An Investigation of Slacktivism in Online Donation Campaigns: An Abstract

Abstract

Donations by individuals make up the vast majority of contributions received by nonprofit organizations. Based on the statistics published by Giving USA, around 72% of donations made in 2014 ($258.5 billion) were individual contributions. Not surprisingly, in a digital era, online donation campaigns account for a significant part of contribution figures. Crowdfunding campaigns, in particular, collected about $16 billion in 2014, a 1718% increase from 2010. While it seems intuitive that sharing these campaigns on social media increases donations, as more people get to know about them, the net effect of such sharing has not been studied. Using data collected from a major crowdfunding website, and utilizing three econometrics models, it is shown that sharing crowdfunded campaigns on social media actually has a negative effect on donations. A phenomenon which, in recent literature, has come to be known as slacktivism; the tendency of people to make fast, easy contributions (e.g., sharing a campaign, wearing a bracelet to support a cause, etc.) instead of meaningful, perhaps more difficult contributions (e.g., actually giving money to a cause). It is further shown that consistent with similar social living (non-donation) campaigns (e.g., Groupon), there is a “critical mass” beyond which donations increase significantly. The existence of these phenomena in the nonprofit domain has important strategic implications about how awareness is to be made about nonprofit campaigns in the online world. It could also lead to more creative social media awareness strategies than merely sharing.