It would be great to add a link to the article on charitable giving you refer too to see if they already conclude or dismiss my idea on the issue. From observations of those around me I tend to see the reason behind charitable giving as something other than maximizing the utility of the charitable gift. I postulate that people give to many different charities as a social signal. The contributor is signaling to those who are receiving the gift that they sympathize with the cause. The contributor is also signaling to those around them that they are a caring and compassionate person. The quantity of the gift has an almost negligible effect on this signaling. So the more times someone gives, and the more charities they give too allows them to signal positive social mores more often and to a larger audience, increasing their social status higher, than if they gave all their expendable money to one charity a limited number of times.
It would be great to add a link to the article on charitable giving you refer too to see if they already conclude or dismiss my idea on the issue. From observations of those around me I tend to see the reason behind charitable giving as something other than maximizing the utility of the charitable gift. I postulate that people give to many different charities as a social signal. The contributor is signaling to those who are receiving the gift that they sympathize with the cause. The contributor is also signaling to those around them that they are a caring and compassionate person. The quantity of the gift has an almost negligible effect on this signaling. So the more times someone gives, and the more charities they give too allows them to signal positive social mores more often and to a larger audience, increasing their social status higher, than if they gave all their expendable money to one charity a limited number of times.