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This article presents the outcomes to a study of the charity donation behavior of 771 low-income people residing in three socially deprived Boroughs in inner-London. It emerged that several variables known to affect (a) levels of charity giving and (b) choices of types of charity supported among the U.K. public as a whole also influenced the donation behavior of the financially poor. In addition, it appeared that a participant's sense of affinity with other low-income people and the degree to which the individual believed that the poor were unfairly treated by society at large exerted significant impacts on giving behavior. However behavior differed according to whether a low-income person was "better-educated" (i.e., possessed a qualification beyond the level normally obtained at the minimum legal school leaving age) or was less well-educated. The "very poor" did not donate a higher percentage of their incomes than the moderately poor.

Abstract

Although online fundraising by charitable organisations is now commonplace, many aspects of effective online fundraising remain unexamined. In particular, little is known about the nature and determinants of impulsive donation decisions taken by browsers of charity websites. This empirical study attempted to help fill this important gap in current knowledge about online fundraising via an investigation of the antecedents of impulsive online giving to a hospice organisation in the south of England. Two hundred and thirty‐nine donors who stated that their gifts had been made impulsively and 223 donors whose online gifts were reported as having been pre‐planned completed a questionnaire that explored, inter alia, a person's socio‐demographic characteristics, level of impulsiveness and attitude towards impulsive behaviour, charity donation history, prior knowledge of hospice issues, subjective norms and personal involvement with charity giving. The main determinants of impulsive donations were identified and the profiles of various types of impulsive giver were established. Relevant matters were investigated in the contexts of two types of web page design: emotive and informative.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PurposeTo establish the best approaches that companies operating within a cyclical economic environment should adopt when marketing their products.Design/methodology/approachA structural equation modelling procedure is applied to the examination of the influences on corporate performance of certain policies pursued during cyclical downturns. The degrees to which these policies are implemented are hypothesised to depend on factors such as a firm's age and managerial experience of cyclical fluctuations, marketing orientation, and whether business cycles are explicitly taken into account when formulating corporate strategies. In total, 119 businesses in the UK construction industry participated in the investigation.FindingsThe relative effects of a number of explanatory variables on performance and its assumed antecedents are reported. Firms adopting "long‐term" approaches to marketing management across cycles tended to attain superior performance. However, short‐term approaches to marketing were commonplace.Research limitations/implicationsSelf‐declared information on company performance was utilised. Also the study only considered a single industry (construction), so the results might not be generalisable to other sectors.Practical implicationsThe outcomes offer practical advice to managers in the construction industry regarding their staff recruitment, retention and development policies during cyclical downturns, their employment of relationship marketing, and appropriate corporate strategies and budgeting methods for use in cyclical environments.Originality/valueThis is the first published study to explore construction companies' marketing responses to cyclical conditions.

A mail survey of 747 small to medium sized charities in the United Kingdom (UK) revealed that 123 of 344 respondents employed a conventional advertising agency (as opposed to a public relations consultant, direct marketing agency or other type of marketing services firm) and that 134 claimed that they completed all aspects of the marketing function in-house. The remainder used a variety of forms of outside help with their advertising and marketing campaigns. Respondents were contacted again by letter and (if necessary) telephone and requested to complete an adaptation of Kohli et al.'s (1993) MARKOR instrument (a set of questions designed to establish the extent of market orientation within organizations). Outcomes were factor analyzed, and significant dimensions of market orientation utilized as independent variables (with others) in a logistic regression that had the state variable 1 = Employs an advertising agency; 0 = Does not employ an agency, as the variable to be explained. Results indicated that key elements of market orientation critically determined small to medium sized charities' (SMC's) decisions to engage advertising agencies. Overall, it seemed that the importance of effective marketing was widely recognized by SMCs.

The men who make the decisions about whether to promote a woman are often prejudiced, notes Roger Bennett. He considers how women can manage the disadvantage, looks at the shortcomings of remedies like codes of practice, and concludes that what is needed is radical positive action.

AbstractThe widespread contracting out to British charities of welfare services previously furnished by the state has resulted in many charities operating in fields well outside those specified by their original missions. Challenges connected with charity mission drift have received a great deal of (mainly negative and critical) attention in the nonprofit practitioner literature in recent years, yet no academic research has been completed into exactly how charities respond managerially and operationally to government‐induced mission drift. This empirical study attempted to fill this important gap in knowledge about charity management through in‐depth case studies of three charities known to have experienced substantial mission drift during the last decade, focusing on the styles and types of approach the organizations had adopted in their dealings with government funding agencies. It emerged that the three charities accepted mission drift as a fact of life. Rather than simply supplying contract services to government bodies, the charities were highly proactive in seeking to initiate, direct, control, and assume overall strategic responsibility for state‐funded activities.