Individual Donor Support for Nonprofits: The Roles of Financial and Emotional Information

Abstract

The ability to attract donor funding is important to many nonprofit organizations' success in achieving their goals. Prior literature indicates that the emotional response of potential donors to the mission of these organizations as well as the assessment of the financial information provided impacts donation decisions. However, prior literature has examined either the effect of the emotional response or financial information, but not both. Using an experiment, our paper fills this gap in the literature by investigating both factors in the same study. Furthermore, we investigate the potential moderating effect of emotional intelligence. The results indicate that, under some circumstances, the emotional response of the potential donor and the donor's emotional intelligence impact both the decision to donate and the size of the donation. However, the financial information, as compiled by the Better Business Bureau, a business rating agency that also rates charities, impacts only the size of the donation.