I’m a Canadian. A behavioral scientist. A fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins. A husband. The son of a parent afflicted with cancer. These are some examples of the identities I hold.

Identities refer to important social roles, relationships, attitudes, and passions that people use to describe themselves. Everyone has various identities that are more or less at the forefront of their minds in different contexts. When I’m at work, my professional identity as a behavioral scientist is most prominent. When I’m at home, my identities as a husband, son, and hockey fan are more salient.

If you’re a regular reader of the Agitator, then you already know DonorVoice takes a donor-centric fundraising approach taking individual level, donor identity into account.  We do this because a core reason why someone may decide to support your cause (or not) will be anchored in his or her identity. Why? It turns out identities, by their very nature, have goals attached to them.  If your charitable cause is well-aligned with the goals of your potential donors, then supporting your charity is an identity-related choice that potential donors are likely to make. In other words, people are more likely to support the causes that match who they are.

Identity-relevant information is easy to obtain with zero-party data (i.e. you ask donors). It’s easily scaled if those key data elements are treated as a business imperative and baked into, for example, existing acquisition processes (e.g. in telemarketing scripts, in face-to-face scripts). It’s worth your time and effort to learn your donors’ identities because identity information allows for tailored—that is, personally meaningful—messaging.

But what exactly constitutes an effective identity-tailored message? To answer that question, we need to understand how and why people develop identities in the first place.

Identity Formation

People acquire identities through learning and experience. And people’s range of learning and experience is delimited, at least in part, by the socioeconomic, cultural, familial, and personal circumstances they find themselves in. Identities can be modeled (e.g., “Kevin, help daddy rig up this fishing pole”—future angler identity) or even imposed by others (e.g., “We’re all Democrats in this family!”)—more on this in a bit. Identities can also be discovered and slowly developed from people’s temperament. For example, someone high in Openness, one of the Big Five traits, is more likely to become a member and supporter of the local art museum and an artist than someone lower in Openness.

An important reason why people develop identities is to satisfy their basic psychological needs.

• People adopt identities to experience relatedness to certain individuals and groups they care about.
• They adopt identities to feel competence, to learn and develop skills or to feel effective in advancing a cause.
• Finally, they adopt identities to satisfy their need for autonomy, to engage in activities that express their values and elaborate their interests.

The practical insight here is that merely cuing an identity isn’t enough—remember, people aren’t soulless automatons that can be easily steered by external prompts in one direction or another. Creating personally meaningful messages on the basis of donor identity means giving supporters opportunities to satisfy their needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. How can your charity foster a sense of connection and community? How can your donors feel the positive difference they make when they support your cause? What goals and values does your organization share with its donors? The answers to these questions help make for a need satisfying message.

A Word of Warning: Identities Aren’t Created Equal

Some identities are “strong,” others more superficial. For example, many Americans identify themselves as Christian. However, for some Americans, this identity distinguishes little of what they care about or their daily lifestyle; it will probably give some insight into their holiday get-togethers, however. For others, being Christian deeply characterizes their values and worldview. We might describe these two types of Christian identity as “little c” and “capital C” Christian. Clearly, if you were going to tailor messages on the basis of Christian identity, you’d have to distinguish these.   Pentacost isn’t exactly a special holiday to contact the little-c Christians on your donor list.

There is another, arguably more important, way that identities aren’t created equal. Some identities are self-endorsed and can be enacted with a full sense of volition. They’re what you might describe as “authentic identities.” The value systems of authentic identities genuinely mesh with the other goals and interests that a person holds. Other identities are taken on as “shoulds” and “have to’s,” behavioral scripts that a person feels pressured to perform. Psychologists refer to these types of identities as introjections. You can think of introjections as identities that have been “swallowed” without getting “chewed” much less “digested.”

This distinction between “authentic identities” and “introjected identities” might seem strange since all identities are part of a person’s psyche. But if you consider how basic psychological needs can be pitted against each other during the formation of identities, it makes sense.

Remember, one of the main reasons that people develop identities in the first place is to satisfy their basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. By adopting the attitudes and social mores of a group—by identifying with a group—people are able to fulfill their need for relatedness. But if their acceptance and social approval depends on acting in a way that’s consistent with a particular identity, then people have to give up their sense of autonomy or choice about how to think and behave in order to retain approval. Conform or risk rejection. In such a context, one’s needs for relatedness and autonomy are made to conflict.

This will lead one to either discard the identity (and its associated group) or, as is frequently the case, adopt it as an introjection. Consider, once again, the imposition, “We’re all Democrats in this family!” From the perspective of basic psychological needs, what’s happening here is family acceptance (relatedness satisfaction) is being made contingent on unquestioning adherence to a political affiliation (thwarting autonomy).

Some identities are difficult to feel a real sense of ownership over if you’re not free examine their tenets. Once adopted as an introjection, a person may feel good about themselves only to the extent that he or she is able to live up to the standards originally demanded by others. The identity is uncomfortable. It may be enacted, but the associated motivation is controlled and unstable.

At this point, you might be wondering why I’m veering into psychodynamics and telling you all this. Here’s why: When speaking to a donor’s identity, you don’t want to repeat the controlling pattern described above. Specifically, you don’t want to use a donor’s identity as the target to sink your manipulative talons: “Being the good Democrat that you are, can we count on your support?”

The implication here is, “If you don’t choose to give support, you’re not a good Democrat. You’re not behaving as you should.” Organizations adopting this approach aren’t only risking a suboptimal quality of donor motivation in the event that donors do conform and give support, they’re also risking reactance—that resentful anti-conformity we’ve covered previously.

Being Thoughtful About Donor Identity

Speaking to a donor’s identity makes the landscape of need satisfaction more salient because it makes the communication more personal, that is, relevant to their goals. Developing need-supportive messages on the basis of identity then, means helping donors to see how supporting your cause helps them advance the goals that define the identities that are important to them.

People often hold identities that have befallen them and that naturally align with charitable causes (e.g., battling cancer). All things considered equal, a person battling cancer or a caregiver for someone battling cancer is probably more likely to see value in supporting cancer research. But, even in such instances, people actively choose who to express their identities with and people are naturally oriented to need satisfying experiences. So it’s always worth your effort to make your interactions with your donors as relatedness-, competence-, and autonomy-satisfying as possible.

Stefano