Do Fundraisers Abuse Emotion?
Last week I posted on the topic of emotion in fundraising, riffing off of Ken Burnett’s piece, Adventures in Emotional Space.
Whenever I write about emotion in fundraising, I’m generally urging the need for more of it (in comparison to logic and building the rational case).
But of course, we all know about having ‘too much of a good thing’. I suppose we’ve all seen the fundraising appeal that’s made us cringe because of its schmaltziness, exploitiveness, blatant ‘ambulance-chasing’, or sheer lack of taste.
Probably many of us tend to get more upset by appeals that play purely upon negative emotions — fear, anger, retribution, even hatred. We’re more tolerant of appeals — based on emotions like compassion and love — that ask us to pour out our hearts — and wallets — for sad-eyed children or threatened species. [I know, there could be some anger there too.]
Could there ever be too much ‘good’ emotion in fundraising?
Where’s the line? Is it like pornography … unable to define officially, but ‘know it when you see it!’?
I raise this because of a small footnote to Ken’s article:
Please note 1. Ken Burnett is managing project 6 for the Commission on the Donor Experience, The use and abuse of emotion. If you have something to add about improving the donor experience emotionally, or if you fancy writing up some emotional case histories, please get in touch.
I for one want to hear more from Ken on his investigation into this topic, so I urge you to come forward with your examples of fundraising abuse of emotion.
Tom
5 responses to “Do Fundraisers Abuse Emotion?”
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I think this comes down to how well you know your donors and their emotional triggers.
Thank you June you are right, of course. And this implies that really the key to the proper use of emotion in fundraising is the fundraiser him or herself, their knowledge of their donors and also the personal characteristics, attitudes and integrity as well as the skills they bring to the job.
Have you any good examples June of how this works at optimum? If so, I’d love to hear of them and who knows, may be able to share them with other donor-focused fundraisers far and wide.
PS Thanks Tom for the call for content. Though our Commission on the Donor Experience has been set up to change the culture of British fundraising we’ll be delighted to be informed by fundraising wisdom from across the Atlantic. When it comes to doing the right things by donors there are no frontiers.
Please email me at ken@kenburnett.com with any emotional observations. Thanks.
I think emotion abuse is pretty rare. I usually hear of reactions like that from fundraisers who are more comfortable making logical arguments, marshalling facts and statistics, than emotional ones.
Sure, some potential donors are moved by the emotion and react in a negative way. Guilt is powerful stuff, and sometimes we deal with it by pushing away whatever causes it.
When I was in grade school, we used to have to watch this films about kids in Africa with leprosy (or Hansen’s disease, I think it’s now called). (Catholic school… they also made us fill in for sparsely attended funerals.) It definitely verged on abuse – 3rd graders watching people suffer horribly. But I can’t help but think it also tweaked our ability to empathize… and our sense of responsibility for people outside our small world.
And I’m sure there are cases where it’s abused – but that seems to hinge on: is it honest?
I think a lot of it comes down to, “Am I respecting my donors? Or am I just trying to whip them into an emotional frenzy by any means possible?” And as Mary said, honesty is important.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially because our org’s fundraising has been heavily statistic and logic centered until recently.
I agree that some donors are not comfortable seeing an emotional fundraiser. However, if the fundraiser is sincere and not feigning emotions, that’s the donor’s own issue. Of course, next time the fundraiser will be well advised to bring a more rational argument to that specific donor. This does not mean, however, that the fundraiser is emotionally abusing the donor. It’s maybe that the donor is unable or unwilling to experience the emotion themselves for whatever reason.
I believe (and research backs me up), that stories are what inspire fundraising, not logic. Many professional world changers seem to feel the need to prove their professionalism by proving their rationality, because an appeal to emotion is considered a logical fallacy and somehow inferior to making your case only with cold hard facts.
I believe this goes against how humans are wired and actually decreases our respect for and ability to hone our skills in empathy.
I think the main reason fundraising makes almost everyone uncomfortable is that we all have to reflect on the fact that we’re most likely not doing what we can, and that’s a very difficult feeling to sit with.