PhD Dissertation Proposal by Deserina SULAEMAN | Smart Charities? Analyses of IT-enabled Charitable Fundraising

Smart Charities? Analyses of IT-enabled Charitable Fundraising

About The Talk

Crowdfunding has transformed charitable fundraising by enabling fundraisers, even inexperienced ones, to reach a wider set of potential donors. Deserina’s research aims to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of charitable fundraising using crowdfunding. In particular, she examines how campaign-specific factors, other campaigns on the platform, and factors from outside of the platform can influence the success of campaigns on a charitable crowdfunding platform. Essay 1 examines how signals set by fundraisers influence the donations received by charitable crowdfunding campaigns. Essay 2 examines how the presence of multiple campaigns with similar charitable causes affects the amount of donations received by each campaign. With the last essay, she plans to examine how announcements of government disaster relief grants influence the donations received by charitable campaigns associated with those natural disaster events. In sum, this thesis aims to provide new insights on the dynamics of charitable fundraising using crowdfunding to the academic research community as well as practitioners in the charity sphere.

Speaker Biography

Deserina SULAEMAN is a third year PhD candidate in the Information Systems and Management area under the supervision of Assistant Professor Mei LIN. Members of her dissertation committee include Professor Srinivas REDDY from LKCSB, Assistant Professor Qian TANG from SIS, and Professor Zannie Giraud VOSS from Southern Methodist University. Deserina's research agenda is focused on IT-enabled charitable fundraising. Deserina holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Purdue University and Master's degrees in Marketing (MBA) and Arts Management (MA) from Southern Methodist University.