For starters, don’t ask.

Asking  donors “why” they give tends to produce a lot of rationale or superficial answers.  People are able to reliably cite their attitudes and provide insight on their experiences from interactions but rarely do they shed light on the cause of their behavior when directly prompted.

A slightly better approach is to ask why a particular cause (not the charity itself) is important to them.  This will also result in describing experiences,  but some of those may indirectly shed light on the ‘why’.   The danger here is relying on a researcher to intuit this.  It can be done with multiple researchers doing independent coding and then statistically comparing those answers but that process is extremely rare – i.e. doesn’t happen – in practice.

The better way is leaning on the reams and reams of guidance and insight found in academia by doing a a literature review – e.g. a Google Scholar search.  This is how you start your testing process with the use of theory.  Unfortunately, most fundraisers don’t base their testing on theory. The norm is semi-random test ideas borne of habit, not rigor, and  producing semi-random results with no real insight.  The Test loses. The Test wins.  Next Test please.

Without knowing why the test lost/beat the control, the result doesn’t matter.

The only way to know why is to start with a “why” hypothesis.

You’ll want to sign up for one of the many paid aggregator services to get fuller access to more academic articles.  And, you’ll want to have a 2^nd or 3^rd cup of coffee.  Reading through academic journal articles is not for the faint of heart.  It’s informationally dense,  often math heavy and too frequently laden with inscrutable language.  It’s as if they don’t want anyone who might make use of the research  to read it. (Come to think of it, ditch the coffee, grab your favorite adult beverage instead.)

Here’s a real world example.

We were thinking about feminism and why people support groups aligned with women’s rights.  Guess what?  There has been an awful lot of academic thought dedicated to this topic.  And as it turns out, dedicated to damn near every topic or issue you can think of, ranging from feminism to duck hunter identity to a study in the Ergonomics journal titled, “Impact of wet underwear on thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort in the cold”.   (As it turns out, wet underwear sucks)

Our aims was not just to unearth theories and research about what makes feminists tick but what makes some tick differently from others.   No group, no matter how homogenous on the surface, is monolithic.

Here’s a snippet of what we found. And what we found is just the tip of the iceberg.

• There is evidence that three people can have the exact same belief structure with one of those persons adopting the “feminist” label in public (e.g. Facebook), the 2^nd only being comfortable doing so in private and the 3^rd, not at all. Labels matter,  but not equally nor in the same direction to all people.
• There is also evidence that some feminists (whether they adopt the label or not) are motivated by communal messaging (e.g. work with other feminists) while others by agentic messaging (e.g. take a stand for your beliefs)

We ran a Communal and Agentic messaging ad against the control.  Both beat the control.  We know why.  We also have further, live, in-market evidence that not all feminists are the same.  And our test results sit on a foundation of other research and evidence.  We should feel much more confident in these results because of it.

Next, we then ran versioning of our winning ads to explore the feminist label question.   We found that overall, the best ad is No Feminist Label and Agentic messaging.

But why in the world would we look for a ‘winner’ instead of winners?  The idea of a single control is 100% counter to being “donor-centric” or evidence-based or research-led or any other idiom you want to apply.

The real upside here is not just refining a campaign.  It is tagging the people who respond to the Agentic Feminist label ad as such in your CRM.  Once that’s done the  subsequent touchpoints with the donor can be tailored accordingly.

The aim becomes further testing and refining and optimizing for up to four different groups of feminists who may equally support your cause but are different (from the other groups) in how best to motivate and activate their sense of self.

This isn’t more time or money compared to a current state of one-size-fits-nobody and semi-random testing, which takes up plenty of both (time and money).  It is reapplying the same time and money differently.

To do so requires a mindset shift that refuses to think and believe a single control or one-size-fits-nobody journey or a journey tied to channel,  or other internal, navel gazing is the best way to raise money for the cause you desperately care about.

In short, we need to show our supporters we care as much as they do by showing we know their ‘why’.  Only then can we reverse any of the oft-cited flat to negative trend lines plaguing the sector.

Kevin