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Behavioral Science Posts

We Re-did the DonorVoice Website. Why Should You Care?

You shouldn’t…unless you’re interested in understanding why people give and using the insight to make your fundraising better. There is a case study here. You shouldn’t…unless you’re interested in using behavioral science to get beyond one size fits all fundraising. There is a case study here. You shouldn’t…unless you’re considering changing your own website and […]

Learn More June 28, 2021

Plastic Bag Bans and Your Fundraising Problem

The common fundraising bias is to focus on small problems, easily reduced – the conversion on your landing page, the response rate on your control mailing. This last mile focus means we often miss related, larger behavior problems – i.e. the upstream problems. Is the larger conversion problem tied to overfishing the same acquisition waters, […]

Learn More June 25, 2021

Donor Service: Walking the Talk

For years we’ve stressed the importance of good donor service when it comes to donor satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value. In earlier posts here and here, we pointed out that poor donor service accounts for a significant part (20%) of why donors drop out. There’s simply no excuse for organizations losing nearly 20% of their defecting donors because […]

Learn More June 23, 2021

Does the donor sign up experience impact sustainer retention?

If you think donor experience matters to sustainer retention then the vague term needs to be broken down into specifics and we need to get more precise. Let’s start with context. Consider a telefundraising campaign to convert digital petition leads to sustainer. Mental exercise: Name two parts of the call experience that have a statistically […]

Learn More June 21, 2021

A Perfect “How-To-Book” is Born

Tom Ahern is a prolific author of some of the most provably practical fundraising how-to-books in our sector. I have gifted literally scores of Ahern books to colleagues and clients. For good reason. They’re packed with valuable insights and profusely illustrated with helpful examples. Among my favorites is Tom’s Making Money With Donor Newsletters for […]

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How to Have More Winning Tests?

Stop designing tests assuming everyone’s the same. 99.9% of tests are of this variety, the random nth, A/B test. Hidden in many “losing” test results is a test idea that worked for some people and not others. Here are results of an experiment with donations going to World Vision and prospective donors randomly split into […]

Learn More June 18, 2021

The Value of a Fundraiser

Almost every sector of the economy is now facing the issue of how many employees will actually return vs. how many will simply opt for greener pastures. If the financial meltdown of 2008 was the Great Recession, will almost-post-pandemic- 2021 turn out to be the Great Resignation. Virtually every part of the nonprofit sector – […]

Learn More June 16, 2021

Humility in Numeracy

Numeracy, defined as a basic understanding and ability to work with numbers, matters. The less numerate earn less and have less wealth. They’re also more likely to have chronic disease, take more prescription drugs and be less able to follow the (partly numerated) instructions, thus adding more health risk. Some of this is conflated with […]

Learn More June 14, 2021

Update on the Cost of Embalming An Elephant

I know that’s a strange headline, but I wanted to call your attention to something so basic that I’m constantly amazed so many fundraisers simply overlook it. I’m talking about the basic data of our trade – names, addresses, deceased donors and fundamental demographics—the very “simple” stuff that makes the difference in any donor communication […]

Learn More June 11, 2021

The Corvallis Effect and Donor Fatigue

A mysterious student has been attending class at Oregon State University for the past two months enveloped in a big, black bag. Only his bare feet show. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am the Black Bag sits on a small table near the back of the classroom. The class is Speech 113 – basic […]

Learn More June 9, 2021

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

We Re-did the DonorVoice Website. Why Should You Care?

Plastic Bag Bans and Your Fundraising Problem

Donor Service: Walking the Talk

Does the donor sign up experience impact sustainer retention?

A Perfect “How-To-Book” is Born

How to Have More Winning Tests?

The Value of a Fundraiser

Humility in Numeracy

Update on the Cost of Embalming An Elephant

The Corvallis Effect and Donor Fatigue

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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PreTest Tool

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