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Grassroot national fundraising campaign - faith-based giving in the post-communist country

Thu, July 18, 2:00 to 3:30pm, TBA

Abstract

The Czech Three Kings Collection, organised by Caritas, is a unique national fundraising campaign where tens of thousands of carolers dress up as the Three Kings from the biblical story of the Wisemen visiting baby Jesus, go house by house, sing carols and fundraise for a social cause.
Though there are similar collections on the Three Kings Day in neighboring countries, none of them shares the scale and success of the Czech version (see Kuvíková & Svidroňová, 2010; Neumayr, 2015; Samples, 2019). Apart from generating significant financial amounts (Haltofová, 2011), this Collection is also the most extensive fundraising event employing the largest volume of volunteers (Kulska, 2021; Zamazal, 2014). Also, Caritas is the largest provider of social services in Czechia (Pejcal and Dostál, 2017). The dominant method of fundraising here is door-to-door fundraising (Dostál and Hyánek, 2023). According to Wiepking (2010), religious people might choose not to donate within the door-to-door campaign because they prefer to be asked to donate in church or through direct mail appeals. However, our research suggests that the higher level of religiosity in the municipality increases the total amount collected there. Another factor considered is the timing. Müller & Rau (2019) wrote that the timing of the collection around the holiday seasons might have important implications for both the marketing and the success of such initiatives. Christmas can promote the act of giving in both religious and non-religious people (Tedham, 2012). Ekström's (2018) research also suggests that Christmas may increase the level of altruism to a certain extent. However, Müller & Rau (2019) suggest that the Christmas season is marked by a certain level of stress, leading to lower empathy and, thus, decreasing willingness to give. From this perspective, the timing at the end of the Christmas season might be a combination of both theoretical points, benefiting from the Christmas spirit but starting after the seasonal stress comes back to normal.
This study builds on earlier research (Dostál and Hyánek, 2023) and focuses on the local level and the key success factors for this event. While the whole topic is framed by the faith-based philanthropy and church-based social services provision, the focus of the research is therefore the relationship between the local yields of this collection and the factors that may influence this.
The research utilizes the statistical data of the 2023 Three Kings Collection published on the official webpage (Caritas Czech Republic, 2023), namely the funds collected in the Brno diocese covering 945 municipalities, which is about 59% of all municipalities in the Diocese. We analyse the per capita collection yield using regression analysis, with selected demographic and socio-economic indicators obtained from the Census 2021 (Czech Statistical Office, 2022) as regressors. In addition to religiosity level, we include municipality size, average age, gender, proportion of people with higher education, and employment as control variables. We thus supply an insight into the nature of a Christian fundraising campaign, taking place in the context of a highly atheistic country, yet successful and sustainable in the long term.

References

Dostál, J., & Hyánek, V. (2023). Church charity fundraising in a decreasingly religious society: Case of the Three Kings Collection in the Czech Republic. Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing, (e1815), 1-12. doi: 10.1002/nvsm.1815
Ekström, M. (2018). Seasonal altruism: How Christmas shapes unsolicited charitable giving. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 153, 177-193.
Haltofová, P. (2011). Which factors influence to the financial resources of NGOs in the Czech Republic in last years. In Proceeding of the 13th International Conference on Finance and Banking (Vol. 13, No. 12, p. 10).
Kulska, J. (2021). Between mission and interests: The evolving role of the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic and Poland. In Exploring Organized Interests in Post-Communist Policy-Making (pp. 237-255). Routledge.
Kuvíková, H. & Svidroňová, M. (2010). Kvantitatívny rast a akceptácia súkromných neziskových organizácií v Slovenskej republike. Konference Bílá místa teorie a černé díry reforem ve veřejném sektoru II, Brno, Masarykova univerzita
Müller, S., & Rau, H. A. (2019). Too cold for warm glow? Christmas-season effects in charitable giving. Plos one, 14(5), e0215844.
Neumayr, M. (2015). Giving in Austria: A corporatist relationship between the nonprofit sector and the state. In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy (pp. 100-117). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Pejcal, J., & Dostál, J. (2017). Nongovernmental nonprofit organisations in social services: theories versus the real situation in the Czech Republic. Scientific papers of the University of Pardubice. Series D, Faculty of Economics and Administration. 40/2017.
Samples, S. T. (2019). Black is not beautiful: the German myth of race. Relating Worlds of Racism: dehumanisation, belonging, and the normativity of European whiteness, 223-244.
Tedham, A. (2012). Charitable giving, fundraising, and faith-based organizations: Islamic Relief World Wide and World Vision International-a comparison.
Wiepking, P. (2010). Democrats support international relief and the upper class donates to art? How opportunity, incentives and confidence affect donations to different types of charitable organizations. Social Science Research, 39(6), 1073–1087.
Zamazal, M. (2014). Charita Česká republika při povodních. In Dostál, J., Soukopová, J. Dobrovolnictví a nestátní neziskové organizace při řešení následků povodní v ČR. Sborník z workshopu a semináře Protipovodňového vzdělávacího a výzkumného centra. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 2014. s. 80-96. ISBN 978-80-210- 6713-4

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