“I can’t afford to support every worthy cause”: The role of donor taste, beneficiary need and nonprofit competence in selection of recipients for charitable donations

This panel session is predicated on the assumption that a distinctive feature of the third sector is that it is values-driven, that values motivating philanthropic action are held by individuals, organisations and society at large, and that when these values clash it challenges the legitimacy of both motivations and actions.

My paper is concerned with the role that values play as a driver of personalised philanthropy and it focuses on the complex issues involved in choosing one type of charitable beneficiary over another. The data discussed in this paper comes from a larger research programme that explores donor perceptions of the nature and distribution of charitable benefit, and it should be stressed that the findings presented here are interim as they are based on analysis of only half of the data gathered for this study.