Why Would Anyone Add 13% To Their Donation Amount?

The DonorVoice Team ran a very cool, smart test with one of our agency of record clients, Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB).  I can be praiseworthy as I wasn’t directly involved (think that’s merely correlation…) Here were the guiding inputs. There are two separate, mental giving decisions Will I give, yes or no? If yes, […]

Quality Comes From Quantity But…

Author Ray Bradbury said, “Quantity produces quality.  If you only write a few things, you’re doomed”. There’s at least three, fundraising nuanced takes on this. You’re running a quantity model business and have a set ratio of quantity to quality donors you bring in.   This model fails for almost every charity save for the uber […]

One Panda Or Four?

Researchers asked separate groups of people how much they’d donate to save 2,000, 20,000 or 200,000 migrating birds drowning in an oil pond.   The mean responses are stunningly similar, $80, $78 and $88.  This underscores what is wonkily called “scope neglect” or the inability or unwillingness to factor in the size of the problem as part […]

Who Owns the Story?

That’s the rhetorical question underlying an Amref Health UK report, a charity focused on health in Africa.  The report shares loads of useful detail on a direct mail test pitting what they call participant stories against charity stories. The report is authored by outside consultants, Jess Crombie and David Girling, in partnership with Amref.  The test […]

Statistical Significance Smificance…

Your SmartPhone Makes You, More You

I hate my phone and love it. Check that; I love my phone and hate my kids’ phones. Check that;  I love my phone and hate my kids’ phones except when I need to reach them but even then, I still kind of hate their phones because they insist on texting with initials and shorthand […]

When Does a Losing Test Win?

Did either or both of these test ads beat the control?  No peeking. Neither test beat the control.  Or at least that’s the case if you assume everyone is the same and do a random nth test, which is 99% of all tests. How about this one, did either or both beat the control?  Go […]

Ask Amounts: $.99 and Upgrading

We wrote last week about the allure of $.99 pricing in the consumer world and argued for testing with $.99’s in the ask string. The best test is appending education to your file (cheap, quick and easy) as proxy for numeracy,  and having a split test since more numerate and less numerate people process prices […]

The Power of $.99 Not Created Equal

The consumer world is way ahead in understanding the science and psychology of price on decision making.  Suffice to say what a person is willing to pay and how they feel about it is highly malleable. In our world there’s still a lot to learn and optimize for our price equivalent– ask amounts.  We’re not […]

A Low Risk, High Reward Approach to Fundraising

In recent years we’ve tried to show how breakthroughs in research, particularly in behavioral science enable knowledgeable fundraisers to reap some mighty impressive rewards that come from a more in-depth understanding of “why” a particular donor gives (identity),  why different messages are required for different donors (personality/psychological profiles) and how these elements are used in […]