Does Performance and Transparency Matter to Individual Donors’ Giving in Malaysia?

The recently released World Giving Index (https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/WorldGivingIndex2013_1374AWEB.pdf, 2013) reports that despite the fall in the growth rate of the global economy, the average percentage of people donating continue to increase. However, nonprofit organizations (NPO) were urged to be more transparent and inform the public about their work. This concurs with concern over NPO’s impact and its subsequent effects on donor’s behaviors. With indices of donor performance abound that lead to ranking of donor allocative performance, this may influence donor behavior. As such, this paper seeks to investigate the influence of performance on charitable giving decisions by donors. Performance in NPO is complex and difficult to measure. This paper focuses on the influence of NPO’s performance on charitable decisions of individual donors in Malaysia. Individual donors were chosen since various studies identify them as one of the main contributors to charities. Online survey was conducted requesting information on respondents’ demography and psychographic. The survey also requested information from respondents on various criteria of NPO when deciding to donate. Based on the survey, performance though important is not the major consideration for individual donors when donating to NPOs.