What Else Should I Support? An Empirical Study of Multiple Cause Donation Behavior

People who make regular and significant donations to charity normally give to more than one organization, and in over three quarters of all cases they support substantially different types of cause (e.g., a human service charity in conjunction with an animal charity). Unfortunately, nothing is known about the antecedents of donors' decisions to give simultaneously to different genres of cause. The present research examined this matter in relation to a person's “main” charity (i.e., that to which the individual had given the most money during the previous 12 months) and their “second” charity (i.e., that to which the donor had given the next highest amount). Only people who had made sizeable donations to their main and second charities were included in the investigation. The study queried the stimuli that triggered support for a donor's main charity and second charity, and the motives behind decisions to give to particular kinds of cause.