Researchers ran a simple experiment. Two versions of a fundraising campaign with same photo, same story, same goal. One used the phrase “malignant tumors” in the headline, the other, a softer “illnesses.”

The result?  Naming the disease performed much worse.  But this testing was on a crowdfunding platform with donors seeing saw multiple campaigns side-by-side.  Further experiments were done to unearth the “why”, which one never knows with standard A/B split tests.

People were anticipating feeling distress when the disease was named and so they avoided it.  Ok, so this matters if you’re writing for GoFundMe but what if you’re not?

What if you’re a health charity, or a disaster relief group, or a hunger org, sending one message to one person?  The lesson still holds, just not in the same way.

In single-message environments like email, direct mail, social ads, or microsites, donors don’t have the easy out. There’s no carousel of emotional alternatives. But they can still disengage. They can skim, ignore, delete, toss, or scroll past. The avoidance is quieter, but just as real.

And this anticipated distress goes beond just the word “cancer” in a headline. It’s the emotional burden you place on someone the moment they see your message and whether you give them a way to carry it.

Naming the thing — the diagnosis, the trauma, the crisis — isn’t wrong, but it’s rarely the best first move. Especially not when it’s paired with a raw image or no narrative context.

When you combine an unbuffered image with blunt, high-distress language, you’re almost daring people to shut down and many will do just that.

This doesn’t mean you hide the need, you just sequence it. Start with the person, not the pathology and build a narrative before you drop the weight of what’s wrong. You show rather than tell, drawing the reader in with something they can hold onto — a detail, a moment, an image that builds connection instead of shock.

And when the hard part comes, and it should, you don’t leave them there, you offer a path forward because hope isn’t the opposite of need, it’s the companion to it and it’s the thing that lets the person stay in the story.

Which one is better to you?

Every morning, Mia asks if today’s the day she gets to go back to school. Her treatments have kept her home for months—but there’s a real chance that could change.

OR

Mia is battling stage IV neuroblastoma. She’s been undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and still faces a long road ahead.

If your cause is distress-laden (and most are) you need to assume donors are regulating their emotions, consciously or not. Your job is to make that easier by framing it and making it bearable to feel.

Kevin