Every nonprofit has a photo like this somewhere:

Yes, it’s a photo that your corporate partner can use on their Web site or in their annual report as a way of showing their commitment to the community.  And, among a still-sadly-plurality-older-white-male business community, the big check sends the message to other business people in the audience:

Your check is too small.

And this, to stereotype broadly, is not an audience that wants their anything to be smaller than anyone else’s anything.

But for goodness sakes: do not put this big check picture in your donor communications.  Ever.

Because it sends the message “your check is too small.”

We’ve talked about social proof nudges like “the average donor gives $X” as an upgrade strategy for people who don’t know what the socially acceptable amount is.  This anchoring can help boost average gift, often without the significant negative effects on response rate you see with other interventions.

But as we talk about in our Nobel-Peace-Prize-nominated* white paper Science of Ask Strings, anchors have to be close to the amount that someone is considering.  Otherwise, they are easily discarded as irrelevant or, potentially, offensive.

What you are saying with the big check is:

• “What you are giving is 1/10000th of what this person is giving”
• “This is how we treat people who give us things like this: note that we look to be dressed nicely at what appears to be a fancy hotel and really yucking it up with each other.”
• “This is how we treat people who give us what you give: we send them this letter.”

This is not a response rate booster.  And, since the amount is so far off from not only what they give, but what they could possibly give, it is not an effective anchor for a higher gift.

It also indicates that this type of thing is what you nonprofit employees with your time.  Remember, donors don’t have a good gauge for what “overhead” is.  If a donor sees an employee helping fill sandbags, that’s likely part of why they gave their gift.  If it’s grin-and-gripping in a hotel, they will wonder if you got there in your G6 after your ski vacation in Gstaad.  Chances are you, like me, got there in a convenance more like my 2003 Saturn Ion that has started shedding optional features like the ability to change the radio station.  But that’s not what this picture looks like.

The most grievous sin the picture has (and this goes for award pictures and ribbon cutting ceremonies): it’s not about the donor.  For the donor, you are a means to the end that they are hoping to create in the world.  The opportunity cost of that photo is immense. You could be showing visual proof of the impact the donor is having on the world.

It is a cultural shift, because the big check photo is one of those things that is done.  But it shouldn’t be.

Instead, ask if you could also get photos of your corporate partner, grantor, or their employees doing some of your mission work.  Someone in a logoed polo shirt planting a tree or serving on your crisis phone line or reading a story to children is something you can use in your communications.  And it helps cement the bond between you and the person who gave you the big check.  Because they are (hopefully) in it for the impact as well.  Having a photo of trees, services, or kids is a far better reminder of that than phony grins and foam core.

Nick

* Not really.  But when I saw who gets nominated for the Peace Prize, I’d view some names (e.g., Putin) as equally plausible to me winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness only to come up just short at Belmont.  Without a horse.  “Ask string white paper” suddenly seems like nomination material.