(Un)Informed Charitable Giving∗

Evidence suggests little informed giving. To understand this behavior, we examine a model of charitable giving with costly information. We find that an individual who considers a smaller contribution is less likely to seek information, and thus the percentage of informed giving diminishes as the population grows. We also find that a direct grant to the charity exacerbates crowding-out by discouraging information acquisition, whereas a matching grant increases donations by encouraging it. We further show that a (first-order) stochastic increase in valuations for charity can decrease donations; and that facilitating private acquisition of information can be a better fund-raising strategy than directly supplying it. JEL Classifications: H00, H41, D82, D83