IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-95-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Green Giving: An Analysis of Contributions to Major U.S. Environmental Groups

Author

Listed:
  • Richer, Jerrell

Abstract

Data are compiled from the tax records of 29 major environmental organizations for the period 1980-1994 to identify factors that influence voluntary contributions. I examine the effects of organizational characteristics, such as fundraising expenditures and alternative sources of revenue, along with the impact of general economic conditions and the political climate. I find that government grants to the organizations had a positive and statistically significant impact on voluntary contributions rather than a crowding out effect. Contributions were price inelastic, where the price is defined as the effective cost to the donor of achieving a one-dollar increase in the provision of program services. Resources devoted to fundraising had a strong and positive impact on donations, suggesting that the environmental organizations fell short of maximizing both total and net revenues. Contributions were also affected by factors largely outside of the organizations' control. Increases in the unemployment rate were associated with reductions in giving, while donations are shown to be greater in years when a Republican President was in office.

Suggested Citation

  • Richer, Jerrell, 1995. "Green Giving: An Analysis of Contributions to Major U.S. Environmental Groups," RFF Working Paper Series dp-95-39, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-95-39
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-95-39.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barrett, Kevin S., 1991. "Panel-Data Estimates of Charitable Giving: A Synthesis of Techniques," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 44(3), pages 365-81, September.
    2. Susan Rose-Ackerman, 1982. "Charitable Giving and “Excessive†Fundraising," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(2), pages 193-212.
    3. Khanna, Jyoti & Posnett, John & Sandler, Todd, 1995. "Charity donations in the UK: New evidence based on panel data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 257-272, February.
    4. Kingma, Bruce Robert, 1989. "An Accurate Measurement of the Crowd-Out Effect, Income Effect, and Price Effect for Charitable Contributions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1197-1207, October.
    5. Jones, Andrew M & Posnett, John W, 1991. "The Impact of Tax Deductibility on Charitable Giving by Covenant in the UK," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(408), pages 1117-1129, September.
    6. Posnett, John & Sandler, Todd, 1989. "Demand for charity donations in private non-profit markets : The case of the U.K," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 187-200, November.
    7. Weisbrod, Burton A. & Dominguez, Nestor D., 1986. "Demand for collective goods in private nonprofit markets: Can fundraising expenditures help overcome free-rider behavior?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 83-96, June.
    8. Barrett, Kevin S., 1991. "Panel-Data Estimates of Charitable Giving: A Synthesis of Techniques," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 44(3), pages 365-381, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:kap:iaecre:v:13:y:2007:i:2:p:171-182 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Julie Hewitt & Daniel Brown, 2000. "Agency Costs in Environmental Not-For-Profits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 163-183, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richer, Jerrell, 1995. "Green Giving: An Analysis of Contributions to Major U.S. Environmental Groups," Discussion Papers 10870, Resources for the Future.
    2. Khanna, Jyoti & Posnett, John & Sandler, Todd, 1995. "Charity donations in the UK: New evidence based on panel data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 257-272, February.
    3. Fuminori Toyasaki & Tina Wakolbinger, 2014. "Impacts of earmarked private donations for disaster fundraising," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 221(1), pages 427-447, October.
    4. Khanna, Jyoti & Sandler, Todd, 2000. "Partners in giving:: The crowding-in effects of UK government grants," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(8), pages 1543-1556, August.
    5. Elias Asproudis, 2011. "Revisiting environmental groups and members’ behaviour: budget, size and (im)pure altruism," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 13(2), pages 139-156, June.
    6. Julie Hewitt & Daniel Brown, 2000. "Agency Costs in Environmental Not-For-Profits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 163-183, April.
    7. Olsen, Jan Abel & Eidem, Jan Inge, 2003. "An inquiry into the size of health charities: the case of Norwegian patient organisations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 457-466, September.
    8. Tinkelman, Daniel, 2004. "Using nonprofit organization-level financial data to infer managers' fund-raising strategies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2181-2192, August.
    9. Dennis Coates, 1998. "Public Sector Crowding Out of Private Provision of Public Goods: the Influence of Differences in Production Costs," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(5), pages 460-479, September.
    10. James Andreoni & A Abigail Payne, 2001. "Government Grants to Private Charities: Do They Crowd-Out Giving or Fundraising?," Public Economics 0111001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Berry, Steven T. & Waldfogel, Joel, 1999. "Public radio in the United States: does it correct market failure or cannibalize commercial stations?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 189-211, February.
    12. Okten, Cagla & Weisbrod, Burton A., 2000. "Determinants of donations in private nonprofit markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 255-272, February.
    13. James Andreoni & Abigail Payne, 2007. "Crowding out Both Sides of the Philanthropy Market: Evidence from a Panel of Charities," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000001769, UCLA Department of Economics.
    14. Cornelli, Francesca & Buraschi, Andrea, 2002. "Donations," CEPR Discussion Papers 3488, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Andreoni, James & Payne, A. Abigail, 2011. "Is crowding out due entirely to fundraising? Evidence from a panel of charities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(5), pages 334-343.
    16. Carmen Marcuello & Vicente Salas, 2001. "Nonprofit Organizations, Monopolistic Competition, and Private Donations: Evidence from Spain," Public Finance Review, , vol. 29(3), pages 183-207, May.
    17. Jade Wong & Andreas Ortman, 2013. "Do Donors Care About the Price of Giving? A Review of the Evidence, with Some Theory to Organize It," Discussion Papers 2013-22, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    18. Duncan, Brian, 1999. "Modeling charitable contributions of time and money," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 213-242, May.
    19. Timm Bönke & Nima Massarrat-Mashhadi & Christian Sielaff, 2013. "Charitable giving in the German welfare state: fiscal incentives and crowding out," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 154(1), pages 39-58, January.
    20. Sonia Manzoor & John Straub, 2005. "The robustness of Kingma’s crowd-out estimate: Evidence from new data on contributions to public radio," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 463-476, June.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-95-39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.