Director: Dr. David Reinstein, Senior Lecturer, University of Exeter

Project partner: George Howlett, head of CEA Workplace Activism project

Purpose: To explain and promote practical fundraising innovations stemming from academic research, to encourage trials and experiments, to promote effective giving and encourage collaboration and knowledge-sharing

Key innovations and ideas: Give if You Win, default recognition, give more tomorrow

Funding and support: ESRC Impact Acceleration; University of Exeter; Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA)

We are partnering with: Employers, fundraisers, philanthropists, third-sector organisations

Scientific advisors and co-authors

Psychology: Dr. Nick Fitz, Ari Kagan (Duke)

Economics and Finance: Dr. Gerhard Riener (Dusseldorf), Dr. Paul Smeets (Maastricht)

Statistics and Data science: Dr. Mark Kelson (Exeter)

Research and technical assistance: Katja Abramova, Janek Kretschmer. Previous contributors: Audrey Utchen, Agata Siuchinska, Samuel Dexter, Alexis Carlier, Louis Philipp Lukas, David Serero, Daisy Newbold-Harrop.

Wider project: The Innovations in Fundraising impact project aims to unlock generosity and increase the level and impact of charitable giving in the UK and abroad, while enhancing donors’ understanding and appreciation of their generosity.

Knowledge exchange, tools

• Build Innovations in Fundraising Wiki interactive knowledge and resource base on core issues
• … including employee giving (schemes), incentive pay, philanthropy in the UK, practical fundraising research findings
• Produce reports and guidelines to explain research results, industry knowledge, and best practice to a wider audience

Engagement, innovation

• Engage banks, investment firms, fundraiser and other large employers, individually and in small groups, to discuss goals, processes, and opportunities for promoting employee giving in innovative ways, with a focus on high-impact charities
• Hold meetings and focus groups to identify the necessary requirements and potential obstacles to implementing and testing systems allowing employees to commit potential incentive pay (bonuses) to charity ¹⁾
• Run pilots and controlled trials of ‘Give if You Win’ and other employee-giving innovations inside firms

Innovations in Fundraising Wiki

Give if You Win page

Give if you win: Consider an individual facing an uncertain salary raise, bonus, or investment ‘windfall’. If you ask him in advance to commit ‘if you get this windfall, how much of it will you donate?’ he is likely to be more generous than either - if you waited to ask him after he learned and habituated to the windfall or - if you asked him to donate from ‘regular wealth.’

Conference page (WIP)

• Centre for Effective Altruism
• David Reinstein's research page
• David Reinstein nontechnical writings and research summaries
• Other useful resources

Purpose: Engage like-minded individuals from across sectors in the impact project ‘Innovations in Fundraising’ during our one-day Spring 2018 conference in London, sharing practical insights, experiences, issues and concerns. Our key initiative, “Give If You Win”, connects employee bonuses with philanthropy. The entire conference will last about six hours, including breaks and mingling, but we welcome drop-in participants who can only spare an hour or so.

The proposed outline is Here; your comments and suggestions are welcome.

• We will come together as finance and management professionals, academics, nonprofit workers, and philanthropists to share our knowledge and experience of what is possible, what works, and what is worth testing.
• We are targeting a real impact: this conference will be a success if it leads firms, fundraisers and researchers to plan specific tests and trials.
• Evidence from David Reinstein (Exeter Department of Economics) and others suggests that people are likely to be more generous with uncertain future income than with money they already have in the bank.
• In 2016, City Philanthropy held a “Bonus Pledge Think Tank”to consider ways to make the “City’s bonus pot become a force for good”, an application of Give if You Win.
• “Give If You Win” has a very practical application for the financial sector - charitable fundraisers can ask for a commitment “if you earn a bonus, how much will you donate?“

Interested in attending? Please fill out the interest form and we will be in touch when the details are confirmed.