manuscripts has drastically increased. In the field of bioethics, however, no research has been undertaken to study whether the percentage of single‐author articles is decreasing, the proportion of multi‐author articles is increasing or the average number of authors per article is increasing. The objective of this research is to analyze these trends in authorship for the period 1990–2003 in peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics. In the nine peer reviewed journals from the field of bioethics we studied, we observed a significant increase of the multi‐author article and of the average number of authors. This is mainly due to the increase in the number of publications with an empirical design. This growing trend is a challenge for the editors of journals in the field of bioethics to enhance awareness about the value and definition of authorship. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper questions the current construction of a 54 metres statue of Maitreya against a 108 metres stupa in the steppe south of Ulaanbaatar, that will stand at the edge of a new ‘eco-city,’ Maidar City. The Grand Maitreya Project was initiated in 2009 by H. Battulga, businessman and MP. The project aims to be ‘one of the largest Buddhist complex in the world,’ and now is a ‘National project for reviving traditional Buddhist education and culture.’ I propose to (...) use religious and art-historical approaches in order to document the ‘birth’ of a Buddhist project, with a special interest in the long process of conception, fundraising and promotional programme. Relying on recent studies on the entanglement of Buddhism, politics, culture, consumerization and tourism that gave rise to new cultual modalities, and on studies of colossal statues recently built in Asia, this article asks what the GMP tells us about modern Mongolian politics and public religious culture. What are the sources of inspiration and foreign references of the GMP? Is it a religious monument that will benefit from the tourist economy, a tourist attraction, or a unifying, nationalist symbol of 21st-century Mongolia? (shrink)

BackgroundRandomized controlled trials (RCTs) are often complex and expensive to perform. Less than one third achieve planned recruitment targets, follow-up can be labor-intensive, and many have limited real-world generalizability. Designs for RCTs conducted using cohorts and routinely collected health data, including registries, electronic health records, and administrative databases, have been proposed to address these challenges and are being rapidly adopted. These designs, however, are relatively recent innovations, and published RCT reports often do not describe important aspects of their methodology in (...) a standardized way. Our objective is to extend the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement with a consensus-driven reporting guideline for RCTs using cohorts and routinely collected health data.MethodsThe development of this CONSORT extension will consist of five phases. Phase 1 (completed) consisted of the project launch, including fundraising, the establishment of a research team, and development of a conceptual framework. In phase 2, a systematic review will be performed to identify publications (1) that describe methods or reporting considerations for RCTs conducted using cohorts and routinely collected health data or (2) that are protocols or report results from such RCTs. An initial “long list” of possible modifications to CONSORT checklist items and possible new items for the reporting guideline will be generated based on the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) and The REporting of studies Conducted using Observational Routinely-collected health Data (RECORD) statements. Additional possible modifications and new items will be identified based on the results of the systematic review. Phase 3 will consist of a three-round Delphi exercise with methods and content experts to evaluate the “long list” and generate a “short list” of key items. In phase 4, these items will serve as the basis for an in-person consensus meeting to finalize a core set of items to be included in the reporting guideline and checklist. Phase 5 will involve drafting the checklist and elaboration-explanation documents, and dissemination and implementation of the guideline.DiscussionDevelopment of this CONSORT extension will contribute to more transparent reporting of RCTs conducted using cohorts and routinely collected health data. (shrink)

As an innovative financing activity, online crowdfunding is characterized by extremely high information asymmetry. To reduce this information asymmetry, crowdfunding companies typically use information presentation, feedback, and other means to convey more information about the fundraising project to investors. Whether the information presentation and feedback affect the investment behavior of nonprofessional ordinary investors is yet to be determined. Moreover, the method by which the information presentation and feedback influence the investment behavior and consequently, the financing performance of crowdfunding companies, (...) has to be identified as well. Currently, research on this subject remains deficient. Therefore, with signal theory and the difference in the cost of information transmission considered, this study classifies the information released by fundraisers on the crowdfunding platform into two categories: low-quality signal and high-quality signal. Projects on the JD.com Crowdfunding website are then used as research samples to explore how the difference in signal quality in the information presentation and feedback of crowdfunding projects influences financing performance from the perspective of investors. The results show that low-quality signals such as video duration, the number of updates, and the number of comments on projects positively affect the success of crowdfunding; meanwhile, crowdfunding experience, which represents high-quality signals, positively moderates the relationship between project video duration, project updates, and crowdfunding success. (shrink)

To advertise or estimate demand, many pre-order items appear on crowdfunding platforms. Few studies have explored backers’ preferences between crowdfunding projects and pre-order items. To analyze backers’ preferences, 1,800 technology and innovation campaigns were collected from theIndiegogocrowdfunding platform. Using the product stage badge, the campaigns in the concept and prototype stages were treated as crowdfunding projects, while those in the production and shipping stages were labeled pre-order items, resulting in 1,305 crowdfunding projects and 495 pre-order items, respectively. Propensity score matching (...) was leveraged to investigate differences in fundraising outcomes between crowdfunding projects and pre-order items. The results indicate that pre-order items have better fundraising outcomes than crowdfunding projects, suggesting that backers are risk-averse on the crowdfunding platform. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the impact of Machiavellian rhetoric on fundraising within the increasingly important context of online crowdfunding. The “all-or-nothing” funding model used by the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, may be an attractive context in which entrepreneurs can utilize Machiavellian rhetoric to reach their funding goal, lest they get no funding at all. This study uses data from 76,847 crowdfunding projects posted on kickstarter.com and develops a dictionary for computer-aided text analysis (CATA) of Machiavellian rhetoric to (...) measure the relationship between the frequency of Machiavellian rhetoric use and crowdfunding performance, operationalized as either reaching a funding goal or the number of backers who funded the project. Machiavellian rhetoric is segregated into eight facets, which are categorized into hard and soft influence tactics. Hard tactics include revenge, intimidation, betrayal, and manipulation. Soft tactics include ingratiation, supplication, self-disclosure, and persuasion. Results reveal that signals of revenge, self-disclosure, and intimidation have negative effects, whereas signals of ingratiation and persuasion have mixed positive effects on crowdfunding performance. Ingratiation is found to increase the number of backers, but not funding success. Conversely, persuasion is found to increase funding success, but not the number of backers. Surprisingly, betrayal rhetoric is positively related to both measures of crowdfunding performance. Thus, this article complements the literature on backer decision-making, entrepreneurial methods, reward-based crowdfunding, and ethics in entrepreneurship by demonstrating how the displays of potentially negative phenomena, such as Machiavellianism, have complex consequences for entrepreneurial outcomes. (shrink)

Using a dataset of corporate philanthropic gifts of $1 million or more, we examine the influence of corporate donors on the performance of recipient non-profit organizations. We find that corporate donors positively influence NPO performance, specifically in the form of higher revenues per employee, program ratios, and fundraising returns. We find little evidence that large foundation or individual donors similarly enhance organizational performance. In additional analysis, we find that large corporate donations matter when the corporation is more likely to (...) have influence over the recipient NPO. These findings suggest that corporate donors provide the monitoring and expertise needed to enhance organizational performance beyond simply providing funding to NPOs. Our results are robust to a two-stage model and propensity score matching to address endogeneity concerns. While prior research has examined the effect of corporate philanthropy on donor organization performance, we contribute to the literature by examining whether corporate philanthropy also improves recipient organization performance. (shrink)

This paper presents a poststructuralist, postcolonial and feminist interrogation of the ‘Girl Effect’. First coined by Nike inc, the ‘Girl Effect’ has become a key development discourse taken up by a wide range of governmental organisations, charities and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). At its heart is the idea that ‘girl power’ is the best way to lift the developing world out of poverty. As well as a policy discourse, the Girl Effect entails an address to Western girls. Through a range of (...) online and offline publicity campaigns, Western girls are invited to take up the cause of girls in the developing world and to lend their support through their use of social media, through fundraising and consumption. Drawing on a wide range of policy documents, media outputs and offline events, this paper explores the way in which the Girl Effect discourse articulates notions of girlhood, empowerment, development and the Global North/south divide. (shrink)

Nowadays, many countries are promoting entrepreneurial education or the “innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity” education. Entrepreneurial education can enhance a nation’s economic competitiveness and give rise to new business. At the moment, entrepreneurial courses are mostly designed by school teachers; however, while school teachers may possess business experience, they lack in entrepreneurial experience. Hence, entrepreneurial education courses call for experts with entrepreneurial experience to contribute to course designs and assist with course teachings. Entrepreneurial education not only improves a student’s entrepreneurial skills, (...) but also enables each student to explore their personal characteristics in order to advance the collaboration efficacy of the team as a whole. This study asked six experts with entrepreneurial experience in the information industry to work with school teachers in course design as well as teaching collaboration. The course design starts with three talk sessions given by professionals who share with students their thoughts and experiences in entrepreneurial products, team organization, fund raising, and profit calculation. Following that, each student is asked to share their own thoughts on entrepreneurial products and start searching for team members and planning their project. During the course, each team receives six individual advising sessions from the professionals, with topics ranging from product modeling, feasibility, product market estimation, fundraising methods, and profit calculation. The experts also provide each team member with personal trait analysis. Last but not least, the course invites five management-level industry professionals to play the role of venture capital investor and evaluate each team’s product modeling based on their presentation. This study reviews the grades given by the experts as well as the evaluations given by the three industry managers to assess whether the entrepreneurial education course’s student entrepreneur teams satisfy the industry’s expectations. (shrink)

Contemporary universities are characteristic of an evident proliferation of corporate discourse. A sole concentration on the production of new knowledge and the education of students does not ensure the prosperity or even survival of universities any longer, and equally important are the admission of elite students, the outcome-based evaluation of academic performance, the establishment of alumni network and also fundraising. This article examines how and to what extent this trend of marketization has invaded the order of discourse of Chinese (...) universities. The research methodology combines the paradigms of critical discourse analysis and the tenets of critical genre analysis [Bhatia VK Towards critical genre analysis. In: Bhatia VK, Flowerdew J and Jones RH Advances in Discourse Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 166–177], with particular attention paid to the notion of genre, interdiscursivity and conversationalization. The texts examined include ceremonial speeches, regulatory documents, insiders’ accounts and field notes. Analytical results show that the trend of marketization, in spite of a potential threat for academic integrity, does facilitate the institutional restructuring and transformation of universities in the context of Mainland China. (shrink)

We examine the impact of employing a female, versus a male, leader on future (t + 1) donations and operating margin using a sample of 4387 unique nonprofit organizations (NPOs) between 2011 and 2014. Using two-stage and matched sample designs, we find that NPOs headed by female leaders report higher future operating margins but lower future donations. We interpret these findings to mean that female leaders are more focused on fiscal responsibility than fundraising. We also find that female leaders (...) with past fundraising experience attenuate lower future donations, and at commercial nonprofits, female leaders with prior for-profit experience contribute to even higher operating margins. Moreover, while female leaders identified as the founder of the organization increase future donations, they have no effect on future operating margins. Collectively, the results of our study should increase nonprofit boards’ confidence in hiring female leaders thereby narrowing the gender disparity in leadership in the nonprofit sector. This study expands the extant literature by providing initial evidence on the effects of female leaders in NPOs thereby contributing to research exploring gender, diversity, management, and nonprofit executives. (shrink)

Charitable foundations are being called upon to operate in more pen and democratic ways and to involve a more diverse constituency. This unprecedented study details the inner workings of a democratically organized philanthropy, where funding decisions are made by community activists. Susan A. Ostrander spent two years doing intensive field research at the Haymarket People's Fund -- a small, Boston-based foundation. Based on a philosophy of raising and giving away money called "Change, Not Charity," the Fund makes grants to local (...) grassroots social change organizations. The world of social movement funding comes alive with Ostrander's descriptions of grantmaking and policy meetings, donor events, and the day-to-day work of the Fund staff. Within this fascinating behind-the-scenes account, Ostrander argues that the "social relations of philanthropy" are more important and more varied than previously understood. Written at a time when Haymarket was dealing with crisis, this book tells a story of organizational change as the Fund moved from an informal collective to a more formal structure; it is also the story of a struggle to build a multi-race, multi-class, gender-equal organization. Ostrander details these ongoing struggles and addresses the larger issue of how fundraising can itself be a kind of social movement organizing among the progressive people with wealth who continue to be Haymarket's main donors. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article examines the complexity of narratives of space and time which support the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, and the consequences for patients disadvantaged by deficits in social cognition or socioeconomic status in areas relating to literacy. In the context of demonstrating the significance of narratives of space and time in the diagnostic process for multiple sclerosis, the article discusses new strategies for treatment that engage the arts and humanities and presents a brief history of the disease and current diagnostic (...) criteria, before discussing the MS Society of Great Britain and Ireland's awareness and fundraising campaign from the 1980s, and Tom Kempinski's play Duet for One, inspired by the life of cellist Jacqueline du Pré. The conclusion addresses the urgency of heightening patient and clinician awareness of how the presentation, interpretation, and sharing of narrative accounts of disease influence health outcomes and makes suggestions about how to adjust for these biases. (shrink)

“Would you like to contribute to XYZ charity by adding a dollar to your bill today?” Point-of-sale campaigns for fundraising are common to grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants and warehouse clubs. Commonly referred to as ‘checkout charity,’ these fundraisers have generated over $4.1 billion in contributions for nonprofits over the past three decades. Yet little research has focused on the ethicality of this type of campaign. To address this need, we analyze the issue using behavioral ethics and normative theory. We (...) consider three stakeholder perspectives, including the nonprofit initiating the campaign, the business hosting the campaign, and the donor. Often ethical theories are seen as competing for primacy rather than being complementary perspectives in choosing the best action. We demonstrate that ethical discernment results in a richer analysis when consulting multiple frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to provide a set of ethical considerations for individuals to draw upon when devising and donating to checkout charity campaigns. This analysis will serve as a conceptual resource for scholars, practitioners, and students of nonprofit and for-profit management. (shrink)

Chidiac, Anthony Saint Teresa of Calcutta made a significant impact on Christian spiritual thought and practice in the twentieth century by dedicating her entire life to serving the poorest of the poor. Her spirituality is based on the premise that through serving the marginalised and disenfranchised in our society we are in essence ministering to Christ and consequently helping to 'quench his thirst'. Her effective work made her one of the most highly respected and venerated figures of recent times, and (...) it made her a readily acknowledged saint by Christians and non-Christians alike. She generated a tremendous amount of publicity by her determination to help the poor and to love the unwanted, the most vulnerable in society. At times she was criticised unfairly by some people regarding her conservative stance on issues, her fundraising activities and her effectiveness in dealing with the issue of poverty. Nevertheless strong yardsticks of her success are the countless awards she received and her ability to establish a dynamic congregation of 4500 dedicated nuns, active in over 130 countries, who continue to make a real difference to our world. (shrink)

The church is called to be a tangible messenger of hope in society. Communities of poverty, especially, need a church that carries its mandate both through proclamation and through deed. This research is a case study of a team located in South Africa that is part of an international missional order called InnerCHANGE. The latter focuses on discipleship and the nurturing of local leaders who are community builders in areas of poverty. This focus is expressed through practical ministry initiatives. The (...) latter necessitates finances through the team does not always have. A desire to overcome its financial challenges led it to decide to get some training in financial literacy, so that it can improve its fundraising efforts. This training was provided by a finance broker. The latter started his teaching with personal finances before going into organisational finances. He believed that good personal financial stewardship leads to good corporate financial stewardship. The outcome of this training led ICSA staff and the board of directors to diversify their fundraising efforts and to set the target of saving 15% of its income. The work is still in progress for reaching this target. However, for 2 years in a row, ICSA has been making some good progress in increasing its income and savings. This article concludes by advising the body of Christ serving from below to pursue training in financial management so that it can strengthen its checks and balance system which could lead to sustainability.Contribution: This article contributes to the on-going discussions about financially sustainable models of the church from below in Africa so that the church can remain an important role player in serving local communities practically. It uses InnerCHANGE South Africa as a case study of such efforts. (shrink)