When a Crisis Has a Silver Lining: Social Media P2p Fundraising at the Start of COVID-19

Abstract

Research suggests that global crises generally have a negative impact on donations to nonprofit organizations. In this research note, we challenge whether this wisdom applies to all channels by examining a growing digital fundraising channel, social media peer-to-peer (p2p) fundraising, at the start of the COVID-19 crisis. Through both United States and German samples, we study which nonprofit organizations over- and underperformed compared to the market average to glean the potential drivers of success. We demonstrate that not all crises lower generosity, provide managerial insights into this new digital fundraising channel, and discuss how our results are generalizable to other channels and crises.