Charitable crowdfunding donation-intention estimation depending on emotional project images using fNIRS-based functional connectivity.

Charitable fundraising increasingly relies on online crowdfunding platforms. Project images of charitable crowdfunding use emotional appeals to promote helping behavior. Negative emotions are commonly used to motivate helping behavior because the image of a happy child may not motivate donors to donate as willingly. However, some research has found that happy images can be more beneficial. These contradictory results suggest that the emotional valence of project imagery and how fundraisers frame project images effectively remain debatable. Thus, we compared and analyzed brain activation differences in the prefrontal cortex governing human emotions depending on donation decisions using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, a neuroimaging device. We advance existing theory on charitable behavior by demonstrating that little correlation exists in donation intentions and brain activity between negative and positive project images, which is consistent with survey results on donation intentions by victim image. We also discovered quantitative brain hemodynamic signal variations between donors and nondonors, which can predict and detect donor mental brain functioning using functional connectivity, that is, the statistical dependence between the time series of electrophysiological activity and oxygenated hemodynamic levels in the prefrontal cortex. These findings are critical in developing future marketing strategies for online charitable crowdfunding platforms, especially project images.

The Importance of Philanthropy Foundation for the Future Sustainability of Agriculture and Nutrition: An Opinion Study on Practical Applications, Policies, and Strategies.

Food security, food sustainability, and malnutrition represent critical global challenges. Th urgency of comprehensive action is evident in the need for research collaboration between the food industry, agriculture, public health, and nutrition. This article highlights the role of philanthropy, of a non-profit organization, in supporting research and development and filling financial gaps. The article also explores the interplay of nutrition, agriculture, and government and policy, positioning philanthropy as a catalyst for transformative change and advocating for collaborative efforts to comprehensively address global food challenges. In addition, the discussion also underscores the ethical complexities surrounding charitable food aid, especially in terms of the dignity and autonomy of its recipients. The paper concludes by proposing future directions and implications, advocating for diversified intervention portfolios and collaborative efforts involving governments, businesses, and local communities. Apart from that, the importance of answering and alleviating ethical dilemmas related to food charity assistance needs to be a concern for future studies related to philanthropy because of the significant challenges faced by the contemporary food system, which include food security, health, and nutritional sustainability.

It's not you (well, it is a bit you), it's me: Self- versus social image in warm-glow giving.

Attempts by charities to motivate giving tend to focus on potential donors' altruistic tendencies. However, prior research suggests that approximately 50% of individuals are to some extent motivated by warm glow, the satisfaction received from the act of giving. The satisfaction derives from looking good to themselves (self-image) and/or to others (social image). We conduct an online experiment on MTurk participants (n = 960) with a more realistic simulation of being watched to determine the importance of self- and social image to warm-glow giving. We find evidence that suggests that social image concerns do not increase the likelihood that someone will give but they do increase the amount given; average giving is significantly higher in the treatments when feelings of being watched are stimulated. Our results suggest that charities looking to increase their donor bases might effectively do so by focusing on self-image concerns. Charities wishing to increase the amount donated might effectively do so by focusing on the social image concerns of the donor.

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.

The Interactive Effect of Incentive Salience and Prosocial Motivation on Prosocial Behavior.

Charities often use incentives to increase prosocial action. However, charities sometimes downplay these incentives in their messaging (pilot study), possibly to avoid demotivating donors. We challenge this strategy, examining whether increasing the salience of incentives for prosocial action can in fact motivate charitable behavior. Three controlled experiments (N = 2,203 adults) and a field study with an alumni-donation campaign (N = 22,468 adults) found that more (vs. less) salient incentives are more effective at increasing prosocial behavior when prosocial motivation is low (vs. high). This is because more (vs. less) salient incentives increase relative consideration of self-interest (vs. other-regarding) benefits, which is a stronger driver of behavior at low (vs. high) levels of prosocial motivation. By identifying that prosocial motivation moderates the effect of incentive salience on charitable behavior, and by detailing the underlying mechanism, we advance theory and practice on incentive salience, motivation, and charitable giving.

Testing a decoy donation incentive to improve online survey participation: Evidence from a field experiment.

This study introduces a new randomized field experiment exploring the impact of offering a decoy charity donation incentive together with a monetary reward to increase response rates in an online survey about coronavirus fears. The study used a two-stage approach, starting with a preliminary survey to investigate participant attitudes toward different types of donations. Subsequently, an experiment was conducted wherein a less desirable £2 donation (the decoy) was introduced as an alternative to a £2 Amazon voucher (the target) within the choice set. The study sample consisted of 431 university students. They were split into three groups: a control group with a standard £2 Amazon voucher incentive (216 participants), a decoy group with the target shown first (108 participants), and a decoy group with the decoy shown first (107 participants). We found significantly higher survey completion rates in the decoy than in the control condition (82.3% vs. 74.5%). Notably, an order effect was observed-presenting the target before the decoy led to a higher completion rate (89.8%) compared to presenting the decoy first (74.8%). Importantly, the inclusion of the decoy incentive did not introduce any response bias. This study offers a proof of principle that incorporating a decoy charity donation incentive into the choice set can have a positive impact on survey participation without adversely affecting response behaviour. It demonstrates the potential of such incentives to encourage participants to complete online surveys, even when a small monetary reward is offered.

CORESS is an independent charity, supported by AXA Health, the MDU and the Kirby Laing Foundation.

We are grateful to those who have provided the material for these reports. The online reporting form is available on the website (coress.org.uk), which also includes previous Feedback reports, and via the CORESS app. Published cases will be acknowledged by a Certificate of Contribution, which may be included in the contributor's record of continuing professional development, or which may form part of appraisal or annual review of competence progression portfolio documentation. Trainee contributions are particularly welcome.

Ethical judgments of poverty depictions in the context of charity advertising.

Aid organizations, activists, and the media often use graphic depictions of human suffering to elicit sympathy and aid. While effective, critics have condemned these practices as exploitative, objectifying, and deceptive, ultimately labeling them 'poverty porn.' This paper examines people's ethical judgments of portrayals of poverty and the criticisms surrounding them, focusing on the context of charity advertising. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that tactics that have been decried as deceptive (i.e., using an actor or staging a photograph) are judged to be less acceptable than those that have been decried as exploitative and objectifying (i.e., depicting an aid recipient's worst moments). This pattern occurs both when evaluating the tactics themselves (Studies 1a-1c) and when directly evaluating critics' arguments about them (Study 2). Studies 3 and 4 unpack the objection to deceptive tactics and find that participants' chief concern is not about manipulating the audience's responses or about distorting perceptions of reality. Participants report less concern about non-deceptive manipulation (using emotion to compel donations) and 'cherry-picked' portrayals of poverty (an ad showing an extreme, but real image) so long as there is some truth to the portrayal. Yet they are more sensitive to artificial images (e.g., an actor posing as poor), even when the image resembles reality. Thus, ethical judgments hinge more on whether poverty portrayals are genuine than whether they are representative. This work represents the first empirical investigation into ethical judgments of poverty portrayals. In doing so, this work sheds light on how people make sense of morally questionable tactics that are used to promote social welfare and deepens our understanding of reactions to deception.

Threatening Nonprofit Hospital Tax Exemption: A Better Path Forward.

This Viewpoint discusses regulation of nonprofit hospitals in a way that will advance their charitable purposes without eliminating their tax exemption status.

The Policy Alliance Between Hospitals and Debt Collection Agencies: Content Analysis of Public Comments on Regulations on Billing and Collections.

Significant debate persists about the obligations of nonprofit hospitals toward low-income patients. Many issues pertaining to this subject were discussed during the rulemaking process following the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which set forth rules for hospital billing and collection. In public comments, hospitals, debt collectors, and patient advocates debated what constituted "reasonable efforts" to determine whether a patient qualified for hospital financial assistance before resorting to extraordinary collection actions including lawsuits, wage garnishments, and adverse credit reporting. This study analyzes public comments to the proposed Internal Revenue Service rule on section 501(r)(6). After an initial review of the data, 5 commonly mentioned issues were identified. Respondents were organized into commenter types, and the opinion of each respondent to each issue was coded by 2 separate reviewers. Discrepancies between reviewer determinations were resolved by consensus during follow-up discussions. This analysis revealed a set of common concerns: whether reporting delinquent medical debt to credit bureaus and selling debt to third party buyers should be considered extraordinary collection actions; whether hospitals should be able to use presumptive eligibility to rule patients either eligible or ineligible for financial assistance; and whether hospitals should be held legally liable for the actions of third-party debt collectors. Hospitals and debt collection agencies were allied on most issues, particularly in their shared belief that reporting debt to credit bureaus and selling debt to third parties should not be tightly regulated. Patient advocacy organizations and hospitals had divergent opinions on most issues. The alliance of hospitals and debt collectors in advocating for fewer regulations around collections is part of a history of hospital lobbying to maintain tax-exemption with fewer charity care mandates. This alignment helps explain why third-party debt collection agencies, and aggressive collection tactics, have become commonplace in hospital billing.

Osseointegration Foundation Charity Overdenture Program Study: Part 2.

This assessment evaluated the clinical feasibility of using narrow-diameter implants to support a mandibular overdenture. Twelve patients presenting with an edentulous mandible were recruited from nine dental offices. Each patient received two to four implants in the mandible. The implants were placed without additional bone augmentation, and a total of 36 implants were placed. All sites achieved satisfactory crestal bone stability and soft tissue maintenance 1 year after the final prosthetic restoration. This investigation was supported by the Osseointegration Foundation, working in conjunction with the Zest Anchors implant company. There are three basic valuable activities that emerge from a professional foundation, which were reflected in this case study. They include disseminating information to practitioners, persuading young clinicians to become research investigators, and reaching out to patients in need of treatment who cannot afford it without a charitable opportunity.