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Navigating Hostility: The Effect of Nonprofit Transparency and Accountability on Donor Preferences in the Face of Shrinking Civic Space

Donors unhappy
when states restrict NGOs—
’cept when transparent.
Philanthropy
Experiment
Conjoint analysis
Bayes
INGOs

Suparna Chaudhry, Marc Dotson, and Andrew Heiss, “Navigating Hostility: The Effect of Nonprofit Transparency and Accountability on Donor Preferences in the Face of Shrinking Civic Space,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2025), doi: 10.1177/08997640251348654

Authors
Affiliations

Suparna Chaudhry

Lewis & Clark College

Marc Dotson

Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University

Andrew Heiss

Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

Published

July 2025

Doi

10.1177/08997640251348654

Abstract

Governments across the world have increasingly used laws to restrict the work of nonprofits, which has led to a reduction in public or official foreign aid directed towards these groups. Many international nonprofits, in response, have turned to individual donors to offset the loss of traditional funding. What are individual donors’ preferences regarding donating to legally besieged nonprofits abroad? We conducted a conjoint experiment on a nationally representative sample of likely donors in the US and found that learning about host government criticism and legal restrictions on nonprofits decreases individuals’ preferences to donate to them. However, organizational features such as financial transparency and accountability can protect against this dampening effect. Our results have important implications both for understanding private international philanthropy and how nonprofits can better frame their fundraising appeals at a time when they are facing restrictive civic spaces and hostile governments abroad.

Important figures

Figure 1: Estimated marginal means and average marginal component effects for conjoint experiment results

Figure 3: Estimated marginal means and average marginal component effects for the interaction between transparency and crackdown

Citation

 Add to Zotero 

@article{ChaudhryDotsonHeiss:2025,
    Author = {Suparna Chaudhry and Marc Dotson and Andrew Heiss},
    Doi = {10.1177/08997640251348654},
    Journal = {Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly},
    Pages = {1--27},
    Title = {Navigating Hostility: The Effect of Nonprofit Transparency and Accountability on Donor Preferences in the Face of Shrinking Civic Space},
    Year = {2025}}