Evidence suggests that donors have little demand for information before giving to charity. To understand this behavior and its policy implications, we present a model in which each individual can acquire costly information about her true value of charity. We observe that an individual who...

We present a theory of charitable fund-raising in which it is costly to solicit donors. We fully characterize the optimal solicitation strategy that maximizes donations net of fundraising costs. The optimal strategy dictates that the fund-raiser target only those individuals whose equilibrium...