(Warning: spoilers for both Game of Thrones and fundraising success.  If you aren’t a GoT fan, skip down to just below the picture)

At first blush, Game of Thrones is 90% people fighting the wrong war: who gets to be on the throne, rather than the White Walkers.  In fact, writers penned many a think-piece arguing the White Walkers symbolize global warming.  This makes some sense with their catastrophic power and powerful people denying their existence.

But only Sansa Stark cares about a timeless existential threat: there isn’t enough food.  In a world of dragons, ice zombies, fire gods, assassin shadow babies, etc., people still need to eat.  Including armies.  And a large food stock just went up in smoke.

Maybe there is a Westerosi Norman Borlaug in waiting in the Seven Kingdoms.  Because as Bronn put it in season two:

(BTW, if you are a fan, this piece got me thinking about this issue)

We face the same thing in fundraising.  We face the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II – our White Walkers.  Yet there has been more coverage of Mooch Briefly Visits the White House (coming soon to a children’s book store).

This is because humans are horrid at assessing risk, scope, and importance.  We give to cancer charities more that have fewer fatalities.  We donated more to help three million people in Haiti post-earthquake than 20 million people Pakistan post-flood.  People donate relatively the same amount to save 2,000, 20,000, and 200,000 birds.

So if you are a fundraiser (or Sansa), how do you draw attention to a mass tragedy in a way that does not numb your audience?  Five tips:

Tell one story at a time. A prominent study found a story of a child does better than that same story with information about the general problem of poverty in Africa. Additionally, a story of one boy did as well as the story of one girl; both did better than the story of the boy and the girl together.

When we hear a single story, we react with emotion and affect. When we hear the story of many, we react with logic and calculation. Or as Stalin put it: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.”

Save the statistics for the right audience.  Educational and information appeals are usually anathema to direct marketing fundraisers.  And they do depress response among most people.  However, mid- and major donors are more receptive to analytical appeals, so your appeals may have to be targeted or customized.

If you need to talk about a group, talk about a coherent whole.  Researchers found that groups perform better in appeals if they are entitative.  Don’t worry – I had to look it up too.  It means how much people consider something to be a coherent whole.  They found that donations to help children increased when children were part of the same family.  They also asked about saving butterflies with pictures that showed them flying randomly (low entitativity) or together (high entitativity). The butterfly flock raised 69% more on average.

Make the people you are helping positive.  In the same study as above, when the starving children in Africa were in the same prison, rather than the same family, the group dynamic hurt donations rather than helping them.  Group identities only help when they are good groups.

Use the unit asking effect. Researchers asked people how much they would donate to help 20 children in need.  Half of the audience had a preceding question: “Before you decide how much to donate to help these 20 children, please first think about one such child and answer a hypothetical question: How much would you donate to help this one child? Please indicate the amount here: $____.”

People who got this question were willing to donate $49 overall to the children, versus $18 for the control.  When they tested this effect in mail, unit ask donors had gifts 4x to 5x more than those who received a plea for the 40 children alone.

So, in your appeals, whether to donors or bannermen, you want to lead with a story of one person if possible.  If not, make sure they are a laudable, coherent group, and center on the individual first before zooming out.

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