CHARITABLE DONATIONS

Charitable organizations are very important part of the modern-day society, because these
organizations are engaging in valuable services with the desire to change the world. Charitable
organizations focus their work on a large number of felids namely supporting individuals who
suffers from poverty, domestic abuse, homelessness, and many other social problems of human
society.

There are large number of non-profit organizations such as the United Nations organization which
span their operations throughout the world, regional organizations such as Dakota Medical
Foundation focus their work on a specific region and food pantries or homeless shelters that have
operations limited to a city. By their nature, charitable organizations have the opportunity to
expand their operations in many sectors or geographical regions (e.g. United Nations) or a very
specific cause in one city (e.g. homeless shelter).  These organizations provide tremendous
support to the needy in the society by channeling money, education, medicine, food, water,
shelter and any other resources from their donors to the needed segments of the society through
providing a platform for collective action towards a better world. Since there are a large number
of organizations that span the world and countless areas of support, the main issue that every
charitable organization comes across is securing donations to fund its operations. With the
competition in the market for donations, charitable organizations have to distinguish themselves
apart from other organizations. Therefore, to achieve this goal, these organizations require
branding techniques to market themselves and secure funds from their donors.

A large portion of the donations for non-profit organizations comes through fund raising events;
although these organizations do not consider themselves as brands they have been known to have
a consistent style and actions that allow them to have a steady social picture. A charity donation
can also benefit an individual or a business economically and socially when a charity publishes
the names of its donors. This acts as a medium of marketing to enhance the public figure of the
donor thus increasing his economic and social benefits.
It is especially likely that donors who receive positively framed messages, designed to make
them feel good, are statistically more likely to respond than those donors offered primarily
negative messages, designed to make them feel bad. The donors will donate more when they feel
that the recipient is similar to themselves. If a charitable donation can enhance self-satisfaction in
donors, it increases the amount of the donation.
According to the above discussed there are many factors that drives donor behavior including
age, sex, annual income, education, size of the household (area, members etc.) and tax benefits.
Furthermore, there are many studies that identify the donor behavior through psychological
characteristics such as big five factors of personality, trust, past experience, empathy, social
recognition etc. this extensively recognizes the importance of a sound brand image for a charity
in order to secure donations to support its operations. Donor’s ideal brand image of a charity, a
charity can increase the amount of donations received.

Further, this confirms the importance of branding in the market of charitable donations, because
it asserts the importance of understanding the characteristics of donors to increase charitable
donations through successful branding. Congruence between ideal and actual characteristics of a
charity perceived by donors and show that age and emotional stability are determining factors of
congruence, where age shows the strongest relationship to congruence. This shows that as the
donors’ age increases, donors seek out charitable organizations that align with their ideal brand
image of a charity. Although, emotional stability shows a statistically significant result the
coefficient is very small compared to age.
In conclusion it is important for charitable organizations to have a sound brand personality that is
close to ideal brand personality characteristics of their donors.