Can mass fundraising harm your core business? : a field experiment on how fundraising affects ticket sales

Some companies engage in mass fundraising - where thousands of recipients are asked to make small donations - in addition to their core business. Via a corpo-rate social responsibility (CSR) channel this may increase sales. However, recent research uncovered significant "ask avoidance" which, if present, could imply that fundraising activities may harm a company's core business. Here we examine how asking for donations affects ticket sales of a publically owned leading opera company. In two large-scale randomized controlled trials with a total of over 50,000 opera visitors, who are asked to donate for a social youth project, we find that donations can crowd out ticket expenditure during a campaign. But for the longer run we observe a precisely estimated null effect.