Didja hear the one about the two kids:  one an extreme pessimist, the other an extreme optimist?

The parents took the pessimist to a room full of brand-new toys, and the optimist out to a manure pile.

When they checked in on the pessimist, he was crying.  He wouldn’t play with any of the toys, worried he would break them.  When they checked in the optimist, he was happily digging through the manure.

The pessimist turned  to his parents and yelled “There must be a pony in here somewhere!”

All this to say, after digging through the Charity Commission report yesterday, we found a couple of (very small) ponies of usable information.

First is the general point the Charity Commission report was trying to make: trust in charities could and should be higher.  As we mentioned yesterday, this echoes Edelman and nfpSynergy reports that nonprofits are trusted more than most other institutions, but that trust in all institutions is dropping.

There are some important implications to this:

• We need to defend nonprofits that are unfairly attacked. Nick talked about the hit job stories on Wounded Warrior Project two years ago and how slow the sector was to rally to their support.
• We need to systematically build trust, because trust matters. As I said back in February, it’s “Because “trust” is the lynchpin of a solid and sustainable relationship with a donor; Because there is a way to measure trust and identify those actions that can increase donors’ trust–and significantly increase donor value and an organization’s net income.  In today’s climate of mistrust understanding the importance of trust and identifying what steps an organization can take to build donor trust is more important than ever.”

The second point is that the Charity Commission Report contained an actual test of messaging about how you can best position your impact.

The researchers  had their sample look at four different versions of an ad for a fictional charity:

• A fundraising statement about how your donation is needed
• A logo for the Charity Commission
• A statement of impact for that charity
• A pie chart about how funds are used

(If you’d like to see them in living color, they are on page 10 of the report here.)

And, if you got anything from yesterday’s post, you can probably guessed that using the Charity Commission’s logo didn’t move the needle.  You would be right.

The winner in this case was the humble pie chart, followed by the organization-specific statement of impact.  Both were effective at raising trust and donation intention, likely by educating donors that not as much is spent on overhead as they think.

But why test four treatments when you can test 6,656 treatments?  That’s what the Data and Marketing Association and our colleagues at DonorVoice did in a test with nonprofit donors earlier this year. Using the DonorVoice Pre-Test Tool, they looked at what works best among:

• Trust indicators (e.g., Charity Navigator logo, GuideStar Platinum rating, testimonials, etc.)
• Who you help (e.g., identifiable victim, statistics, tangible examples, etc.)
• How overhead is presented (e.g., pie chart, cost transparence, not mentioning it, etc.)
• Donor control (e.g., restricted giving, unrestrictive giving, control over channels, etc.)
• Donor identity, which you’ve heard us talk a lot about

The results of this test will be released  in a free DMA webinar on August 7^that 2 PM Eastern.

I’ve promised Kevin and Nick I will not ruin the suspense with previews of the test results.   But I can say that the pie chart came in second in how to treat overhead.  What came in first?  That, you will have to watch the webinar to find out.  AND MUCH MUCH MORE.

Roger

P.S. If you can’t make it, email Nick at nellinger@thedonorvoice.com–  he’ll get you a copy of the deck after the webinar.