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Behavioral Science Posts

Are You Undermining Donor’s Sense of Control?

People give of time and treasure. We know this to be true. A factoid in support: Americans donate over $310 billion and volunteer 8.8 billion hours per year. If you take the median household income in the US (67k) and the average hours worked in a year you see that the hours given are worth […]

Learn More March 28, 2022

Back to Normal

Covid changed everything. For a little while. The prognosticators claiming otherwise were seemingly trying to outdo one another with their hyperbolic goobly gook. Here is one such hot-take, “that one can talk about a global synchronisation of human behaviour establishing a completely new, universal change of consumer patterns.” Uh, yeah, whatever. A nod to Mark […]

Learn More March 25, 2022

Personas? Buyer Beware.

This post is sourced from an article I wrote for the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s bi-monthly magazine, Marketing AdVents. I encourage checking out the DMAW membership offer. They produce a lot of good content with conferences, webinars and this publication. The only reason to group donors is because you believe you’ll be more financially […]

Learn More March 23, 2022

Paper vs Digital –Does the Medium Matter?

Does an ask for money or time get mentally processed differently depending on whether it’s a paper or digital ask? In a word, yes. A study done in China and the US found that the medium determines, in part, how willing folks are to help. They dubbed the finding the “good paper” effect, which likely […]

Learn More March 18, 2022

Don’t Ask if You Don’t Care About the Answers

Zero party data is the data that voluntarily comes from your donors. It’s their voice. You might say we built a company around the value of it. This data is proprietary, you don’t sell or trade it in the co-op mills taking in others’ mailing list laundry. You keep it to yourself and you use […]

Learn More March 16, 2022

Fundraising in Inflation and Under Threat of Nuclear War. 7 Survival Tips for 2022

Here we go again. The phone’s ringing, the email inbox dinging as colleagues attempt to figure out what to do in a world that more than ever seems to be falling apart. Over Agitator’s 15 years our readers have witnessed a litany of financial meltdowns (2008), pandemic disasters (2020) and now in 2022 inflation coupled […]

Learn More March 14, 2022

Fundraising Lessons From the Liberty Ship Innovation

Shipbuilding pre-WWII was akin to fundraising before mass market channels existed—highly bespoke and tailored to the buyer, time consuming and with non-scalable labor as the primary input. Necessity often being the mother of all invention, the shipbuilding industry in the United States underwent a radical transformation to meet the needs of the Allied cause. But […]

Learn More March 11, 2022

The Exquisite Corpse of Direct Mail

If direct mail is dead it’s one hell of an exquisite corpse. And, with each passing week it grows even more exquisite. Not that it’s ever died; just grown more valuable, important, and increasingly informed by more and more science. We’ve been on the direct mail soap box a long time, particularly urging small to […]

Learn More March 9, 2022

The Anatomy & Science of Conversation

Conversation abounds in the world of fundraising whether in-person or over the phone. Everybody makes note that we should be active listeners and strive for making a conversation, well, you know, “conversational”. That feels thin. The social science world has done a lot to get a more robust answer. This has implications for humans talking […]

Learn More March 7, 2022

The Last Mile Matters

In supply chain world the last mile is that last step to get the Amazon package to your door. It’s notoriously expensive and cumbersome and it can be the difference between turning a profit or not. Your last mile equivalent is the paper or digital equivalent reply form. This last mile is a good place […]

Learn More March 4, 2022

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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Behavioral Science Posts

Are You Undermining Donor’s Sense of Control?

Back to Normal

Personas? Buyer Beware.

Paper vs Digital –Does the Medium Matter?

Don’t Ask if You Don’t Care About the Answers

Fundraising in Inflation and Under Threat of Nuclear War. 7 Survival Tips for 2022

Fundraising Lessons From the Liberty Ship Innovation

The Exquisite Corpse of Direct Mail

The Anatomy & Science of Conversation

The Last Mile Matters

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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