| While there has been considerable research into patterns of charitable giving to non-profits, comparatively little is known about the behavior and motivations of organizations within these markets. This work contributes to the literature on non-profits by investigating the motivations of non-profit organizations and the effect of these actions on market structure. I first form a dynamic model of oligopoly in a non-profit market, specifically allowing for organizational utility to follow several specifications proposed by the literature: own revenues, own provision of services, and/or total market surplus. I obtain theoretical results on market efficiency under these different utility specifications, as well as for different underlying market parameters. Using nationwide shelter-level panel data of U.S. transitional housing programs, I employ the dynamic model to gain inference on the true specification of organizational utility. Finally, I use the estimated model to simulate market responses to shocks to the number of providers, the demand for services, and the supply of contributions. None of the utility functions proposed by the literature significantly explains organizational behavior, with the results more consistent with a fixed organizational utility associated with entry. Relatedly, the market structure shows slow and relatively small responses to the simulated shocks. This questions the efficacy of increasing government donations to non-profits or the ability of non-profit markets to increase production in response to a decrease in government service provision. In the final chapter, I employ a natural field experiment to investigate how the framing of solicitation in fundraising can increase the efficacy of this important non-profit operation. A treatment of suggesting a specific donation amount to individuals both increases the incidence of giving and strongly collapses the donation distribution on the suggestion amount. This implies that individuals are motivated by a social or fundraiser norm signaled by the suggestion amount, and that organizations can use this suggestion power to improve the efficiency of fundraising. |
