Structure and Dynamics of a Charitable Donor Co-Attendance Network

The dynamics of charitable donor co-attendance networks can help fundraisers assess and improve fundraising outcomes. To improve understanding of donor-giving patterns, this study examines a large, multi-year network describing the co-attendance of donors at charitable fundraising events. We analyze the dynamics of co-attendance networks based on their topological structure, shift in node characteristics, and various network properties. Among other results, we observe a 76% increase in giving value for donors that showed increased centrality rank over nonoverlapped snapshots. In the data we examined, 19.14% of the donors whose giving increased and 16.24% of donors that remained in the same giving range exhibited increased co-attendance with high-capacity donors, whereas none of the donors that shifted to a lower class exhibited increased co-attendance with high-capacity donors over the periods, potentially illustrating a positive peer effect on donors. Some similarity was also observed in the giving characteristics of donors who co-attend events, with a 0.211 assortativity coefficient for the giving class of donors as a characteristic of donors when considering network dynamics using a rolling window size of 3 years. This is followed by analyzing the group-level similarities that reveal an interlinked clique of communities with diverse sizes. Our results show that large communities have a higher fraction of wealthy donors.