Charitable Organizations Research Articles

Environmental regulations and charitable donations made by polluting companies: Evidence from China

Using a quasi-natural experiment on the adjustment of sulfur dioxide emission levy standards by provinces in China from 2007 to 2014, we apply a difference-in-differences method to examine how stricter environmental regulations affect charitable donations made by polluting companies. Empirical results show that the increase in pollution levy standards increases corporate donations by 0.505%, implying that polluting companies use charitable donations as a strategic action to address the negative impact of environmental penalties. We also find that the political connection, local environmental governance preference, public image and corporate social responsibility strategies significantly affect the relationship between environmental regulations and donations of polluters.

«Фонд имени бывшего начальника Главного тюремного управления тайного советника А. М. Максимовского» (1907–1917): причины создания, деятельность, историческое значение

The purpose of this article is to study the activities of the “Foundation named after the former head of the Main prison department, privy councilor A. M. Maksimovsky”. Research objectives: to identify the reasons for the foundation’s creation, to analyze the main directions of its activities, to determine the list of persons who established this fund, to establish the historical significance of the foundation’s work. The chronological framework of the study is determined by the time of the existence of this charitable organization. The source base consists of unpublished office documents, reference sources, pre-revolutionary periodicals. Clerical documentation from two funds of the Central archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region was used: fund 386 “Nizhny Novgorod prison inspectorate” (1908–1918), fund 1952 “Balakhninsky district branch of the Prison trustee society”. The most important historical sources include reference materials on the highest and central state institutions of Russia (1801–1917), the pre-revolutionary periodical press — the journal of the Main prison administration called the “Prison bulletin”. The author came to the conclusion that “The Foundation named after the former head of the Main prison department, privy councilor A. M. Maksimovsky”, was created on the initiative of representatives of the political elite of the Russian empire. Its founders wanted not only to perpetuate the memory of A. M. Maksimovsky, who died while performing his official duty, but also, in the context of the growing revolutionary movement in Russia, to financially support the families of prison officers killed in their posts.

The Local Press and the BBC

AbstractThe decline in local newspapers is leading to a local news ‘desert’, where there is little or no coverage of important local issues like policing, court cases and council politics. At present, the BBC attempts to fill some of the gap by paying for ‘local democracy reporters’ who work for private local media companies, but this creates tensions and is not a sustainable solution. This article argues that granting small local media organisations charitable status, as in the United States, would also be problematic. Instead, it advocates an independent ‘Local Press Council’.

Being politically connected: corporate charitable giving before and after the 2016 Charity Law

PurposeCharitable giving in China has moved from being subjected to government attention and public skepticism to receiving government encouragement and public support. The role played by political connections in philanthropy is indisputable, although very few studies have explored their association from the perspective of the country’s first Charity Law of 2016. This study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about the 2016 Charity Law and offers an understanding of the future trends in corporate charitable giving.Design/methodology/approachUsing empirical analysis of data collected from listed companies in China, this study analyzes the impact of political connections on corporate charitable giving before and after the 2016 Charity Law. The study adopts three leading theories from previous research into corporate charitable giving and political connections: corporate social responsibility, resource dependence theory and stakeholder theory. A conceptual framework is outlined, and hypotheses are formulated accordingly.FindingsThe results show that political connections have a substantial positive impact on corporate charitable giving, both before and after the implementation of the 2016 Charity Law, which has significantly promoted and increased the amount and proportion of charitable giving. Although the 2016 Charity Law attempted to weaken the political connections of enterprises, the influence of political connections on corporate charitable giving has proved difficult to diminish or eliminate, as charity is dominated by the state.Originality/valueThis study explores the association between political connections and corporate charitable giving from the perspective of China’s Charity Law of 2016.

Can Media reports encourage Donors to give cash instead of in-kind? Evidence from an experiment

Following a disaster that results in a humanitarian crisis, media coverage of the event is frequently followed by surplus donations of goods to charitable organizations. This flow of donations, a post-disaster phenomenon termed material convergence, often consists of large quantities of unsolicited and unwanted items that disrupt the distribution of more urgently needed goods. In this study, we conduct two experiments to evaluate whether this problem can be mitigated by media reports on the benefits of donating cash instead of goods. We find that such reports can significantly increase the proportion of cash donations, potentially reducing the material convergence problem.

The mobile giving gap: The negative impact of smartphones on donation behavior

AbstractWhile charities typically use the same messaging when appealing to consumers on their smartphones and PCs, this approach may backfire. Across three studies, we find consumers are less likely to donate on their smartphones (vs. PCs), a phenomenon we call the mobile giving gap. In study 1, we demonstrate that consumers are less willing to donate real money to a charitable organization. In study 2, we provide process support and demonstrate that the focal effect is mediated by other‐focus. Finally, a field experiment using Google display ads (study 3) replicates the focal effect and demonstrates that the negative impact of smartphones is attenuated when the appeal explicitly focuses on others (vs. the self). This study not only provides additional process support, but also suggests an easily implementable strategy that charities can use to close the mobile giving gap. Taken together, our findings offer theoretical insights related to the mobile mindset and its impact on consumer behavior and highlight that charities should tailor their donation appeals based on device type.

Gift Loop (You Give, They Gain, We Grow)

“Gift loop" is an innovative unwanted stuffs management system designed to address the escalating global challenge of wasting good stuffs. This comprehensive solution integrates technology, community engagement, and sustainable practices to minimize goods wastage at various stages of the supply chain. Key components include a user-friendly mobile application that empowers buyers to make informed purchasing decisions, reducing the likelihood of excess things in households. This fosters partnerships with local charities enabling seamless redirection of surplus goods from businesses to those in need. Through real-time tracking and analytics, the system not only minimizes goods wastage but also creates a positive impact on communities by addressing poverty and promoting sustainable consumption. By decluttering our living spaces and donating items we no longer need, we not only create physical space but also foster a sense of purpose and community engagement. Through the act of donation, individuals contribute to the well-being of others, providing essential resources to those in need and supporting various charitable organizations. This abstract delves into the ripple effects of donating, examining how it fosters connections within communities and promotes a culture of giving. It highlights the significance of small individual actions in collectively addressing social and environmental challenges. Key word: Unwanted stuffs Management, User-friendly website, Real-time, Supply chain efficiency, Minimize poverty.

Black Charity: Rethinking the Subsidy of Black Charitable Donations



How Far Into the Future Can Values Predict Behavior? It Depends on Value Importance

When people say a value is important to them, does it have consequences years later? Recent research found that among people who hold a value to be highly important, there tend to be strong relations between that value and behavior. But does this effect persist over time? The current research found that highly important values correlate with behavior, 1 and 2 years later, significantly more strongly than less important values, using a sample of Australian adults ( n = 2,333 to 3,135). We found this between refined values and indices of value-expressive behaviors, as well as between tradition and universalism values and charitable donations. This adds to our understanding of the nature of values as priorities, showing that highly important values operate differently to less important values by having a stronger role in their effect on behavior, not just in the present but also in the future.

Red tape reform, transaction costs, and corporate social performance: A natural quasi-experiment in China

The question of how government red tape affects corporate social performance (CSP) has received little attention. Based on the transaction cost and institutional theories, we hypothesize a theoretical link between external red tape and CSP. We employ a natural quasi-experiment based on the gradual rollout in some cities of administrative licensing centers, which aimed to reduce red tape and link these with firm-level charitable donation data from 1998 to 2016. Results show that red tape reform improved CSP by reducing corporate efficiency-based transaction costs and that this facilitating effect is heterogeneous in terms of red tape reform characteristics. Our study advances external red tape research by confirming the positive role of red tape reform in fostering socially conscious stakeholder behavior.

"When I was Younger, My Story Belonged to Everyone Else": Co-production of Resources for Adults Living with Craniosynostosis.

Despite growing recognition that congenital craniofacial conditions have lifelong implications, psychological support for adults is currently lacking. The aim of this project was to produce a series of short films about living with craniosynostosis in adulthood, alongside a psychoeducational booklet. The resources were developed using multiple focus groups and meetings attended by researchers, patient representatives, a leading charitable organisation, an award-winning film production company, clinicians, and other experts in the field. An online mixed-methods survey was developed based on prior work to request feedback on the acceptability and utility of the resources from the craniosynostosis community. While data collection to evaluate the resources is ongoing, preliminary results (n = 36) highlight an acceptability rating of 100%. The resources developed represent a step forward in addressing the unmet information and support needs of adults with craniosynostosis and highlight the benefits of co-production in research.

Predicting Food Distribution with Underlying Factors for a Hunger Relief Organization

ABSTRACT Hunger relief organizations often estimate food demand using food distribution data. Leveraging Visual Analytics (VA) and historical data, we examine how underlying factors like unemployment, poverty rate, and median household income affect forecasts for aid recipients’ food demand. Our study reveals that incorporating these factors enhances forecast accuracy. Visual Analytics empowers decision-makers to integrate field knowledge with computational insights, enabling more informed decisions. This innovative approach presents a valuable tool for charitable organizations to strategically improve forecasting precision in the dynamic landscape of hunger relief.

Not Exactly Dragon's Den: Enterprise Challenges can Enhance Psychological Literacy

Enterprise challenges are teaching activities that allow students to develop and pitch a creative idea in response to a real-life challenge, usually posed by a charitable organisation. Students work in teams to develop their ideas and draw on their subject knowledge, as well as entrepreneurial processes, to articulate their product or service that addresses the challenge. These activities have the potential to enhance psychological literacy as they provide an opportunity to utilise psychological knowledge and skills in novel and unfamiliar ways and urges students to find creative solutions to societal problems. This article presents the rationale and structure to design an enterprise challenge in psychology teaching and uses two case studies to show diverse ways of delivering these teaching events. Evaluation data from six previous challenges show that students self-rate their perceived psychological literacy and entrepreneurial orientation higher after having participated in an enterprise challenge. These teaching activities present a propitious way of enhancing psychological literacy in the curriculum and supporting students on their journey to develop as global citizens.

Weak Foundations: The Origins of Women’s Football in Spain, 1894–1931

In 1914 in Spain, the first recorded football matches played by women took place, although the first media mention of Spanish women playing football dates from 1894. As in other countries, Spanish pioneer women footballers were helped by men who acted as coaches, referees and supportive journalists, and the first female footballers played for the benefit of charitable causes. The origin of women’s football in Spain is a multi-dimensional historical phenomenon that encompasses more than Spanish women playing football. Journalists working for Spanish media reported on foreign female teams practicing the sport abroad and/or touring Spain to play football, and Spanish vaudeville actresses parodied women footballers in real pitches or on theatre stages. The years 1894–1931 provided weak foundations to women’s football in Spain. Spanish women played football (if only sporadically) but only two teams are known with certainty to have existed, and no system of regular contests emerged. As time passed, women footballers faced increasingly ferocious criticism from the printed media. The Spanish case shows that after an early and promising start, the historical process of women’s inclusion into the world of football stalled. The process was not linear, as stagnation and steps backwards followed a hopeful beginning.

HISTORY OF FORMATION AND CONTRIBUTION OF CARITAS PHU CUONG IN THE FIELD OF CHARITY TO BINH DUONG PROVINCE

This paper presents the history of Caritas Phu Cuong as a charity and social organization that plays an important role in helping the poor and disabled people of Binh Dương province. In addition, the study also analyze the role and contributions of Caritas Phu Cuong in the field of charity for Binh Duong province in the following aspects: medical examination and medicine distribution for the poor people; life protection program; taking care of lonely elderly people; support people with disabilities to integrate into the community; build a library of books and toys for children; organize compassion classes for children of workers in difficult circumstances; bright path scholarship (Slovakia); environmental protection and human trafficking prevention programs. Finally, the article will discuss the role, functions and scope of activities of Caritas Phu Cuong in different historical periods to adapt to the changes in the socio-political context of Vietnam.

Protecting Confidentiality in the Digital Ecosystem of Humanitarian Aid

Protecting Confidentiality in the Digital Ecosystem of Humanitarian Aid

Naval widows, war work and the port town civic burden: State, civic, philanthropic and self-help in the aftermath of the battle of Jutland (1916)

The naval town of Portsmouth bore a large portion of the brunt of the casualties lost at the Battle of Jutland (1916). The article will explore the precedent of naval philanthropy in Portsmouth and its historical links with naval disasters affecting the town which will lead to an analysis of how the town viewed their civic duty and mobilised local support for war widows immediately after the Battle of Jutland. It will then turn to assess the role of the local War Pensions Statutory Committee and its intersections with charitable organisations such as the Royal Patriotic Fund and Lady Beatty’s Jutland Fund. The analysis will lastly explore some of the stories of the nearly 100-strong Jutland war widows who worked in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard during the war. It will highlight the agency of civic leaders in determining aspects of World War One relief and how war widows were able to navigate and survive their personal tragedies in a naval town.

Neural asymmetry in aligning with generous versus selfish descriptive norms in a charitable donation task

Social alignment is supported by the brain’s reward system (ventral striatum), presumably because attaining synchrony generates feelings of connectedness. However, this may hold only for aligning with generous others, while aligning with selfishness might threaten social connectedness. We investigated this postulated asymmetry in an incentivized fMRI charitable donation task. Participants decided how much of their endowment to donate to real charities, and how much to keep for themselves. Compared to a baseline condition, donations significantly increased or decreased in function of the presence of descriptive norms. The fMRI data reveal that processing selfish norms (more than generous ones) recruited the amygdala and anterior insula. Aligning with selfish norms correlated on average with reduced activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and, at the individual level, with decreasing activity in the ventral striatum (VS). Conversely, as participants aligned more with generous norms, they showed increasing activity in the LPFC and, on average, increased activity in the VS. This increase occurred beyond the increased VS activity which was also observed in the baseline condition. Taken together, this suggests that aligning with generosity, while effortful, provides a “warm glow of herding” associated with collective giving, but that aligning with selfishness does not.

Nutrition and public health in Georgia: reviewing the current status and inspiring improvements: a joint event of the Georgian Nutrition Society, The Nutrition Society of the UK and Ireland and the Sabri Ülker Foundation, October 2023

AbstractGeorgia lies to the northeast of Türkiye, having a western border on the Black Sea. With a population of some 3·73 million, Georgia has a tradition of gastronomic excellence dating back millennia. However, changing lifestyles and external influences have, as elsewhere, led to problems of suboptimal nutrition, and lifestyle-related diseases and disorders prevail. There is considerable scope for improving the focus on public health (PH) and nutrition in Georgia. With this in mind, the Georgian Nutrition Society teamed up with The Nutrition Society of the UK and Ireland and the Sabri Ülker Foundation, a PH charity based in Istanbul, Türkiye, to host a conference and workshops in Tbilisi, Georgia. The primary purpose was to review the current status of PH and nutrition in Georgia with reference to the situation elsewhere, to share examples of best practice and to identify opportunities for improvement. A particular highlight was the presentation of a programme of nutrition education for family physicians recently implemented in Türkiye. This summary of the proceedings is intended as a blueprint for action in Georgia and also to inspire others to consider how PH might be improved via a focus on balanced nutrition.

Swedish Societal Transformation and the Question of Tax Incentives for Charitable Contributions to Civil Society1

Abstract The issue of how the Swedish welfare system should be organized in an increasingly market-driven economy has become an urgent one. The public sector’s retreat from its previous commitments through deregulation and new public management reforms, as well as the state’s ambition of highlighting non-profit actors as potential providers of welfare, can be understood as an illustration of two ongoing processes of transformation in Swedish society. The aim of this article is to place a legal doctrinal research methodology of the Swedish Income Tax Act´s incentive scheme for corporate and private donations to civil society at the intersection of these transformations (welfare and civil society). At the same time, it is in the understanding of the tax legislation and the advantages it can offer individuals, nonprofits or commercial actors, that changes can be brought about in both the patterns and our understanding of charity and giving. A question that arises in this context is whether it is meaningful to speak of a shift in the state’s control of the financing of civil society. The term nonprofit tax shift is introduced in the study to discuss this issue. The article also addresses how ideas, stances and policy initiatives are shaped and articulated in Swedish contemporary politics, including tax policy. The paper argues for the existence of a ressentiment driven discursive frontline, running parallel to the public dialogue on welfareand the role of nonprofits. Additionally, it examines whether these developments in tax policy have affected the notions of justice that were previously a significant consideration in designing the income tax system in Sweden.