It’s not a big scientific discovery that supporters care about the difference they make. If my donation won’t change anything, why would I give? At the same time though, very few supporters check a charity’s actual impact before making a donation. So, what’s going on here? Two things:

1. The type of impact

Actual impact is the difference a donation, or the charity, had on the cause and can be shown with data from the field.

Perceived impact is the difference supporters perceive their donation, or the charity, could have e.g. $15 could buy medicine.

2. Access to impact information

While information on actual impact is either limited and/or requires a lot of effort to access, information on the impact your donation could have is readily available.

The result? Supporters don’t bother looking for actual impact information. Instead, they might rely on perceived impact.

Does increasing supporters’ perceived impact increase giving?

Research on perceived impact and different ways of increasing it featured prominently in our 1^st Online Behavioural Symposium. Here’s a quick summary of the findings (click on headings for slides from each talk).

Prof. Peter Ayton – The efficacy of broadcast charitable appeals: Tangible impact of Donations

The researchers coded 358 charitable appeals on BBC Radio 4 based on characteristics such as whether the presenter is a celebrity, whether an amount was suggested, or whether a specific tangible impact was mentioned e.g. £25 could buy a goat. Then, they looked at the appeals’ effectiveness in raising money. Out of the 12 appeal characteristics they looked at, only two were significant predictors of giving: the presenter’s gender – males performed better – and the mention of tangible impact of plausible donations. Takeaway: show the impact a donation could have with a tangible example.

Prof. Enrico Rubaltelli – How to systematically increase people’s likelihood to give; Perception of the cost/benefit tradeoff of a fundraising campaign

Compared to not including one, an example of tangible benefit increases perceived impact which in turn increases giving. But is there any way we could increase the perceived impact of a specific benefit even further? The answer is yes. Let’s say we have the following two donation options:

• $30 to buy a 4-star blanket
• $50 to buy a 5-star blanket and a pillow

We could increase the attractiveness of the more expensive option by increasing the perceived impact of the associated benefit. The way to do that is by adding a decoy option which asks you to give the same amount with a similar but inferior benefit:

• $30 to buy a 4-star blanket
• $50 to buy a 5-star blanket
• $50 to buy a 5-star blanket and a pillow

Or if you’d like to push people to the lower amount (not sure why you’d want that but for illustration’s sake), you could have this decoy option:

• $30 to buy a 3-star blanket
• $30 to buy a 4-star blanket
• $50 to buy a 5-star blanket and a pillow

The decoy option makes it obvious that at equal cost you could have more impact which drives people to your target amount. Takeaway: test including a decoy option in your shopping list featuring an inferior benefit compared to the amount you want to nudge supporters towards.

Prof. Hengchen Dai – Prosocial Goal Pursuit in Crowdfunding: Evidence from Kickstarter

Sharing a target and how close you are at achieving it (goal proximity), could be another effective way to show people the impact they could have. After observing donations to about 5,500 Kickstarter projects, the researchers found that it takes 140% less time to go from 95% to 100% than it takes to go from 100% to 105%. This was driven by an increase in donation rate and in donation amount. Takeaway: showing how close you are at achieving a goal might increase people’s perceived impact and thus increase giving.

To sum up: increasing a supporter’s perceived impact could have a positive effect on giving. But there are many ways you could do that and not all will be equally effective. For example, you could make people feel their donation is just a drop in the ocean by talking or sharing numbers about how big the need is. On the contrary, you could increase people’s perceived impact by not talking about the scale of the issue, by sharing tangible examples of benefit, or by asking people to help just one person/one project. It is worth testing different ways of increasing perceived impact to see which one is the most effective for your audience.

Interested in finding out more or testing some of these ideas? Email me at kkoutmeridou@thedonorvoice.com

Kiki