Less than seven weeks after the general elections in the Netherlands – a record in the nation’s history – conservative party leader Mark Rutte and social democrat leader Diederik Samsom presented their new government coalition agreement on October 29, 2012. The agreement consists of 81 pages of policy decisions, including budget cuts amounting to $20 billion. So what’s the news for the voluntary sector in the agreement?

In veel situaties bevinden we ons in een sociaal dilemma waarin we moeten kiezen tussen ons eigen belang en het collectieve belang. Dit geldt bij uitstek in de politiek. Welke kiezers zijn geneigd tot samenwerking in sociale dilemma’s? Vlak voor de afgelopen Tweede Kamer verkiezingen verscheen er een artikel over deze vraag in de European Journal of Personality waaraan René Bekkers meewerkte samen met drie sociaal psychologen.

Two weeks away from the general elections in the Netherlands, and a little over three months away from the US elections, we are bombarded with polls. At least one everyday, sometimes more. What do the findings of these polls tell us exactly? The perennial answer that you will hear from a scientist would be: it depends. Some polls are better than others.

Update, February 28, 2018 : The Netherlands Senate (Eerste Kamer) has voted in favor of the opt-out system proposed in parliament. The vote was close: 38 senators were in favor, 36 voted against. The ministry of Health, Wellbeing and Sports announced that the law will be implemented in the summer of 2020. The law creates another natural experiment with changes in defaults, which will be interesting to monitor.

Op dinsdag 27 juni 2012 week nam staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie Mr. Fred Teeven het rapport Vertrouwen in filantropie en de noodzaak van opleidingen in ontvangst. Bij de aanbieding van het rapport sprak staatssecretaris Mr. Fred Teeven over het belang van professionalisering in de filantropische sector.

A recent article published by Austrian anthropologists Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber in the high profile online journal PLosONE suggests that prosocial persons have more children because this increases ‘fitness’. The study compares the number of children in 2004 by respondents in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey (WLS) who report doing volunteer work as a form of prosocial behavior or not.

Recently, a study on religion and compassion published in Social Psychological and Personality Science attracted attention in the media. ‘Strongly religious people less compassionate’, a Dutch news website reported. This headline is misleading because the study did not show that religious people are less compassionate.

There are strong differences in the level and nature of philanthropy between individuals. Which characteristics of people are typical of generous donors? In a review of the empirical literature on philanthropy, Pamala Wiepking and I have answered this question. The review appears in two journal articles. The first paper is available online: Bekkers, R. & Wiepking, P. ‘Who Gives?

Update: June 26, 2020 “Can I please use your data on giving and volunteering?” Yes you can! In fact, you are very welcome to use the data we have collected at the Center for Philanthropic Studies.

Decisions of individuals and households about how much to give and which charities to give to are affected by the behaviour of other people around them and the communities they live in. In a contribution to a conference in London I present evidence from tax records and three large scale field experiments testing social influence effects on giving in the Netherlands.

De afgelopen dagen heeft de Tweede Kamer gedebatteerd over een nieuwe wet op financiering van politieke partijen.  Opmerkelijk genoeg is de discussie apart gevoerd van de discussie over de Geefwet, die intussen is aangenomen en per 1 januari is ingevoerd. In de zin van de Geefwet zijn politieke partijen  Algemeen Nut Beogende Instellingen. Maar zijn politieke partijen ‘goede doelen’? Maar over deze vragen gaat het niet.