Does Public Campaign Funding Crowd Out Private Donation Activity? Evidence from Seattle's Democracy Voucher Program

During each election cycle, the city of Seattle distributes four \$25 vouchers to every registered voter, which may be donated to and redeemed by campaigns for city office. Through a difference-in-differences research design, we study the causal effect of Seattle's program on various outcomes in city council elections in the first two cycles after implementation, with two comparison groups drawn from other cities in Washington and California. We find that the program led to an approximately 62-100% increase in total contributions and a 400% increase in number of unique donors. The effects on dollars and donors are entirely driven by small donors, defined as those who contribute less than $200 to a campaign. We find statistically insignificant evidence of decreases in private donations, although our point estimates suggest moderate-to-substantial crowd-out ratios. We further show that the program led to a 76-86% increase in candidates for city council. These results provide some of the first causal evidence on the effect of decentralized public campaign finance schemes, while also speaking to broader questions measuring the effects of money in politics, campaign regulation, and the effects of public funds on private giving.

Effect of Government Grants on Private Giving to East Asian Nonprofits

For effective financial management, social work managers must clearly grasp the relationship between government grants and private contributions, which is frequently characterized as crowding-out effects. Crowding-out effects have been investigated for various types of nonprofits in the U.S., and the results have been mixed. In spite of its popularity in nonprofit research, the theory has not been applied to nonprofits serving minority communities. This is the first pilot crowding-out study looking at East Asian nonprofit organizations, including Chinese, Korean, and Japanese-American nonprofits in the NY and NJ metropolitan area (n = 410). Through a panel analysis, the current study found a significant crowding-in effect for donations to East Asian-American nonprofits (p < .01). The relationship between government grants and private giving was different for each East Asian-American nonprofit organization. Particularly, donors of Chinese and Japanese-American nonprofit organizations donated more money when their charities received more government grants (p < .05). In contrast, we found crowding-out effects for Korean-American nonprofit organizations, but the result was not significant (p > .05). The estimated crowding-in effects of government grants on private giving by each of the East Asian countries were explicated based on each country’s social, political, and cultural background such as the quality of the charity, transparency, and political trust. Social work managers in ethnic nonprofit organizations should establish different strategies to help shape donor giving patterns according to the effect of government grants.

Chinese Charity in Early Chinese American History

This chapter examines philanthropic activities in early Chinese American history. It reveals the extraordinary prominence of philanthropy in the daily life of Chinese Americans from beginning of Chinese immigration to WWII. The essay illustrates the enormous magnitude of Chinese American philanthropy in the context of the Chinese diaspora and shows the importance of ethnic solidarity in motivating and mobilizing Chinese Americans to give. Such an examination underlines the limitations of the western romantic notions of philanthropy exclusively and simplistically as an act of “voluntary private giving,” motivated by universal love for others. The features of Chinese American giving in the early years can also help us better understand patterns of Chinese American charity today.

Democratic altruism

Transnational altruism comes in many forms, prominently among them private giving through charitable NGOs. This paper focuses on the altruistic actions of those giving to charitable organizations and especially on the subsequent altruistic choices of those second-order, donor-organizations. Leaving choices about how donated money should be used exclusively in the hands of donors is morally problematic in various ways. This is why transnational relationships that involve private giving from rich to poor should be democratized. We propose thus a new moral principle for guiding altruistic behavior: democratic altruism. We develop our argument by focusing on the moral powers and formative agency that donors exercise through their charitable behavior, in particular through their choice to support particular types of aid or organizations. We argue that if and when donors give, they should do so in a way that allows the poor to exercise formative agency as well, in decisions over how donated resources should be used on the ground.

Large-scale cooperation driven by reputation, not fear of divine punishment

Reputational considerations favour cooperation and thus we expect less cooperation in larger communities where people are less well known to each other. Some argue that institutions are, therefore, necessary to coordinate large-scale cooperation, including moralizing religions that promote cooperation through the fear of divine punishment. Here, we use community size as a proxy for reputational concerns, and test whether people in small, stable communities are more cooperative than people in large, less stable communities in both religious and non-religious contexts. We conducted a donation game on a large naturalistic sample of 501 people in 17 communities, with varying religions or none, ranging from small villages to large cities in northwestern China. We found that more money was donated by those in small, stable communities, where reputation should be more salient. Religious practice was also associated with higher donations, but fear of divine punishment was not. In a second game on the same sample, decisions were private, giving donors the opportunity to cheat. We found that donors to religious institutions were not less likely to cheat, and community size was not important in this game. Results from the donation game suggest donations to both religious and non-religious institutions are being motivated by reputational considerations, and results from both games suggest fear of divine punishment is not important. This chimes with other studies suggesting social benefits rather than fear of punishment may be the more salient motive for cooperative behaviour in real-world settings.

Public positions, private giving: Dark money and political donors in the Digital Age

Dark money—campaign funds raised by 501(c)(4) designated non-profit corporations whose donors are exempt from disclosure—has become an increasingly large fraction of outside spending in American elections at both the state and the federal level. This paper makes use of the only publicly available donor list for a dark money group in existence today—that of “Americans for Job Security,” who contributed $11 million to two conservative-leaning ballot initiative campaigns in California during the 2012 elections. In comparing the ideological scores of donors of this dark money group to traditional donors to the two conservative propositions, I find a strong liberal tilt of donors to Americans for Job Security—indicating a social pressures motivation behind concealing one’s donation via a dark money group. These results also show disclosure laws have an effect on a donor’s calculus to contribute to a political cause.