The Freakonomics blog had a post last week entitled, To Ask or Not to Ask: Experiments in Charitable Giving. It was a brief follow-up to their What Makes a Donor Donate? podcast episode.

In the post they talk about the research of James Andreoni, Justin M. Rao, and Hannah Trachtman. In their experiment they positioned bell ringers outside of a grocery story in suburban Boston. They told a portion of the bell ringers to not say anything, to just stand there ringing the bell. They told the rest of the bell ringers to solicit customers as they were going in and out, asking directly for a donation.

Their findings are both interesting and illuminate unintended consequences.

While hardly anyone avoided the silent bell-ringers a full 30% purposefully avoided the ones making solicitations. Among those that did give, the donation increased by 75% for those that gave to the bell ringer who solicited the gift. The conclusion: that asking for the gift drives some people away but the gift size might increase.

Check out the whole post here and read their study here.