Paper Title
Friends in Need: Donations By Canadians for Disaster Relief

Abstract
Abstract- This paper examines why individuals give in response to overseas disaster appeals. It uses a unique data set on daily donations to a humanitarian coalition organization, for major disaster appeals from 2005 to 2014. We account for both the socio-economic characteristics of the neighbourhood of the donors and the characteristics of the disaster. Giving to overseas natural disasters is different than giving to charities in general. The role of income is much more nuanced: as income increases in a neighbourhood, it does not clearly mean that giving to disasters will increase, whereas such a clear relationship does exist for charitable giving in general. Not all disasters elicit the same responses – geographic location seems to matter. Frequency of disasters within regions may also plays a role. From a policy perspective, knowing how the private sector responds to large natural disasters helps governments to formulate their responses with the view to mitigating the damages associated with these devastating events. Keywords- charitable giving; natural disasters; humanitarian donations; philanthropy.