Yesterday, based on studies of giving psychology, we headlined Don’t Think, Give.
The overwhelming conclusion of psychological studies is that giving is motivated by a variety of non-rational needs and impulses and that, indeed, thinking or rationalizing gets in the way of giving.
Ironically, the same day, Beth’s Blog cited a study, Money for Good II, suggesting that sharing information about results and financial transparency would attract more donors.
Says Beth: “The study points out that nonprofits can increase their fundraising and improve operations through an intentional focus on measurement – that helps them determine impact, effectiveness, and efficiency. After financial information, individual donors want information about how nonprofits are getting their results.”
Precisely the kind of information that yesterday’s researchers claim will diminish giving.
Now the Money for Good study was conducted by GuideStar, whose business is providing charity performance info. That’s OK. And donors will always say in a survey that of course they think deeply and carefully about their giving choices. No one admits to being victims of their emotions!
I do often argue that some donors — especially educated Boomers — will look more than others for more evidence that a charity is in fact effective at producing results.
But even so, I’m sticking with the psychologists. Emotion rules giving. Emotion brings donors to the point of giving. If any ‘analysis’ and ‘thinking’ occurs, it can break either way … it can get in the way, or it can help the donor make a ‘reasoned’ choice amongst alternatives.
So absolutely, talk about results. But I’d argue that the whole point of talking about results is still to elicit an emotional response … not trigger some sort of ROI analysis. Keep that in mind as you present your results. How, for example?
Don’t present a laundry list of 10 things you’ve accomplished this past year.
Do tell stories about the people your donor helped, the crisis she averted, the enjoyment he enabled.
Let’s hear more from you on this. In making your fundraising case, what’s the balance between heart and mind?
Tom
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I agree
We are in an ‘instant gratification’ world.
We buy things on credit because we want them now, we post where we are on Facebook now rather than telling people face to face later, we skip to a different website if the first one we tried was not intuitive or if did not load immediately.
Why should giving be different. NPOs need to capture that emotional response and monetize it immediately.
Every single recent neurophisiological study and every suiccesful marketing is based on emotions, so there is no even a debate. Showing results and prove value for money is a rational ask AFTER a donor engage with an organization.
A perspective from the UK.
In brief, one size doesn’t fit all. My personal experience here suggests:
- Emotion works to recruit people; rational support helps keep them
- Emotion works at low value; the need for rational support increases will the
value of the donation
- Some charity brands or sectors require more rational communications/impact
reporting/transparency, others do not (despite what people say in groups)
- The proof is in the pudding – but only with patience. Test two communications, one of each type, at recruitment. Analyse the short term ROI. Most organisations will then declare a ‘winner’, and my bet is that 9 out of 10 winners will be more emotional. But: track the recruits from the more rational recruitment pack and – assuming they get appropriate SRM – the ‘thinkers will have have a higher LTV.
Maybe.
I agree that most ordinary donors give for personal emotional and social reasons. “Give, don’t think” if you like. Giving for them is a non-economic transaction. If they don’t have much money to give, they may well volunteer time and skill.
But a few donors treat igiving as a much more rational and economic way, needing impact and SROI evidence before parting with their money. These people tend to be wealthier major donors, acting like “investors” trying to choose which companies to invest in.
The key thing for a fundraiser is to identify if the potential donor is an “investor”. If so, present the impact story as the hok before offering emotional case studies. But with most donors the sequence needs to be the other way round.
I’m with you Tom. Sure put in some info to validate claims and convince people of validity. It reassures donors that the decision they have already made to give is the right one. But after 20 years as a copywriter, it’s clear that emotional and moving letters do dramatically better.
Tom –
Thanks for the posts on both “Don’t Think, Give” and “Think, Then Give”. I led the Money for Good II report that the later referenced and wanted to chime in on a few topics.
First, I’m with you that giving is emotional not rational for the vast majority of donors. In fact, in our first piece of research on this topic, “Money for Good I” (www.hopeconsulting.us/money-for-good) we derived six segments of individual donors. One only of the six prioritized the impact of the nonprofit; the others are driven by other, more emotional, motivations.
In that research we also found that donors rarely research. Our goal in Money for Good II (www.guidestar.org/moneyforgood) was to understand what it would take to get more donors to do research, and to ultimately fund the organizations that are performing the best.
A few findings from our work:
- Donors want a full picture of a nonprofit. This doesn’t mean they want to be bombarded with data, but that they want to know about the organization’s mission, impact, legitimacy, and how it uses its funds
- Donors are willing to take in information if provided cleanly and transparently; we don’t have to limit them to “simple” ratings
- The one area where donors show an unmet need is around information on a nonprofit’s impact and effectiveness
Now, we do think that it will be very difficult to change donor behavior (and we talk at length around the reasons for that in the research). But we do believe that nonprofits should start to provide more information about their impact and effectiveness. Donors do want to understand this, they are not getting the information today, and this is another way that nonprofits can engage with their donors on the important work that they are doing.