All in the mind
May 2009
What drives a donor? Sally Hibbert summarises research on the psychology of giving and offers some practical insights
According to much of the research on who gives to charity in the UK, women, high income groups, people in employment and people who actively practice a religion are more likely to give. [1] The most widely favoured causes include medical research, religion, children and young people, hospital and hospices and overseas aid. This overview of the donors provides a useful backdrop, but individual charities need to carry out their own research to identify target donor segments for their organisation.
There is a broader donor base in the UK. Surveys suggest that between 60 and 70 per cent of adults donate to charity each month. The problem for fundraisers, from a financial point of view, concerns the level of support for charities from this broad donor base. Spontaneous forms of giving are by far the most popular amongst the UK population and people tend to give no more than £10 a month. Donors have been characterised as three different types: [2]
- Bystanders are those who give very little to charity, if anything at all, donating less than £5 a year. They account for30 per cent of the UK population.
- Contributors also give infrequently – nearly two thirds of them give less than once a month and only a quarter gives by direct debit – but they donate between £5 and £120 a year and account for 58 per cent of the UK population.
- Investors are the strong supporters. They give frequently – over three quarters of them give at least once a month and they are the group most likely to donate via direct debit – and donate more than £120 a year, with nearly a quarter of them giving in excess of £500 per year. But they only account for the remaining 12 per cent of the population. Charities are well aware of the small proportion of strong supporters and the UK’s ‘investors’ are heavily targeted by fundraising campaigns. But to gain their support, as well as the support of donors who are less active but nevertheless are positively predisposed to charity, requires understanding of what motivates and triggers giving.
Why do people give?
There is a stronger culture of giving in the US than in the UK and it is suggested that one of the reasons for this is that in the US there are more self-benefits from giving in the form of tax deductions, increased social status, career progression and benefits from the charities themselves. In contrast, conspicuous and self-interested giving is less acceptable in the UK.
The findings of the Helping Out survey revealed that the three most common reasons for donating to charity in the UK were ‘the work of the charity is important’ and ‘it’s the right thing to do’, ‘I just felt like giving’ which reflect the moral and emotional drivers of philanthropy. Academic researchers [3] who have evaluated a wide range of research on helping behaviour have distinguished six fundamental motives that explain philanthropy:
1) Value motives. For most people, charitable giving is a response to moral concerns. People’s personal values and, in particular, the importance that they place on benevolence and equality, are primary motivators of charitable giving.
2) Community-serving motives. People give to charity in recognition of the interdependence in the social and physical world in which we live as well as for reasons of love and concern.
3) Social motives. It is well established that philanthropy is promoted by group membership. People who are involved with social institutions and belong to social groups are more likely to give because they are subject to social rewards and sanctions (e.g. (dis)approval, reputation) that shape donation behaviour. Religious institutions are particularly influential, but other types of groups including professional associations, community institutions and groups and voluntary groups similarly provide social structures that promote fundraising and giving to charity.
4) Emotion-based motives. When people give they feel proud and uplifted, whereas they anticipate feelings of shame and guilt if they decline to give and typically want to avoid these emotions. These emotional experiences are strong drivers of donation behaviour.
5) Understanding motives. Those charities that co-opt members of the public into fundraising know that they need to support the individuals or teams that organise activities on the ground. In other words, they recognise that supporters undergo a learning process and, indeed, the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills is one factor that motivates donors. In addition, people welcome opportunities to use their knowledge and skills.
6) Career motives. While in the US context philanthropy has been linked directly to career progression, in the UK the increased emphasis on corporate social responsibility, which typically involves employee fundraising and volunteering, means that philanthropy has become associated with ‘employee citizenship’ and even a contributor to training.The many different reasons that people have for giving to charity in general and for responding positively to particular fundraising appeals stem from the six categories of motives outlined above. Some people think deeply about their motives while for others giving is more intuitive. Yet it is vital to understand the motives of different donor segments in order to appeal to donors with a well crafted and targeted message.
3) Social motives. It is well established that philanthropy is promoted by group membership. People who are involved with social institutions and belong to social groups are more likely to give because they are subject to social rewards and sanctions (e.g. (dis)approval, reputation) that shape donation behaviour. Religious institutions are particularly influential, but other types of groups including professional associations, community institutions and groups and voluntary groups similarly provide social structures that promote fundraising and giving to charity.
4) Emotion-based motives. When people give they feel proud and uplifted, whereas they anticipate feelings of shame and guilt if they decline to give and typically want to avoid these emotions. These emotional experiences are strong drivers of donation behaviour.
5) Understanding motives. Those charities that co-opt members of the public into fundraising know that they need to support the individuals or teams that organise activities on the ground. In other words, they recognise that supporters undergo a learning process and, indeed, the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills is one factor that motivates donors. In addition, people welcome opportunities to use their knowledge and skills.
6) Career motives. While in the US context philanthropy has been linked directly to career progression, in the UK the increased emphasis on corporate social responsibility, which typically involves employee fundraising and volunteering, means that philanthropy has become associated with ‘employee citizenship’ and even a contributor to training.The many different reasons that people have for giving to charity in general and for responding positively to particular fundraising appeals stem from the six categories of motives outlined above. Some people think deeply about their motives while for others giving is more intuitive. Yet it is vital to understand the motives of different donor segments in order to appeal to donors with a well crafted and targeted message.
How do people make donation decisions?
Donors may be positively predisposed to give to charity, but they potentially face an extremely complex decision. If they restrict their choice to UK charities, they have nearly 200,000 charities to choose from. In reality, of course, few people approach the donation decision making task in this way; they don’t need to give and they tend to give when asked. This means that marketing communications for charity fundraising play a crucial role in giving decisions.
Three aspects of fundraising communications influence how potential donors usually respond to fundraising messages; the source of the message, the features of the message and the nature of the request for support. [4]
The source of messages and appeals
A charity should be both familiar and credible if donors are to believe and accept the messages about the cause and the need for help. Charity brands should be associated with traits that indicate to donors that the charity is an effective intermediary for helping (e.g. ‘accountable’, ‘effective’, ‘responsible’, ‘caring’). This said, recent research suggests that these characteristics are often associated with all charities in people’s minds. [5] Investment in brand building should therefore focus on the more abstract dimensions of brands, such as brand heritage, values and personality that can serve to differentiate charity brands. The appeal of a particular brand identity will differ across donor segments. For instance, donors’ personal values have been shown to be are important determinants of the organisational values that they favour.[6] For example, people who are materialists and value achievement are attracted to organisations that project values of being exciting, adventurous, competitive and entrepreneurial.
Features of the message
The need for help. People’s decisions of whether or not to help are heavily influenced by their interpretation of the situation. Donors evaluate whether beneficiaries are responsible for their own circumstances, the severity and urgency of the need and the potential consequences for the beneficiaries and themselves as helpers. Awareness of need increases when the potential beneficiaries of a charitable organization are known to the individual. Research has shown that when donors know someone who has experienced or suffered from a particular condition, they are particularly sympathetic towards the causes. Beyond these general trends, donor support for particular causes depends on the fit between the charity and the donor’s personal values and self image.
Representation of beneficiaries. The ways in which charities portray beneficiaries in their communications impact on brand identity and can affect levels of compliance with fundraising appeals. Charities face difficult decision about two aspects of beneficiary portrayal: a) should communications portray beneficiaries’ negative circumstances or the positive outcomes of having received help? And b) if a negative appeal designed to evoke shock, guilt or shame is used, should it be hard hitting and seek to evoke strong emotions in donors?
Over the years many charities have been criticised for negative portrayals of their beneficiaries on the grounds that representation of beneficiaries in this way contributed to their stigmatisation and disadvantage. Subsequently many charities have changed their communications and even their name to send more positive messages about their beneficiaries and the charity’s mission. The research on the relative effectiveness of positive and negative representations of beneficiary remains inconclusive. Positive appeals do not appear to be more effective in soliciting donations, although research suggest that they result in a more positive attitude towards beneficiaries in the long term. As for negative appeals, which continue to be heavily used by certain types of charities, there is evidence that they effectively evoke feelings of sympathy, pity and guilt in prospective donors, but donors’ compliance with these requests is not necessarily greater than for other types of appeals.
When using negative appeals, it is important to understand the psychological processes that they evoke. For instance, guilt appeals appear to be effective when donors have a sense of personal responsibility for a situation and the appeal evokes empathy rather than a simple emotional reaction to the negative content of the appeal.
Similarities between beneficiaries and donors. One of the motives prompting individuals to give to charity is that people experience personal distress when they become aware of a need.
The distress is more intense when the person in need is similar in some way to the potential donor. The similarity may be terms of physical characteristics or more abstract features such as culture and personal values.
Labelling. When labels are attached to individuals or groups, people are more likely to behave in ways that are consistent with the label. Labelling people as generous and philanthropic creates greater motivation to help; it results in more helping behaviour and encourages people to develop more positive attitudes towards organisations requesting help.
Social influence. When individuals recognise that giving is normative, their propensity to donate and the amount that they donate increases. This principle provides the logic for making announcements of how much has been donated to a particular appeal. A successful appeal demonstrates to individuals that support is widespread and that others consider it the right thing to do. The social influences on giving are magnified when people are also given information about the consequences of helping as they then find it more difficult to argue against helping.
The nature of the request for support
Creating options for donors. Even ad hoc donors are, to a degree, strategic in their philanthropy. They may not thoroughly consider the alternative options for giving, but they do develop (un)favourable dispositions towards particular giving options based on costs-benefit analyses and perceptions that they are able to help. If the helping options are restricted, many people will simply decline to help.
Support is more forthcoming when people are given a range of choices about beneficiaries, the type of giving and the amount and timing of the gift. In part, choice is provided by the wide range of charities in the marketplace. But individual charities can attract support by affording donors options. They can provide choice about beneficiaries (e.g. ‘which zoo animal would you like to sponsor?’), about type of support (e.g. giving money, volunteering, supporting pressure group activity), about the size and timing of the donation (e.g. suggesting amounts £2, £10, £20 or ‘other amount’) and alternative forms of giving (e.g. one-off gift, monthly direct debit).
Methods of giving. Asking for donations tends to increase the likelihood of getting them, although this may not hold true for a particular charity if donor fatigue sets in. Not all methods of solicitation are equally successful. There is evidence to suggest that face-to-face solicitations are more successful than impersonal or telephone-based ones and the same applies for the average amount of donations that are handed over in person rather than through an envelope. These effects relate to social influences and the conspicuousness of the donation.
More generally, research has examined the effects of past experience with a charitable organisation in subsequent donations. [7] Once a donor has been successfully recruited by a charity it is more likely that he or she will give again to that charity.
The more trust is built between donors and the charitable organisation the more loyal they become. The perceived quality of the charitable organisations’ service, the perceived impact of previous donations and the extent to which the donors feel they exert control over their relationship with the charity all significantly affect the likelihood of retaining a committed and loyal donor base. In retaining loyal donors, fundraisers need to address two key components of the feedback process. First, in thanking donors for their contributions, fundraisers should employ labelling techniques such as use of the words kind, helpful and generous and, secondly, they should provide adequate and appropriate donor recognition.
Size of donation. Requests for larger donations appear to be less likely to succeed that moderate ones and a considerable amount of research has demonstrated the importance of legitimising small donations. Phrases such as ‘every little helps’ can be used to increase compliance rates, although this tactic is not necessarily effective when asking previous donors. It is also important that charities communicate to donors that their help will be effective. If a charity presents the need as ‘millions are starving’, prospective donors tend to take the view that they are powerless in the face of such a problem but if they are asked to help one child they are more likely to recognise that they can make a difference. People are discouraged from giving if they believe that helping will only be effective if they make a substantial donation. When communicating with donors about the effectiveness of their help, it is useful to provide information (e.g. what £1 can buy) and deploy role models to advocate the desirable forms of helping behaviour.
Donors’ perceptions of charity appeals and their decisions of how to respond depend on how they interpret the various elements of fundraising communications. That is, they view the appeal through a lens shaped by their motives, past experience, knowledge and attitudes. What is a passionate and deserving fundraising campaign to one person may stir no feeling at all in another. While research into the psychology of giving has identified some general principles of effective fundraising, those charities that fare well in difficult times will be those who really get to know their donors.
[1] The Individual Giving Survey (IGS) from NCVO and CAF, and the government-funded 2006/7 Helping Out survey (Low et al 2007)
[2] Who are the Givers?, Institute for Philanthropy (2003), Source: www.instituteforphilanthropy.org/
[3] Clary, E. G., Snyder, M., Ridge, R. D., Copeland, J., Stukas, A. A., Haugen, J., & Miene, P, Understanding and assessing the motivations of volunteers: a functional approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1516-1530, (1998)
[4] Bendapudi, N., Singh, S.N. and Bendapudi, V., Enhancing Helping Behaviour: An Integrative Framework for Promotion Planning, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60, No. 3 (July), pp 33-49, (1996)
[5] Sargeant, A., Ford, J. and Hudson, J. Charity Brand Personality: The Relationship With Giving Behaviour, Service Industries Journal, Vol 28, No. 5, (2008)
[6] Bennett, R., Factors Underlying the Inclination to Donate to Particular Types of Charity, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp 12-29, (2003)
[7] Sargeant. A and Lee, S., Donor trust and relationship commitment in the U.K. charity sector: determinants of donor behavior?, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 33(2), pp. 185–202, (2004)
[2] Who are the Givers?, Institute for Philanthropy (2003), Source: www.instituteforphilanthropy.org/
[3] Clary, E. G., Snyder, M., Ridge, R. D., Copeland, J., Stukas, A. A., Haugen, J., & Miene, P, Understanding and assessing the motivations of volunteers: a functional approach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1516-1530, (1998)
[4] Bendapudi, N., Singh, S.N. and Bendapudi, V., Enhancing Helping Behaviour: An Integrative Framework for Promotion Planning, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60, No. 3 (July), pp 33-49, (1996)
[5] Sargeant, A., Ford, J. and Hudson, J. Charity Brand Personality: The Relationship With Giving Behaviour, Service Industries Journal, Vol 28, No. 5, (2008)
[6] Bennett, R., Factors Underlying the Inclination to Donate to Particular Types of Charity, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp 12-29, (2003)
[7] Sargeant. A and Lee, S., Donor trust and relationship commitment in the U.K. charity sector: determinants of donor behavior?, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 33(2), pp. 185–202, (2004)
Author: Sally Hibbert
Sally Hibbert is an associate professor of marketing and head of the marketing division at Nottingham University Business School. She has published widely on the topic of donor behaviour and has undertaken a variety of research projects for organisations in the voluntary sector and local and national government.
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