When donation choice does not improve participation: an earmarking decision protocol for family philanthropy

What this experiment can change in a family philanthropy office

A family office sponsoring philanthropic research may be tempted to offer respondents control over a charitable reward, expecting that greater choice will translate into greater participation. Raff, Böhm and Fuchs tested a closely specified version of that proposition. They invited 6,711 psychology academics at 171 universities drawn from the global top 200 to a ten-minute survey. Each completed response triggered a US $5 contribution to the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science. Random assignment compared allocation to a randomly chosen purpose, participant earmarking, and earmarking with disclosed flexibility to reallocate once a purpose reached its funding goal. This is useful evidence for designing participation incentives, not evidence about returns to family wealth or the effects of large restricted grants.

The combined earmarking arms produced 272 completions from 4,474 invitations, versus 134 from 2,237 invitations in the random-allocation arm: approximately 6.1% versus 6.0%. The preregistered directional test did not find a significant increase. The authors also examined practical equivalence using a two-percentage-point threshold. A family philanthropy committee should therefore remove any automatic assumption that adding choice to this kind of externally funded incentive materially improves completion. The appropriate response is a decision record stating which part of the setting resembles the proposed program and which part does not. It is not a blanket ban on restricted gifts or donor participation. Practical equivalence was not established for every comparison: the exploratory click comparison and the earmarking-versus-flexible-earmarking survey-start comparison did not meet the paper’s equivalence-test significance criterion. The absence of a significant difference alone is not proof of equivalence.

Distinguish three decisions before commissioning a survey

The philanthropy director should separate the decision to make a charitable contribution, the decision to offer it as a participation incentive, and the decision to give respondents allocation rights. This experiment changed the third decision while keeping a donation incentive in every arm. It cannot establish whether donations outperform no incentive, whether cash is better for a particular family-office audience, or whether an unrestricted allocation by a charity is better than random allocation among these three purposes. Treating its control group as an unrestricted-giving benchmark would misstate the intervention.

Create a short intervention specification before recruitment. Record who supplies the money, who chooses the purpose, what participants must do, the number and distinctness of purposes, the amount, the timing of payment, the permission to reallocate, and the completion definition. Also record whether intended respondents are grantees, beneficiaries, employees, independent advisers or potential donors. A recipient who depends on the family for funding may experience an invitation differently from an academic who can ignore it. A voluntary invitation and a clear statement that future funding does not depend on participation are proposed safeguards; the source did not experimentally test those safeguards.

Price allocation rights as an operating obligation

The grant operations lead should obtain a written estimate of the additional work associated with choice before placing earmarking in an invitation. Relevant tasks include agreeing eligible purposes, tracking selections, confirming whether each purpose can absorb funds, reconciling transfers and explaining reallocations. This is a prospective local cost exercise. The study does not provide a universal cost estimate or prove that every charity suffers from earmarking. A small gift with extensive tracking may be disproportionately expensive, while an existing reliable allocation system may make its marginal cost modest.

Define the decision criterion in local units. For example, compare additional completed, usable responses with additional staff time and the cost of honoring restrictions. Avoid attributing all survey costs to an experimental feature that changes only allocation choice. If the charity values the option for mission or relationship reasons, record that reason separately from an unverified participation benefit. A choice may be retained for a legitimate nonfinancial purpose even if no participation uplift appears, provided the committee accepts its cost and can deliver what it promises. A claimed uplift should never be inserted into a budget merely because the interface appears more engaging.

Preserve outcome definitions and do not promote a click signal

The research or evaluation lead should predefine invitations, consented starts and completed usable responses as separate stages. Raff and colleagues treated started and completed surveys as the main outcomes and examined clicks exploratorily. Combined earmarking produced about 15.0% clicks versus 13.5% in the random arm, but this was not statistically significant in their two-sided exploratory test. Reporting that difference as evidence of successful engagement would hide the distinction between curiosity and completion. A family office should report the full funnel with denominators, uncertainty and all assigned groups, rather than the most favorable stage.

A local pilot needs an analysis plan before outcomes are inspected. Specify a primary endpoint, the minimum difference worth the operational cost, the number of invitations feasible, the assignment unit and the analysis date. The paper's two-percentage-point threshold arose in its own context and is not a transferable industry benchmark. A smaller audience may be unable to discriminate between useful and unimportant effects. In that case, report an imprecise feasibility pilot, not a definitive test. Do not repeatedly extend recruitment until a preferred result crosses a significance threshold; document any extension as a deviation and explain its consequences.

Build an honest flexibility clause and reconciliation record

Where allocation flexibility is included, the finance controller and charity liaison should agree precisely when a chosen purpose can change, who decides, and what record demonstrates the change. The source's flexible arm disclosed possible reallocation when a specific purpose's funding goal had been met. That detail matters: it was not permission for unrestricted redistribution for any reason. The companion proposes preserving the exact invitation wording, choice ledger, transfer confirmation and any reallocation decision. These records connect participant expectations to actual disbursement and allow an independent internal check.

Stop using the incentive if the organization cannot honor the promised allocation or explain the disclosed exception. Pause new invitations if recipients are misled about who supplies funds, if participation is presented as mandatory, or if a reconciliation discrepancy remains unresolved. Do not quietly change the charitable recipient, reward amount or purpose menu during an experiment. If an operational change is unavoidable, close the affected cohort, record the date and cause, and assess subsequent recruitment as a separate version. These stopping rules are editorial controls rather than findings established by the experiment.

Evidence boundaries and committee sign-off

The study concerned a distinctive, research-experienced, time-constrained academic population, a single professional charity, three closely related purposes and a modest externally funded donation. Trust in the charity, mission importance and whether recipients noticed the manipulation were not directly measured. The authors discuss psychological ownership as a possible explanation, not a demonstrated mediator. Do not infer that affluent donors dislike choice, that external gifts never create ownership, or that unrestricted major philanthropy always outperforms restricted grants. None of those propositions was tested.

Before adopting a policy, the committee should sign a one-page transfer assessment. It should identify the source, summarize the null result and practical-equivalence threshold, describe differences in audience and financial stakes, and list what a local pilot could realistically establish. The decision can be to retain simple allocation, test a feasible alternative, or offer choice for an explicitly stated non-participation objective. Track completion rates, cost per usable response, allocation-reconciliation exceptions, participant complaints and staff time against the pre-agreed decision rule. Review the result once the planned cohort closes. Do not call the implementation successful solely because promised donations were paid; that verifies delivery, not a behavioral effect.

This companion is an AI-assisted editorial analysis of the cited version of record. It reports no new primary results, does not claim endorsement by the original authors, and has not received documented human peer review. The proposed controls require contextual judgment by the responsible family-office and charitable organizations. They are intended to make decisions traceable and falsifiable while preserving the distinction between a carefully bounded research result and an untested application.

Source, attribution and limits

[1] Andreas Raff; Robert Böhm; Christoph Fuchs. Earmarking donations to boost study participation? Evidence from a field experiment. PLOS ONE (2025-09-08). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331498. CC BY 4.0.

A single charity, US $5 externally funded incentive and research-experienced academic audience; no no-incentive or personal-cash arm. Null results do not prove exact equality or generalize to self-funded major gifts. Proposed family-office controls were not tested.

Prepared by the Family Office Private Wealth Journal editorial research desk with AI assistance at the direction of Dr. Freedom Cheteni. Original research authors retain full credit and are not authors or endorsers of this companion. This proposed process has not been evaluated in a new empirical study; no independent peer-review acceptance is claimed. This is educational analysis, not individualized investment, legal or tax advice.

Implementation record

Open the cited sources

1. [1] Andreas Raff; Robert Böhm; Christoph Fuchs. Earmarking donations to boost study participation? Evidence from a field experiment. PLOS ONE (2025-09-08). ↗