How Effective Are Charity Managers?

Abstract

This paper presents the first causal evidence of the role that charity managers play in the financial performance of a charity. Using a novel data set of Canadian charities, I find that a one standard deviation increase in manager ability leads to a 0.516 standard deviation increase in total revenue, which amounts to more than $650,000. Married couples are found to have a larger effect than individuals, and female managers are shown to have a larger effect than male managers. I then present extensions that show that the baseline model overestimates the effect of the managers.