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Fidelity’s Valentine for a Better World

Fidelity Charitable, the largest sponsor of Donor Advised Funds has just released its 2024 Giving Report which you can –and should—download and read. Top Lines From Fidelity Report Here’s a summary of Fidelity Charitable’s 2023 activity. 11.8 billion in grants 2.3 million individual gifts –up from 626K 10 years ago given by 322,000 donors—up from 119,000 […]

Learn More February 14, 2024

Climbing the Mountain of Success: Why Your 3% Improvement Might Still Leave You at Base Camp

You just ran a simple, low-cost A/B test and improved something by 3%. Your average donation test went up from “meh” to “slightly less meh.” These can feel like wins that matter. But if your goal is building the brand and growing the supporter base year over year then it might be akin to a […]

Learn More February 12, 2024

To Ask or Not to Ask: The Shakespearean Dilemma of Fundraising

If people enjoy giving, then why avoid a fundraising ask? Being solicited and the joy that can arrive from being charitable are not synonymous. Heck, sometimes they aren’t even far-flung cousins. Relatedly, the act of giving is not what brings joy. It’s how the person feels afterwards. I don’t give because I feel sad, I […]

Learn More February 7, 2024

Breaking Up with Warm Glow: Why Your Donors Deserve a Deeper Flame

People like to give because it fosters a warm glow. Therefore, more asking equals more opportunities for this warm glow. Ergo, donors are happy, satisfied, and fueled with positive motivation to keep giving contingent on you continually asking. When I see this logic train cited it conjures up a record player’s arm lifted, the needle […]

Learn More February 5, 2024

When Avocados Met Toast: A Millennial Love Story Gone Too Far

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far too obsessed with demographics, fundraisers posing as researchers discovered young people crave authenticity, sustainability, and trustworthiness. And, in a stroke of genius, they declared these desires exclusive to the young, as if generations before had thrived on artificiality, wastefulness, and deceit. The hilarious notion that these values […]

Learn More February 2, 2024

Use Case #3,468 for GPT: Surveys

You’ll find what I imagine to be at least 3,467 use-cases splattered across the internet. That makes this example, use case 3,468 and it’s uber novel, using GPT to generate survey research responses. That’s right, a machine answering survey questions and using a wash/repeat method to produce a dataset of say, 1,000 responses. That may […]

Learn More January 31, 2024

Does Your A/B (Testing) Need to Meet C and D?

What do 127,000 experiments over five years from a variety of sectors, including fundraising, tell us about what’s required to run better experiments? First, let’s define better: higher chance of winning and bigger uplift, which creates a multiplier for expected impact; the % chance of winning * likely uplift = expected impact. Here’s our take […]

Learn More January 29, 2024

What is GPT’s Personality?

Can a machine have a Personality? Well, it can be instructed to produce copy that matches certain traits and with guidance, does this quite well. A machine can be programmed to identify and match or mimic the dominant trait of a human on the other side of a text or chatbot conversation. This mirroring technique […]

Learn More January 26, 2024

Urgency and Crying Wolf

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a cautionary tale of urgency messaging. If I’ve read it once, I’ve read it a million (ish) times. Urgency is critical to get donors to take action now. Is it really that simple? When might urgency messaging backfire? Or maybe there is just a better motivator than urgency to prompt […]

Learn More January 22, 2024

Open, Keep, Convert: Mastering the Charity Mail Journey

The DonorVoice Behavioral Science Team is calling for applications to participate in a direct mail innovation project. Details are below. Simply Click here to express interest and the team will follow up accordingly. Overview Your best “digital” donors are your direct mail recipients. And still, almost all your charity mail goes directly in the trash, […]

Learn More January 19, 2024

Ask A Behavioral Scientist

Behavioral Science Q & A

Q: Do you have any insight on whether integrating an individual giving appeal with other comms from the charity in both appearance and messaging can uplift results? Or does the actual appeal become ‘lost’ for lack of stand-out?

Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]

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Q: Is there any research on response rate impact in direct mail when referring to a sustainer gift as ongoing or recurring (catching all frequencies) v. monthly or annual?

I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]

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Q: A major conservation nonprofit sends me lots of mail, many of which have on the envelope “time to renew” or “2nd notice.” I find this practice deceptive, especially as I haven’t given to said organization since 1997. It must be effective or they wouldn’t do it. But is it ethical?

Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]

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Q: I find it irritating when some nonprofits accept my “gift” and then ask me to cover their credit card fees separately. It feels like a practice that does nothing to help win donors and runs the risk of turning others off. Is there any data on this either way?

Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]

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Q: What are the three most important things to consider when designing a brilliant supporter journey?

There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]

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Q: Is there any evidence that changes to the tax laws in the USA changed end of year giving behaviors? Previously, ~30% of US taxpayers filed itemized tax returns allowing them to receive a deduction for charitable giving. Tax law changed in 2017 so that now only ~10% itemize. This should mean tax year-end giving should not matter to millions of people for whom it used to matter. Is there any data evidence to support this?

I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]

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Uncategorized

Fidelity’s Valentine for a Better World

Climbing the Mountain of Success: Why Your 3% Improvement Might Still Leave You at Base Camp

To Ask or Not to Ask: The Shakespearean Dilemma of Fundraising

Breaking Up with Warm Glow: Why Your Donors Deserve a Deeper Flame

When Avocados Met Toast: A Millennial Love Story Gone Too Far

Use Case #3,468 for GPT: Surveys

Does Your A/B (Testing) Need to Meet C and D?

What is GPT’s Personality?

Urgency and Crying Wolf

Open, Keep, Convert: Mastering the Charity Mail Journey

Ask A Behavioral Scientist

Behavioral Science Q & A

Q: Do you have any insight on whether integrating an individual giving appeal with other comms from the charity in both appearance and messaging can uplift results? Or does the actual appeal become ‘lost’ for lack of stand-out?

Q: Is there any research on response rate impact in direct mail when referring to a sustainer gift as ongoing or recurring (catching all frequencies) v. monthly or annual?

Q: A major conservation nonprofit sends me lots of mail, many of which have on the envelope “time to renew” or “2nd notice.” I find this practice deceptive, especially as I haven’t given to said organization since 1997. It must be effective or they wouldn’t do it. But is it ethical?

Q: I find it irritating when some nonprofits accept my “gift” and then ask me to cover their credit card fees separately. It feels like a practice that does nothing to help win donors and runs the risk of turning others off. Is there any data on this either way?

Q: What are the three most important things to consider when designing a brilliant supporter journey?

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