Abstract
With philanthropy continuously booming, the importance of how donors decide what to donate cannot be overstated. Results from archival data documenting 1,400 real donations and four pre-registered experiments (N = 1,606) reveal that, when consumers would like to make a small contribution, they are more likely to donate goods instead of money. This effect is driven by heightened impression management concerns when donors make trivial donations. Donors strategically choose to donate goods rather than money because goods are more difficult to devalue in monetary terms and are associated with more effort and thoughtfulness. Also, in line with the proposed mechanism, this effect is attenuated when donations are made anonymously.