A Journey Inside Your Donor's Brain
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Presented at Banff Compass in May 2013
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A Journey Inside Your Donor's Brain
- 1. A Journey Inside the Brain of your Donors Leah Eustace, CFRE Principal and Chief Idea Goddess @LeahEustace
- 5. Giving makes donors happy
- 6. …and it makes them live longer
- 7. So, giving donors the opportunity to invest in your organization is, in reality, doing them a favour
- 8. Moral identity matters “Thanks for calling and becoming a kind and caring WFIU donor” Those two words increased giving by 21% amongst female donors (no impact on males).
- 9. Donors experience psychic numbing “If I think of the mass I will never act, if I think of the one, I will”
- 10. We really don’t make any sense Give $10 million to fight a disease claiming 20,000 lives and save 10,000. or Give $10 million to fight a disease claiming 290,000 lives and save 20,000.
- 11. The case of Karen Klein
- 13. Stats depress response versus
- 14. Our brains change as we age
- 15. Design is really important
- 16. And so is readability If your fundraising messages has a grade level higher than 7, it will draw a lower response than one written at 7 or less. It’s a tested reality.
- 17. Obama is really good at this
- 18. MRI’s of Donor Brains
- 19. Speaking of planned giving Donors have no idea what those words mean
- 20. 95% of planned gifts are bequests
- 21. Why, not how
- 22. Telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen
- 23. Be cautious about raising awareness
- 24. Beware of what donors say
- 25. Leah Eustace, CFRE Chief Idea Goddess, Good Works @LeahEustace leah@goodworksco.ca
Editor's Notes
- I’ve long had a fascination with how donors brain’s work. I gobble up articles about psychology make lots of my own observations, have learned quite a lot directly through focus groups So, what I want to do this afternoon is tell you about some particularly interesting studies, and how I think we can use the learnings to fine-tune our fundraising programs and raise even more money. Sound good?
- People give when they’re emotions are engaged Decisions are activated by unconscious part of our brain (called the limbic system) . The rational part, which governs our logical thoughts and the language, only comes into play afterwards to justify our decision. Our brain works through images: two third of stimuli that reach our brain are visual and more than half of the brain works on visual stimuli
- Many people have studied emotions, including a guy named Robert Plutchik who developed what’s called the Plutchik flower (shown on the slide). eight primary emotions arranged as opposing pairs. variations in color intensity correspond to variations in emotional intensity. So, the eight primary emotions occupy the middle ring of the flower with more intense forms occurring in the center (note the bolder colors) and milder forms the extremities (note the paler colors). For example, “Rage” is the stronger form of “Anger” while “Annoyance” is the weaker. So, engage these primary emotions in your fundraising. Keep a copy of Plutchik’s flower on your bulletin board. Touch as many emotional trigger points as you can.
- A study by social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn of UBC, increasing wealth does not necessarily make people happier. "People who donate their dollars to charities or splurge on gifts for others are more content than those who squander all the dough on themselves," says Dunn. "The effects of altruistic spending are probably akin to those of exercise ….which can have immediate and long-term effects. Giving once might make a person happy for a day, but if it becomes a way of living, then it could make a lasting difference."
- Perhaps you're thinking that your donors don't care about being happy; they care instead about living longer. another study shows giving reduces the odds of an early death by nearly 60% compared with those who didn't lend a helping hand. "Making a contribution to the lives of other people may help to extend our own lives," says the lead author, Stephanie Brown This confirms that those who have a generous spirit and an altruistic instinct for helping others live happier and longer lives.
- So what does this mean? confirms what fundraisers know intuitively but board members need to understand: Giving donors the opportunity to invest in your successful organization is in reality doing them a Once board members believe this, they will be much more comfortable about raising the funds to guarantee your organization's financial health.
- Jen Shang has a study out with the public radio station WFIU in Bloomington, IN shows that five words tied to moral qualities prompt higher giving levels. During the station’s pledge drive, the people answering phones thanked people for calling and randomly picked two of five words associated with moral identity to describe the caller: caring, friendly, kind, compassionate and helpful. Female donors gave significantly more—21% more—when they heard those adjectives. Interestingly, with male donors, it made no difference. most charities find their donors are two-thirds female, so the implications are the technique could increasing the gift sizes of two-thirds of donors.
- Paul Slovic Ordinary citizens were asked to contribute $5 to alleviate hunger abroad In one version, the money would go to a particular girl, Rokia, a 7-year-old in Mali In another, to 21 million hungry Africans In a third to Rokia, but she was presented as a victim of a larger tapestry of global hunger $300,000 medical equipment
- giving is not a rational choice, that 95 per cent of human thought and emotion happens without our conscious awareness. Paul Slovic ran this test
- Karen Klein? Bullied last June by 7th graders Soon after the video went viral, Max Sidorov, a nutritionist, author and Ukrainian immigrant living in Toronto started a campaign at fundraising site Indiegogo with a goal of $5,000, to help give Klein a vacation. Within a few days of its creation, the fund had surpassed half a million dollars, and, in September, Sidorov presented Klein with a cheque for over $700,000. Why did this happen?
- The video told a powerful story that touched on many of our primary emotions. It also told the story of one individual person… someone we could relate to a feel empathy for. What does this mean to our fundraising? It means that we should always focus on the story of ‘one.’ Stories keep the reader’s attention Help you communicate better Enhance credibility Linger longer in reader’s minds Get your message passed along further and faster
- People prepared to donate to the needy were first asked either to talk about babies (to prime the emotions) or to perform math calculations (to prime their rational side). Those who did math donated less.
- As people age, their cognitive patterns become less abstract and more concrete … in other words, they become more right brained This results in a sharpened sense of reality, and an increased capacity for emotion They become better at feeling empathy and sympathy for others, taking the viewpoint of the one who speaks, seeing personal experiences and first-person stories as important way of learning, and embracing an ethic of caring
- Use 12 pt type at a minimum, 13pt for planned giving A serif type easier to read in printed materials sans-serif type is easier to read on a website. limit the use of all caps, italics, script and ornate typefaces. Make line spacing larger than usual. Use dark type on a white background. Write short paragraphs use of bullets, numbered lists, sidebars, and pull-out quotes older eye develops a yellow cast (blue, purple and green may look alike) Never use glossy paper. . consider hiring an accessibility consultant
- “Our donors are highly educated, it would be a big mistake to talk down to them by writing at a low grade level.” Low grade level copy is not "talking down" to educated readers or treating them like children. Think of it as a form of courtesy, like enunciating clearly when you talk. The most super-educated PhD. will appreciate and respond to copy that's easy to read.
- There’s a reason that Obama’s such a memorable orator: his last three State of the Union Addresses have been written at a grade 8 level…. The lowest grade average of any modern president.
- A couple of U.S. researchers at Texas Tech University used brain scans to find out what happens in donor’s brains when making gift Bequest giving and current giving stimulate different parts of the brain. Making a charitable bequest decision involves the internal visualization system, specifically parts of the brain that recall autobiographical events, including the recent death of a loved one. In other words charitable bequest decision making involves reminders of one’s mortality. This research offers scientific evidence that “the donor’s own story matters most to the donor.” So, what does that mean to us as fundraisers? Focus on the donor’s story. Match the organization’s mission and needs with the donor’s autobiographical sense. Establish artificial deadlines and urgency to overcome a prospect’s natural avoidance tendencies. Suggest giving opportunities that provide some type of lasting memorial to the donor and assure the donor of the organization’s long-term stability
- Planned giving and legacy giving Don’t know what they mean
- This is a fact. So, why do we have to dig 8 layers down into a website to find information about bequests?
- Guess what? Donors already know that they can mail you a cheque, they know that they can give to you online, they know what a bequest is and how to make one. So why are we still focussing all our marketing materials on how rather than why? Throw everything out and start again: inspire your donors to give to you; engage their emotions
- Talking about your goal makes your brain think you’ve achieved it. Stop having a singular focus on your fundraising goal Keep connecting your team with the mission
- study by the University of Michigan‘s Robert W. Smith and Norbert Schwarz showed that one kind of “ask” was problematic. If a charity focused on “raising awareness,” and the charity was well known to the potential donor, then donations were lower than if they highlighted other goals. i.e, if you are quite aware of a charity, you are less likely to donate when “increasing awareness” is a stated assumption that if you know about a cause, lots of other people do too, and spending money on raising awareness is wasted.
- What a donor says they’ll do, and what they actually do, can be entirely different Here’s an example: in almost every focus group I’ve moderated, someone has said “You (meaning the charity) send too much mail!.” Then, invariably, they’ll choose mail as their preferred form of communication at some other point in the conversation. Or, I was recently reading results from a poll where donors said they don’t place much importance on the thank you. Try taking away your donor thank yous and see what happens Do you have a big list of ‘do not mail’ donors? Some organizations have, after a number of years, sent a mailing to those donors. It’s done phenomenally well.