Give where you live: A social network analysis of charitable donations reveals localized prosociality

Abstract

Millions of charities compete for donations, yet no empirical study has examined patterns of shared giving behavior across the nonprofit sector. To understand which types of charities are more likely to share donors, we conducted a social network analysis using behavioral data from 1,504,848 donors to 52 large charities in Australia. Three hypotheses were tested, which considered how patterns of shared donations may be determined by charity sub-type (e.g., health, social services, religious), type of beneficiaries (i.e., humans, animals, the environment), or geographic focus (i.e., international, national, regional). Overall, results indicate that patterns of shared giving are strongly shaped by geography: international charities typically share donors, as do charities operating in the same local region. Some—albeit inconsistent—evidence also emerged to support the notion that sub-type may be an organizing principle for donation distributions, but little support was found for the idea that beneficiaries influence shared giving patterns. A key managerial implication is that the practice of supporter list swapping may be most beneficial when lists are shared between organizations that both operate in the same geographic region rather than between organizations that both operate as the same sub-type of charity or both share similar beneficiaries.