Jackpot for Good: Can Lottery Matches Increase Charitable Giving?

• In Event: Growing Gifts for Good: Examining Fundraising in the Nonprofit Sector

Abstract

This study investigates the effectiveness of lottery matching gift schemes for increasing charitable giving relative to deterministic matches of equivalent expected value and a no-match control. A key aspect is that the lottery match goes directly to the charity, and not to the donor. We recruit a sample of 1,402 online participants and randomly assign them to one of seven conditions: No Match (Control) and two sets of matching schemes of varying equivalent expected values: EV=1 (1:1 deterministic Match, 1:10% of 10 tokens, and 1:1% of 100) and EV=0.5 (2:1 deterministic Match, 1:1% of 50 tokens and 1:0.5% of 100), where one token is $0.50. Participants complete three 10-token allocation decisions for hunger-related charities where one allocation is randomly selected for realization. The 1:1 deterministic Match significantly increases giving by 15.7% compared to No Match. We find that matching schemes with a small probability of a very large amount (1% and 0.5% of 100) elicit higher rates of giving compared to No Match (p=0.02 and p=0.10 respectively) and do not statistically differ from the 1:1 deterministic Match (p=0.98 and p=0.62 respectively). Our results suggest nonprofits can use matching gift donations more efficiently through lottery matching donation schemes while increasing downstream donations.

Author

• Joanna Lahey, Texas A&M University
  Presenting Author