Nonprofits address some of the world's most pressing problems, and many rely on donations to fund their essential work. Nonprofit marketers are, therefore, tasked with promoting charitable giving. Research on giving has largely focused on identifying the characteristics that make people generous but has generated inconsistent findings, suggesting important moderators that are not well understood. Moreover, there is not yet an overarching theory to help integrate the vast and interdisciplinary literature. To address this, we propose Charitable Triad Theory, a new theory of giving with three key tenets: First, giving is triadic because the characteristics of three actors—donors, beneficiaries, and fundraisers—influence charitable decisions. Second, the characteristics of each of the three actors may be necessary but not sufficient to promote giving. Third, giving is relational because interactive relationships between the triad determine charitable choices. A systematic review of 1337 empirical articles published between 1980 and 2020 helps evidence seven key propositions of the theory, which articulate the ways in which donors, beneficiaries, fundraisers, and the dyadic and triadic relationships between them, can affect charitable behavior. We end with a research agenda outlining specific suggestions for future research on (a) the neglected fundraiser and (b) how beneficiaries influence giving.

We examined whether people who are prone to believe COVID‐19 conspiracy theories are characterised by an especially strong concern for others or an especially strong concern for the self, and whether these orientations are associated with willingness to take a COVID‐19 vaccine. We surveyed 4,245 participants from eight nations; three months later we re‐contacted 1,262 participants from three nations. Belief in COVID‐19 conspiracy theories was related to greater concerns about one's own safety, and lower concerns about the safety of close others. Furthermore, conspiracist ideation at Wave 1 predicted reluctance to take a COVID‐19 vaccine at Wave 2, mediated through relative concern for self versus others. In sum, people who are high in conspiracy beliefs have relatively higher concern for the self relative to others, with troubling implications for public health.

Trust is assumed to be important for charitable giving. However, disparate associations have been found, and recent theoretical approaches emphasize motives for giving that do not rely on trust. To resolve this tension, we conducted a systematic review of evidence generated between 1988 and 2020. A meta-analysis of 69 effect sizes from 42 studies sampling 81,604 people in 31 countries confirmed a positive association between trust and giving across diverse measures, r = .22. Meta-regressions showed that organizational (r = .35) and sectoral trust (r = .27) were more strongly associated with giving than were generalized (r = .11) or institutional trust (r = .14). The relationship was also stronger in non-western (vs Western) countries and in nonrepresentative (vs nationally representative) samples. All evidence was correlational, and few studies measured actual behavior. We discuss implications for theories of trust and for fundraising practice, and highlight critical gaps in evidence.

High-profile charity scandals have always represented a threat to the nonprofit sector, which relies on public trust and funding to operate. We systematically review 30 years of empirical research on scandals involving nonprofits and present both quantitative and qualitative syntheses of the 71 articles identified. Informed by this review, we generate a conceptual model theorizing the causes and consequences of scandals, as well as how nonprofits can best prevent and respond to organizational transgressions. We then put forward a research agenda that elaborates five key factors that are especially important for understanding nonprofit scandals but remain understudied: (a) integrity versus competence violations, (b) moral licensing, (c) the multilevel nature of organizational transgressions, (d) sectoral causes of scandal, and (e) effective responses. We close the article with recommendations for nonprofit managers about how to conceptualize, prevent, plan for, and respond to transgressions occurring within their organizations, and any resulting scandals.