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This paper uses two studies to examine taxpayers' knowledge of tax incentives for charitable giving and also explores the consequences of this knowledge on charitable giving decisions. The first study surveys 600 US taxpayers to establish a baseline understanding of how making a charitable contribution affects taxpayers. In the second study, we conduct an experiment with 201 US taxpayers in which we manipulate the knowledge of taxpayers by providing an educational intervention; we also measure, if, how much is donated in a hypothetical scenario under various tax deductibility conditions. The first study indicates fewer than half of participants understand the basic principles of how charitable donations affect tax liability. Our second study reveals that a short educational video is extremely effective at improving taxpayers' understanding and helping them accurately estimate the tax benefit associated with charitable giving. However, through moderated mediation analysis, we also show that participants who received this educational intervention and accurately estimated the tax benefits in turn decreased their charitable giving. We conclude that the majority of US taxpayers do not understand whether they benefit from certain deductions and may be overestimating the benefit they receive from charitable giving, resulting in giving more than they intend.

This article makes use of pooled time series data to study the demand for donations to charitable organizations in Singapore, a newly‐industrializing country. As in the case of the developed nations, donations are found to be responsive to the price of giving and characteristics of the charities such as size and age. Government social expenditures are found to cause some crowding‐out of private donations. The results imply that the government can reduce its direct role in providing social services, and at the same time meet the rising demand through policy measures to encourage private giving.

The promise of a charitable contribution on behalf of respondents to mail surveys may prove effective in increasing response rates as well as offering cost and administration advantages. This study refines this type of incentive by investigating the effect of the amount of the charitable contribution and the placement of the incentive offer in the cover letter. The research population is drawn from the industrial sector, an important sector which has been studied far less than consumers.

This paper examines how the inferred motives for corporate philanthropy relate to the types of charitable causes supported.

Published data were obtained for 256 publicly traded and private corporations from a variety of sources.

The results demonstrated that a number of motives were not significantly related to total charitable giving, but were related to how charitable funds were distributed to various charitable causes. Thus, the study provides insights on the strategic use of corporate charity as means of achieving various business objectives and advancing a theoretical understanding of corporate philanthropy strategies.

This study only investigated some of the presumed motives for corporate philanthropy. Even for the motives investigated in this study, no attempt was made to examine all the motivational factors that determine the level of need for a specific motive. Thus, while the present study provides some of the first evidence of a relationship between motivational factors and data on the types of charitable causes supported, there are other motivational factors that could be investigated in future studies.

The results have a number of implications for managers of nonprofit organizations such as marketing/targeting potential donors. Additionally, the results could be useful for managers of for profit firms in terms of comparing corporate strategies with competing firms.

The study provides a framework for investigating the relationship between motivational factors and types of charitable causes supported.

Previous studies conducted for developed countries like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have often found charitable giving by individuals to depend on income, the tax price of giving, and other variables. This article makes use of confidential tax file data to conduct a similar study for Singapore, a rapid‐growing newly‐industrializing country. The results indicate that disposable income, the tax price of giving, donor’s age and educational attainment are important determinants of charitable giving by individuals. Donations are found to be income‐inelastic but highly price‐elastic. Thus, lowering the price of giving through tax incentives can be very effective in encouraging private donations to charity.

The position of charities in the UK has become a topic of growing concern. The House of Commons Expenditure Committee in its Tenth Report for the Session 1974–75 reviewed the role of the Charity Commissioners and their accountability. The Goodman Committee reported in 1976 on charity law and voluntary organisation and the report of the Wolfenden Committee in 1978 has stimulated further interest. However, constraints on public expenditure have given the whole question a more topical interest, and particularly within the context of how voluntary organisations might best be stimulated. In the Government's budget for 1980 and 1981 tax relief changes exemplify the interest in encouraging voluntary effort. In 1980, for example, tax relief for payments under deed of covenant was extended to the higher rates of tax subject to a ceiling of £3,000 a year, and the effective minimum period was reduced from seven to four years. Tax exemptions for bequests were doubled and exemption was allowed from development land tax for all disposals of land. In 1981 there was a widening of capital tax relief for trusts for disabled people and an increase in value added tax relief for charities serving the disabled.

Prior research has shown that many donors utilize charity ratings for decisions and they give more to higher rated charities. Because ratings are partly or completely based on financial information, the financial reporting quality of highly rated charities is more critical to donors than that of the poorly rated ones. In this study, we examine whether the financial reporting quality of charities systematically varies with charitable ratings. Examining a sample of human service charities, we find that highly rated organizations are more likely to underreport fundraising expenses and overstate program ratios. Highly rated organizations appear to be exercising accounting discretion to achieve this desirable outcome. Collectively, our findings suggest that stakeholders should be cautious when they use the rating information.

Despite the enormous size of the nonprofit sector, there has been very little empirical research done on the capital structure of nonprofit organizations, and no one has examined the potential effects of borrowing on individual contributions. Using a representative sample of nonprofits, the empirical analysis first determines whether secured or unsecured borrowing by nonprofits influence future contributions. The results for the full sample support a “crowding-out” effect. When the analysis is repeated on a subsample of nonprofits that are older, larger, and more dependent upon donations, the results are more ambiguous: secured debt has little or no effect, while unsecured debt has a “crowd-in” effect. The empirical analysis is then expanded to test whether nonprofits with higher than average debt levels have different results than nonprofits with below average debt levels. The results suggest that donors do remove future donations when a nonprofit is more highly leveraged compared to similar organizations.

Reports on recent marketing strategies that simultaneously demonstrate a sense of social responsibility and satisfies shareholders′ demands for increased profits and market share, also known as cause marketing. Discusses the implementation of cause marketing through three forms of corporate sponsorship and examines consumer motivations and cause marketing strategies. Presents a study on consumer attitudes towards altruism and cause marketing segmentation with coupons. Provides managerial implications and recommendations for implementing strategies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between ethical values and performance in the context of the banking sector in Malaysia.

Based on the philanthropic model, this study posits that firms undertaking zakat and charity are ethical firms. Zakat disclosure index (ZDI) and charity disclosure index (CDI) were constructed to measure ethical values. This study hypothesises that ethical values are positively associated with bank performance. Ethical values (i.e. CDI and ZDI) and financial performance data (i.e. return on assets) were collected from the disclosures made in the annual reports of 50 banks for a period of five years (2010-2014).

A positive association was found between zakat disclosure and bank performance. The results indicate that higher zakat disclosure is associated with greater bank performance. However, no relationship was found between charity disclosure and bank performance.

Considering the limitation of the index used in this study, other dimensions such as corporate governance, sustainability, products and environment can be considered in the development of index to measure ethical values in future studies.

This study offers additional explanation on the relationship between ethical values and performance by examining the role of zakat disclosures that characterize the unique aspects of Malaysian companies.