Amid a sea of requests for aid, what factors affect decisions to donate? Researchers and practitioners continue to debate whether we ought to prioritize leveraging passion (e.g., appeal to people’s empathy) or reason (e.g., appeal to utilitarian drives). Here we circumvent the challenges of emotions and obligation as levers by investigating the efficacy of a novel manipulation of choice architecture to affect giving– increasing the number of action options available to donors to increase how much they give. Across six experiments (N = 6,321), participants responded to single or multiple-bid donation requests. Viewing multiple bids for aid increased both intention to donate and actual donation (controlling for affective states that have been previously associated with costly helping). Notably, increasing the number of bids did not decrease the proportion of people who donated at all. We rule out previously-documented heuristics (i.e., 1/n, fairness) and agency as explanations for our effect, and find positive evidence for the role of merely increasing action options (i.e., bids). Finally, we replicate our effect in a natural experiment of charitable donations (N = 10,000). Presenting donors with multiple bids increased the average donation by $8.77 (a 19.7% increase). Our findings have theoretical implications for invigorating behavior and offer practical suggestions for how charitable organizations can better engineer solicitations for aid.