Volunteering as gateway to increased giving, that feels wholesome and easily worthy of a conference keynote slide next to a stock photo of smiling people in matching t-shirts.

This headline is from a large, randomized field experiment with nearly 150,000 people connected to a science/environment nonprofit.  The charity isn’t named but I infer it’s probably 150k who signed up for an app tied to this charity,  a birder app or the like.

None of the 150k had ever donated or volunteered and they were randomly assigned to test and control journeys.

The control (and test) got 21 non-ask emails that aren’t fully described but at least some promote a citizen science volunteer opportunity.  Apparently the control condition was “light psychological siege.”

The treatment group received 3 additional emails promoting this volunteer, citizen science opporutnity.

The test and control got an email solicitation 7 weeks after this 21 (or 24) email  barrage.

And guess what, people exposed to the extra volunteer emails donated later at higher rates.  Case closed, write the paper, do the conference session.

Not exactly.  The data tell a more interesting story.  Volunteer rates did increas slightly in the test: 5.72% → 6.29%.

But look at donation rates.

Among those who actually volunteered, donation rates did not improve.  In fact, treatment volunteers donated at a slightly lower rate than control volunteers:  2.02% vs 2.15%.  Your extra emails promoting the option to the group most interested in it made things slightly worse.

Meanwhile, the biggest increase in donors came from people who never volunteered at all.  Treatment non-volunteers donated at a meaningfully higher rate than control non-volunteers: 0.30% vs 0.19%.

The study doesn’t addresss any of this but doesn’t it seem the mechanism causing increased giving isn’t volunteering itself?

Maybe the extra communications increased:

• app engagement
• mission salience
• familiarity
• perceived value
• psychological proximity to the organization

They were digitally acquired users participating in a platform with a citizen science option.  The “volunteering” itself was submitting observations through the app. That starts to sound less like traditional volunteerism and more like: “people who became slightly more engaged with a mission-driven product later became slightly more willing to support it financially.”

That’s a very different interpretation and probably more useful as relationship formation often happens before visible conversion events.

Someone may:

• open more emails
• use the app more
• consume more content
• feel more connected
• perceive more value
• think about the organization more often

…without ever crossing the CRM threshold that says: VOLUNTEER = YES.

But the paper frames volunteering as the causal mechanism.  The data seem to tell a broader story.  Sometimes people give because they volunteered.  Sometimes they give because, after the 24th email, they vaguely feel like they should chip in for the app they’ve been enjoying for free.

And for the people who were always inclined to do the thing you wanted them to do, more does not equal better.

Kevin