University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

NGO mission design

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 03:58 authored by Anthony Heyes, Steve Martin
NGOs compete in mission statements. Opportunities for impact vary across issues—NGOs with broader missions expect to execute higher-impact projects but provide less precision to donors as to the sorts of projects that will be funded. This matters if donors have preferences amongst issues. The mission-design problem faced by an impact-motivated NGO is analyzed. Interestingly, expected donations are non-monotonic in mission-width. A monopoly NGO engages in “donor-stretching,” choosing a mission statement that includes issues not preferred by any of its donors, but still narrower than socially desirable. Under free entry, issue-widths are strategic complements amongst NGOs. In equilibrium there are too many NGOs, each with too narrow a mission. The issue-space is exactly donor-covered (all donors will have an NGO they wish to give to) but issue over-covered (mission statements overlap). Expected NGO impact is higher for issues at the periphery of any particular NGO's issue-domain, which is socially inefficient.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

ISSN

0167-2681

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

119

Page range

197-210

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-11-08

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC