Date: 16 April 2025, Wednesday
Time: 10.30 – 11.30
Place: MA-330
“Impact Timing versus Magnitude: Consumer Perceptions of Nonprofits’ Resource Allocation Strategies”
by
Hanife Armut
Koç University
Abstract
Nonprofits often face decisions about when to allocate funds—whether to use them immediately or retain and grow them for future initiatives. Operating with limited budgets, this resource allocation decision presents a tradeoff between the timing and magnitude of the impact: creating a smaller impact in the present (e.g., providing food to 10 people this week) or a larger impact in the future (e.g., providing food to 15 people next month). In this article, we focus on this tradeoff and examine how it influences consumer perceptions of nonprofit organizations. We propose that consumers place greater importance on impact timing than impact magnitude. Across seven experiments, including hypothetical scenarios, an incentive-compatible design, and a field experiment on Facebook, we show that nonprofits pursuing larger, future impact are perceived as less effective and less moral, leading to lower donation support, compared to those opting for smaller, immediate impact. Our findings contribute to the literature on impact philanthropy, nonprofit perceptions, and intertemporal decisions in organizations, and offer managerial implications for charities navigating the delicate balance between creating immediate impact and larger impact.
Bio
Hanife Armut is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Marketing at Koç University. Her research primarily focuses on charitable giving, examining how nonprofits’ intertemporal resource allocation decisions influence donations, distinct motivations driving donation rates and amounts, and the impact of benefit framing on recurring giving. Additionally, she investigates the drivers of sustainable consumption and the effects of income inequality on social judgments. Hanife was a visiting Ph.D. student at Penn State University, and her work received grants and honors from ACR and AMS Review. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Economics from Boğaziçi University, Turkey and M.Phil. in Marketing from Bocconi University, Italy.