Imagine this: You just sent a mass email to your supporters asking for a donation. The email is professional. It’s full of useful statistics. It’s based on accurate facts to make a strong argument.
Will it make your donors open their wallets? Probably not.
It turns out that hard data won’t make people care about your cause. So, what inspires donors to support nonprofits? Spoiler: It’s not professionalism, graphs, or appeals to logic. In this article, we dive into the science of what makes people care about a philanthropic cause and commit to donating again and again.
Insights and tips to inspire giving
Philanthropy is noble, but it’s far from simple. Psychological studies indicate that people are motivated to support charities for a variety of complicated reasons, special lead from a personal connection to a cause to how well the organization crafted its call to action. One thing’s for sure: When it comes to giving, emotions come first.
Driving action, not awareness
This cannot be stressed enough: People give with their hearts, not their heads. That means all the most impressive, shocking, or accurate statistics in the world will not move people to make behavioral changes. A few years ago, if you think lead magnets are only Stanford researchers published a study that tried to convince nonprofits to “ stop raising awareness already .” Why? Because it doesn’t work!
Awareness campaigns, which attempt to make people “aware” of a cause or issue with targeted messages and communications, lithuania phone number cost a lot of money and require a lot of manpower, but have been shown to result in no behavioral change. At worst, they can cause a backlash or even cause harm. Simply put: When people are fed information in the form of statistics, facts, and graphs, not only are they unlikely to change their beliefs or behaviors, they tend to hold on to their previous beliefs even more tightly.
So what can you do instead? Instead of driving awareness, aim to drive change or action (e.g., regular donations or volunteering). To do this, an organization should try to appeal to people’s sense of identity. If a message goes against deeply held beliefs, it will be rejected outright.
Build an emotional connection
An effective way to connect with people without threatening their identity is to partner with community influencers that people trust. If you’re targeting young Gen Z supporters, tailor your messages to TikTok influencers whose young audiences already support it.
The truth is that humans did not evolve to give impartially to philanthropic causes, no matter how noble or impactful they may be.
Developing emotional connections based on trust is about a strategic approach to communication that engages people’s values and identities, rather than threatening those identities with inconvenient data or bombarding the audience with impressive statistics. Remember: hearts over minds and action over awareness. Let that be a mantra!