There’s a new meta-analysis in Nature Communications from Matthew Hornsey, Jessica Spence, and Cassandra Chapman that’s worth your time. Cassandra’s work in this area has been consistently thoughtful and this is no different, trying to answer the age old question: do people give from the heart or the head?

The short answer is both. The longer answer is more involved.

Empathy is the clean story. Measure it and it predicts giving at r=.25.   Run tests that increase (decrease) empathy and giving goes up (down).

Effectiveness is where it gets interesting. Measured in a survey, it predicts giving more strongly (r=.42). Then researchers tried to increase the sense of effectiveness using cost comparisons, impact stats, and the classic “guide-dog training versus curing blindness” exercise. Giving barely moved (r=.03). Even the effective altruism tests that all but shouted “PICK THE EFFICIENT CHARITY” landed at a nothing burger.

The authors call this the “effectiveness paradox” but I’d suggest the story is that our sector has been measuring one thing and trying to change another.

The so-called effectiveness measures sound like this: “How much good do you think you can do by donating to this organisation?” and “Will your donation make a positive difference?” That’s measuring a feeling and labeling it effectiveness.

The testing to increase the sense of “effectiveness” the donor feels ask that same donor to do math. Calculate lives per dollar. Choose between Charity A and Charity B.

It’s like measuring whether diners enjoyed their meal, finding that the most satisfied leave the biggest tips, and then trying to boost tips by handing out nutrition textbooks to satisfy the “good food” desire.

In our DonorVoice work we measure Competence and it looks a lot like how the sector measures “effectiveness”.   Donors definitely care about feeling competent, fail to deliver on this and they’ll stop giving.

The need is competence and stats are but one route there and usually a poor one.  The uber common “your $20 provides Y” formulation is a different, better route since the makes it obvious their action mattered and closes the competence loop.

That loop-closing move is the core. Here are five ways to do it that don’t require a cost-per-beneficiary line.

• Make it qualitative, “your March gift helped keep a family in their apartment after the eviction notice”.  This confirms the donor’s  action produced a real outcome and that is what competence feels like.
• Report at the project or person level, not the mission level. “Your gift supported our work in East Africa” is a comprehensibility failure. The donor can’t picture what happened, so they can’t feel what they did. “Kids wore backpacks on their first day of school”  gives the donor a mental image of the outcome.
• Match the ask to the donor, not to your revenue gap. Asking a $50 for $75 is a stretch inside their frame, it’s a enough stretch for the person to succeed. Asks calibrated this way feel like progress to the donor.
• Shut up for 60 to 90 days after a meaningful gift. If someone gave last month and you ask again this month, you’ve just told them the previous action didn’t matter. Quiet time lets the sense of completion set in.
• Give the donor a small, real choice. A pick between two programs, a note they can write that goes to the beneficiary. These aren’t gimmicks. They shift the donor from wallet to agent. Competence hinges on the action being the donor’s action, which is why a choice, however small, turns the gift into a thing the donor did rather than a thing that happened to them.

These all produce the same feeling, a donor who walks away understanding what they did and seeing that it landed somewhere.  The donor needs this as much as they need to feel connection.  This isn’t heart vs. head, it’s competence and connection.

Kevin