A behavioral architecture designed to prevent $6.2 billion in charitable tax incentives
from dissolving into personal consumption every year.
Open science. No commercial interest.
For decades, 86% of American households — those who take the standard deduction — had no meaningful tax incentive to give. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed that permanently. §170(p) is the largest expansion of charitable tax access in a generation.
But the incentive arrives in May. The giving decision happened in December. Without behavioral architecture, the government's co-investment dissolves before it reaches the cause.
New incentives for non-itemizers
New disincentives — 0.5% floor + 35% cap
Without behavioral architecture to capture the refund flow
Source: National Council of Nonprofits · Indiana University Research
§170(p) takes effect. First filing season. Infrastructure gap is visible.
Behavioral architecture must be designed before the pattern locks in.
Absorption becomes habitual. The window narrows. Cost of inaction compounds.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (§170(p), effective January 2026) created a permanent above-the-line deduction for the 86% of Americans who don't itemize. The intent was to expand charitable giving.
What wasn't designed: what happens when that benefit arrives months after the giving decision. The research is unambiguous — tax refunds dissolve.
This is a design problem, not a generosity problem. GIVERs gave in December. The question is whether the government's co-investment reaches the cause — or disappears into an unrelated expense.
A refund entering a bank account is reclassified as "personal money." Redirection then requires active, costly effort.
Thaler 1985 · Arkes et al. 1994Once money is perceived as personal property, redirecting it feels like a loss — approximately 2× heavier than an equivalent gain.
Kahneman, Knetsch & Thaler 1991Tax incentives shape behavior only when salient at the point of decision. By May, December motivation has long decayed.
Chetty, Looney & Kroft 2009The GIVER architecture inserts a circuit-breaker before the causal chain completes. The key is timing, not willpower.
GIVER authorizes an ACH transfer at peak motivation — before the refund exists as psychological property. No second decision required in May.
Behavioral pre-commitmentAcknowledgment includes Social Dividend estimate. The donor becomes a Civic Investor — responsible for the government's co-investment reaching the cause.
+15–25% follow-through (Bem 1972 · Cialdini 2009)ACH executes automatically. 92% of refunds have settled. The federal co-investment lands in the cause's account — visible, measurable, shareable.
The moment everything convergesSame net cost to the GIVER. More impact to the cause.
Converts a one-time donor into a GIVER. Targets the sector's most costly retention problem: 77–81% first-gift churn.
Reveals the government's hidden co-investment to committed donors. Adds salary-linked escalation over time.
Reframes from "what can I afford?" to "what impact do I want?" Works backward from net cost to maximize cause impact.
The most important — and most carefully triangulated — parameter in the model.
Central estimate: 12% (range 6–22%)
Conservative prior for a first pilot in a nascent US behavioral infrastructure. Triangulated from four anchors, then discounted for first-year novelty and absence of employer-match framing.
| Anchor | Implied ρ | Bias |
|---|---|---|
| Save More Tomorrow voluntary commitment Thaler & Benartzi 2004 |
25–35% | ↑ Upward |
| Opt-in consent rates across contexts Johnson & Goldstein 2003 |
15–25% | → Neutral |
| Pre-income charitable field experiments Altmann et al. 2019 · Messer et al. 2016 |
18–28% | ↓ Slight down |
| UK Gift Aid real-world opt-in HMRC 2025 |
28–35% | ↑ Upward |
A conservative discount of ~55% is applied to the anchor midpoint (27%) to account for: nascent US behavioral infrastructure, absence of employer-match framing, first-year novelty effects, and the absence of direct prior evidence in this context. The pilot exists to replace this prior with direct measurement. If ρ exceeds 12%, the model improves.
10,000 iterations · Conservative pilot prior (ρ: 6–22%, mode 12%)
Conservative pilot scenario. If ρ validates above 12%, every percentage point adds ~$70M to the central estimate.
£1.7B/year · Active 35 years · Never repealed
€520M/year · ~18M taxpayers · Active 20 years, expanded
Design phase with UNICEF España · StockCrowd platform · Origin of this model
A pre-registered 4-arm field experiment across Minnesota, Arizona, and Texas (N≈2,000, filing season 2027) will directly measure ρ in the US tax context. Pre-registered on the AEA Registry before first enrollment. All results published regardless of direction.
Explore the RCT Design →Control — standard acknowledgment only
Reframe — GIVER identity framing, no ACH
Commit — Ulysses Pact + automated May 15 execution
Tax-software integration at filing moment
This is a testable $1–10B opportunity. The cost of testing it is low. The cost of ignoring it is not.
Academia + nonprofit + tech. Pre-register the RCT protocol. Coordinate on a Code of Practice.
Target: June 2026Minnesota + Arizona + Texas. Modest scale: N≈2,000. Low cost, high signal.
Close: December 2026Begin conversations with top-3 tax-software vendors and top-5 CRM vendors on the shared Redonation Checkbox standard.
Target: Q4 2026Behavioral economists to co-design and validate the RCT. Target journals: JPE · AEJ Applied.
3–5 organizations ready for a manual MVP in December 2026. Fewer than 2 hours/month commitment.
CRMs and payment gateways interested in co-designing the GIVER UX. 6–10 weeks of commitment.
Not hopes. Not pledges. Automatic.
That is the cultural moment we are building toward.
Nonprofit · Platform · Academic