Charity donor attitudes and preference : an analysis of a questionnaire survey in Norway

Abstract

Since private donations take a large proportion in charitable giving, the meaning of study individual donors’ attitudes and preferences become important. There were some previous researches provided the evidence that donor’s decision is not independent. There are factors could increase the donation. In this Master thesis, based on a questionnaire survey conducted in 2011 in Norway, it is aimed to find out whether some factors impact the donors’ attitudes or not. These factors include the characteristics of donors, individual recipients, charity projects and recipient countries. The findings will be efficient for the charity fund collection.

Both the experimental study and the field research have provided evidences of that some factors could promote the donors to give. In this thesis, some evidences are found that can prove the findings from previous researches, some are not. Basically, donors gender impact their decisions sometime, and always found women are generous than men. Female donors’ attitudes tend to vary across age in our survey, especially for the charities that focusing on female recipients. In addition, elderly slightly less positive than young people sometimes in supporting charities.

The charity projects that are aims at improving health and food conditions and children conservations are seems to be most popular. The vulnerability of recipients and the poverty of the countries are the very important causes for donors to support assistance. Moreover, our respondents would like to support the countries dominated by Christianity most, in the contrast with other 4 religions.

The finding of this thesis should contribute to the charity organizations to modify the fundraising strategy to promote the donors to give.