Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7
“This study finds that people do not give to the most urgent needs, but rather they support causes that mean something to them…
Yet the methods used to encourage donations tend to assume that philanthropy depends on objective assessments of need rather than on [givers’] enthusiasms.
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people act as rational agents results in fundraising literature that often focuses on the dimensions and urgency of the problem for which funding is sought.
The assumption underlying this approach is that donations are distributed in relation to evidence of neediness, when in fact much giving could be described as ‘taste‐based’ rather than ‘needs‐based’.”
Beth Breeze recently did a 2010 research study How Donors Choose Charities: Findings of a Study of Donor Perceptions of the Nature and Distribution of Charitable Benefit sponsored by the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy at the University of Kent, UK (2011) 9-10.