This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: People tend to think more highly of companies that give to charity on a monthly or weekly basis rather than donating an annual lump sum worth the same amount. This is what I and five other marketing researchers found when we conducted seven studies involving more than 150,000 people.
The Journal of Marketing Research, which is peer-reviewed, published our article on the results in early 2026. My co-author Alexander B. Our goal was to discover whether the way a company communicates with the public about its donations affects how much credit it gets from consumers for those gifts.
Across seven studies, we found that companies earn more goodwill when they give consistently—say, US$20,000 a month—instead of making a single $240,000 gift. On average, consumers also said they were more likely to buy from those companies. To test this premise, we did two real-world studies.
First, we partnered with GiftAMeal, a U.S. company that runs a free app for diners. Each time someone takes a photo of their meal at a participating restaurant and shares it on social media, GiftAMeal donates to a local food bank. We ran two versions of GiftAMeal's Facebook ad, which together reached 67,576 people.
One said the company "donated 25,000 meals every month" last year. The other said it "donated 300,000 meals" last year. Both were true, and everything else about the ads was the same.
We found that people who saw the monthly version were about 21% more likely to click on the ad. Next, we worked with Salt + Smoke, a Midwestern barbecue restaurant. When we emailed 75,514 customers who subscribed to its newsletters, half read that the company would give $5,000 a month from September through December to a small, local charity that supports early childhood education programs.
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