One person can sometimes observe another’s donations to specific charities, but one person cannot observe another’s total donations to all charities. Consequently, people do not have enough information to know whether each person is doing his fair share of charitable giving. In these circumstances, the social norm concerning how much people ought to give remains inchoate and redistribution is deficient. To remedy this problem, I propose a donation registry. Taxpayers who itemize could check a box authorizing the IRS to report the taxpayer’s name and ratio of cash contributions to adjusted gross income. Reports are posted online to the "Donation Registry." (The proposal is developed in a working paper found by Googling “Robert Cooter Collected Writings.”)
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From a fundraising perspective your idea would likely improve the overall number of charitable dollars. But how do you prevent diffusion, and therefore increasing ineffectiveness, of those dollars? Since the list of donors would be public, I could see every non-profit in the country courting that list. If that's the case, the fundraising costs nationally would likely usurp any gains in giving from a macro perspective.
I would propose creating a registry of donors that worked similar to a draft sports system where donors, like athletes, can determine when they are interested in getting involved in a new non-profit or not. This would allow Jane Doe, who religiously give $10,000 to Jane's Charity, to not be solicited by other non-profits and therefore save staff time, printing, postage and opportunity costs at every other non-profit, while reducing competition for Jane's Charity.
But, if Jane Doe determines she wants to diversify her giving or is no longer interested in Jane's Charity, then she could register herself on the registry as open to solicitation and other non-profits could court her. When she decides where she wants to begin donating, she then takes herself off the donor solicitation portion of the registry.
I think this would reduce overall costs for all non-profits, spare donors from the deluge of non-profit solicitations and also increase trust in the non-profit community by demonstrating a more effective and efficient way to fundraise.
Your proposal is based upon the thought that there should be a "social norm". People should give whatever they feel they should give and should not give based upon what their neighbor is giving. Also, my giving varies significantly from one year to the other as I donate based on projects that friends or others I know are working on. On year I spent my own time and money volunteering in India and other parts of Asia and S America. Other years I have given very little as I was consumed with work. There is not even a norm for me personally.