A Big Ask Formula for Fundraising: Lessons from Behavioral Science

“If you need something, you can’t just ask. You have to ask and give a reason. If this association has become so well learned that it runs unconsciously, like riding a bicycle, then virtually any reason given for a request should unconsciously trigger a compliant response.”

– Nicholas Epley, Author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel & Want

I just started reading Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel and Want by Behavioral Science Professor Nicholas Epley, and – living up to the publicity it’s received – so far it’s certainly been an interesting and informative read. In it, Epley explores the psychology and neuroscience behind how people understand other people.

One of the studies he discusses in the second chapter of the book got me thinking about how we ask for donations during fundraising campaigns, and that perhaps sometimes there are seemingly obvious components of the “ask” that we forget.

In this particular chapter, Epley explains the way neural associations create habits in our brains, associations so strong that certain behaviors – like answering “fine” when someone asks how you are – become automatic, and we don’t have to think much about them (consciously) before doing them. One example of such neural associations involves responding to requests.

According to the studies Epley cites, when a reason is given for a request, such as, “Can you loan me $5, because I won’t get paid until tomorrow?,” we are more likely to comply with the request – even when the reason is not a good one (or even a logical one).

For example, in one study, an experimenter asked other people if she could step ahead in line to use a copy machine. She made this request under three different scenarios:

• By giving a reason for stepping ahead in line – “because I’m in a rush.” Under this condition, a whopping 94% of people agreed to allow the experimenter use the copier first.
• By not giving any reason. When not giving a reason for her request, only 60% of people agreed to allow the experimenter ahead.
• Finally, the experimenter gave another reason for her request, but not a good one – “because I need to make copies.” Surprisingly, 93% of the people she asked agreed to allow her ahead when this “nonsensical reason” was given (Epley, 27).

As we can see from this experiment, neural associations can be quite strong – strong enough to guide knee-jerk behavior even when logic is not present. Using what we learned from this study, I’ve created a formula for making the “ask” during fundraising campaigns.

Giving a reason for the donations we request from donors might seem obvious at first – but because we are often immersed in the cause for which work, we might mistakenly take for granted that people recognize the exigency of our campaign. Perhaps we assume that potential donors already know how hungry children living in poverty are every day. Or, because we work with the population regularly, we assume that everyone knows how difficult life can be for people living with a chronic disease. Whatever our cause may be, we must remember that not everyone (in fact, most people) won’t be as familiar with the importance of our cause as we are, and as such, they may not know the reasons behind our pleas for money.

So my formula has three parts – first, we stress the urgency of our campaign, then we make the “ask,” and finally we end with a reason for the ask. And just because hollow, meaningless reasons worked well in Epley’s sample experiment does not mean that we should give lousy reasons for our campaigns. Making a donation often requires more thought than we give to letting someone in front of us in line at the copier. Therefore, our reasons should also bolster logical arguments for our cause, such that our audience’s brains are engaged at both the knee-jerk, automatic level and the level requiring careful thought.

Using studies borrowed from psychology and behavioral science like the ones Epley cites can sometimes feel a bit like manipulation. But, like Superman, we can use our newfound knowledge and superpowers for good – and for the advancement of the social good our non-profit organizations support.

References:

• Statistic in example fundraising appeal taken from dosomething.org

Engage & Build Your Non-Profit Audience with Better Font Choices: The Psychology of Typography

If you’re responsible for a non-profit’s email newsletters, fundraising appeals, or website design, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about how to attract new constituents (or perhaps how to keep the ones you have). Maintaining and building upon your audience will not only lead to greater awareness of your cause – it can also result in more donations.

Further, if your organization provides educational materials to a specific population – say to those with a particular disease or condition – you’ll want to make their user experience as easy as possible, particularly if that population is prone to visual or other impairments that can make it more difficult for them to follow the information you provide.

One way to improve user experience and perhaps capture new donors is to think more carefully about your font choices. This past week I read a fascinating piece exploring the psychology of fonts (a great article by the co-founder of oomph Mikael Cho that is definitely worth a read).

In today’s blog post, I will outline the most important takeaways from “The science behind fonts (and how they make you feel),” and relate Cho’s key points to non-profit email and web design:

• Ensure you aren’t causing your readers to feel unnecessarily bad: A study conducted by psychologist Kevin Larson at MIT presented two groups of people with the same article designed two different ways – one with a good design and one with a bad design, shown below:

And what happened as a result? The users who read the poorly designed article felt worse than the other group (who read the same article, but designed better). While reading the poorly designed article, some of the readers even physically frowned. The other group found the well-designed article easier to read, and they also felt good after reading it.

The takeaway for non-profits? If you look at the example above, you can see that the words in the poorly designed article are much more crammed together, and are not spaced far enough away from the image in the article or the article’s headline. By simply spacing out the information you provide, you can ensure that you aren’t causing your readers to associate your organization with feeling bad. Again, making your readers feel better might be especially important if they are part of a population that may already be dealing with a chronic condition or disease state.

• Make sure your font size is big enough to read easily. If your organization isn’t ready for a big change, just increasing your font size by 2px can make a big difference in readability. Cho recommends a font size larger than 12px, preferably within the 16-22px range. For reference, I increased my own font size in this article to 18px. Importantly, Mikael also cites another study which showed that people feel a stronger emotional connection to larger fonts – a significant finding for non-profits whose funding often relies on a strong emotional connection to their cause! 

• Steer clear of overly decorative fonts. Fancy and cursive style fonts look great on wedding invitations or on logo design, but they usually aren’t appropriate for reading on the web. Rather than emphasizing decoration in your font choices, aim for easier readability. Remember that most people have limited time and receive dozens of emails per day; if they can’t easily read what you have to say, your email is likely to end up in their trash bin, and they’ll find their information elsewhere.

• If you’re unsure of how readable your font is, try performing the Il1 test. This test is a good indicator of how easy it is to distinguish between the letters of the alphabet using your font type. If you type out, “Il1” and cannot immediately tell which is the capital ‘i’ or which is the number ‘1,’ you might want to select a different font.

• Be familiar with the difference between serif and sans-serif fonts. If you don’t already know, the word “serif” refers to that small line you see at the end of a letter. Therefore, a “sans-serif” font does not contain that small line. For reference, the font I’m using right now is a serif font. For readability purposes, many experts recommend a sans-serif font on the web, but Mikael notes that screen resolution has improved so much in recent years that we don’t necessarily have to stick to just sans-serif fonts.

• That brings me to my next point: think carefully about your audience. When you’re working for a non-profit, you’re likely not only desperately trying to grab the attention of donors, but you may be trying to educate a unique population of people. I said this above, but it bears repeating – if your audience consists of people with a specific condition, their ability to read or interpret information might be different from your own. Think not only about the obvious symptoms of a disease, but also about secondary symptoms with which you might not be as familiar. Do visual impairments sometimes happen with this disease? Can cognition be affected? How about attention? Although screen resolutions have improved greatly, if you’re dealing with symptoms like these that can affect the ease of reading, it might be wise to stick with easy-to-read sans-serif fonts.

• Consider not just font size, but line height as well. While you may have already thought about the size of your font, something you may have thought less about is the line height of your text. Line height refers to the distance between the lines of your text. Adjusting the line height can have a great impact on the readability of your materials. Look, for instance, at the example Mikael provides (click the image to enlarge if you need to):

Which of these two designs did you find easier to read? If you’re like me, you found the second example not only more visually appealing, but also easier to digest. In this example, Cho adjusted the line height to 27px. If you don’t know how to do this, you can use the style code “line-height: 27px;” to insert into the HTML of your email campaigns or the CSS of your website.

Although not specifically written for non-profit’s Cho’s article is definitely worth a read, and I highly recommend reading it in full when you get the time.

In the mean time, here are a couple of other font resources I recommend:

• https://www.google.com/fonts
• http://www.typogui.de/
• http://hellohappy.org/beautiful-web-type/
• http://www.awwwards.com/the-100-greatest-free-fonts-for-2014.html

Centscere Allows Users to Turn Tweets, Posts, and Likes into Charity Donations

Centscere Allows Users to Turn Tweets, Posts, and Likes into Charity Donations

Yesterday I learned of a relatively new social media platform called Centscere, which allows users to sign up and select a charity of their choice. Users then link their payment information to their Facebook and/or Twitter account and agree to pay a nominal donation (as low as 1 cent at a time) each time they perform a certain action like posting a status or liking someone else’s post. Nonprofits can sign up for free and receive a check with their donations every 8 weeks. 

Uniquely Me: 8 Ways Nonprofits Can Use Sociology and Psychology to Improve Their Fundraising Campaigns

“Who am I?” by Hans-Peter Erb (professor of social psychology) and Susanne Gebert (biologist), an article found in the March/April 2014 issue of Scientific American Mind magazine, explores the personality traits and cultural phenomenon that determine how much value an individual places on feeling unique or different from other individuals.

The studies Erb and Gebert reference throughout the article found significant associations between certain personality traits and a need for people to feel that they are unique individuals. In particular, high levels of extroversion, creativity, and openness, as well as low levels of neuroticism, frequently co-occur with a need to feel unique.

But these individual traits are not the only influencers tied to differences in a need to feel, well – different. Cultural phenomenon are also at play. Specifically, a person coming from a more collectivist society (usually Eastern countries) is typically less concerned with individuality and uniqueness than a person raised in an individualist society (think American and other Western cultures).

Erb and Gebert’s findings got me thinking: how can individual differences in the need to feel unique be used to more carefully tailor donor appeals and nonprofit content? As noted by Erb and Gebert, for-profit advertising has already used such cultural differences to their benefit. For example, studies have found that American ads are more likely to emphasize how a product can make a person stand out from the crowd. The trope of “standing out” is so common, in fact, that a cursory analysis of American magazine and television advertisements will likely yield multiple examples of this difference.

Consider, for instance, this American Lexus commercial:

The transcript of this commercial clearly displays the Western need for individuality and uniqueness: Some things are designed to draw crowds. Others are designed to leave them behind. Introducing the 2014 Lexus IS F Sport. A car designed with one purpose. To stand apart. It’s your move.

So for-profit companies like Lexus have already used this cultural and psychological knowledge to their benefit – now just how, exactly, can it help non-profits? To fully understand the answer to that question, we must first understand who OUR audience is, which will obviously be different for each nonprofit. For more information on discerning your own audience, see my previous blog post on creating “audience-awareness” in your content.

After figuring out your audience, you can use that knowledge to craft stronger content more closely aligned to your audience. Think about who exactly your audience is. Think as locally as possible – your nonprofit might be American, but perhaps it appeals to a specific area of the United States where Eastern immigrants are more common. Or maybe your cause is one that draws a lot of introverts or extroverts. Only from analysis and experience can you determine the unique personality of your organization.

If your audience consists of people who like to “stand out,” think about crafting your content to fit that need:

1. Ensure that easily accessible sharing buttons can be found on all pages of your non-profit’s website, including places where donors contribute to your cause. People with a need to stand out may enjoy displaying their own unique contributions to bettering the world, thereby making your cause their cause.

2. Consider allowing users to earn unique rewards and badges through their personal fundraising campaigns. Blackbaud’s TeamRaiser system, for instance has an option to create ‘milestones’ for your users, and this is where your nonprofit can really use its creativity. For instance, you might create a “1K Club” badge once a user reaches $1,000 indonations. Consider using a resource like Open Badges to easily create unique badges, and, again, ensure that users are able to easily share their accomplishments on social media platforms. To provide a great example of fundraising badges:

An example of fundraising badges from the American Diabetes Association

3. If you’re using a fundraising platform like TeamRaiser, allow users to personalize their fundraising campaigns. That might mean allowing them to honor a loved one via their campaign, or just enabling users to have better control of the visual feel of their page so that they may select the colors, fonts, and images that reflect their own personalities.

4. Your nonprofit is special, so make donors feel special by highlighting the unique things your nonprofit does with donors’ money. In other words, why should donors feel proud that they contributed to your organization in lieu of a similar cause? You might even consider linking the donor’s contribution to a specific, tangible use; as an example of this approach, look to the highly successful Heifer International, which allows their donors to purchase anything from a beehive to a cow to benefit people in developing countries. Not all organizations will have something as unique as a cow to show off, but there is nonetheless a reason your nonprofit exists amongst thousands of other nonprofits.

On the other hand, if your audience consists primarily of people who don’t mind blending in with the crowd, think about crafting your content to fit that need:

1. In your appeals and social media posts, emphasize the greater good that your nonprofit is doing, and how donor contributions improve the collective whole of society or a community. 

2. Ensure that your nonprofit is honoring donor privacy. While we often hear about the need to make donors feel like heroes, not all donors want to be put in the spotlight. For some people, public acknowledgment of gifts may generate feelings of embarrassment rather than pride. Therefore, it is important to make sure donors have the option to remain anonymous if they wish to do so. You might even want to add a simple checkbox on your donation form that donors can select if they wish to keep their privacy:

3. Craft sample donation appeals that emphasize your cause and downplay the participant’s involvement with the fundraising event. This one might sound a bit confusing at first, but the idea behind it is simple. Let’s say that someone is participating in a long bike tour to raise money for your organization. Often, when we send sample letters to these participants, the letters might begin by stressing the ambitious goals of the participant: “I will be embarking on a 200-mile journey, riding my bike to help….” But, again, not everyone will want to be put in the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have just as much opportunity to fundraise. Instead, try beginning the letter by highlighting the organization and the cause it benefits.

4. Make sure that your donors feel that by donating to your organization, they are part of a community. While you might not want to feature specific donors on your organization’s social media pages, you might want to continuously update followers on the progress they have made towards a greater goal. For example, you might say something like, “Thanks to our generous donors, we are now 60% of the way towards our goal of raising $100,000 for the __________ community!” In addition, giving regular news updates about your cause will ensure donors feel that they are a part of your cause and the people involved with it.

Certainly, these observations are not universal. Not all introverts are unconcerned with their own individuality, and not all extroverts feel the need to stand out. Similarly, all Asians do not dedicate themselves to the selfless collective, and not all Americans are so self-interested. To interpret these findings as set-in-stone rules would be to place unfair stereotypes on individuals who differ from these associations. However, in general. such correlations are common, as the authors of the article argue.

Because no audience is entirely homogenous, a mixture of techniques is probably best. Therefore, we can ensure that our campaigns appeal to everyone our content may reach, and in doing so – reach out to a broader donor base. For one final example, look for instance, at the American Lung Association, which skillfully highlights both the greater good and the personal on their, “How Does My Donation Help?” page:

What does your nonprofit do to appeal to its unique audience?

A Worksheet for Crafting ‘Audience-Aware’ Social Media Posts

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If you’ve read my ‘About Me‘ section, you know that my educational background is in English Literature. A lifelong devotee of the written word, my insatiable appetite for language and voracious love for reading ultimately lead me to a Master’s degree in English. And my (also lifelong) passion for helping others lead me to want to use my love for language in the nonprofit world.

In the image above, I’ve adapted an exercise I learned as a student learning to write essays to create a worksheet for crafting social media content.

Although I’ll always support fiction and storytelling (see my other blog), I spent much of my undergraduate and graduate education focusing on the art of rhetoric and persuasion. For however much I love a good novel, some practical part of me yearned to truly understand how language can be used to persuade, to change, and to argue in the real world.

In teaching rhetoric and persuasion, many of my professors (particularly at my undergraduate school Marywood University) rightly stressed the importance of something called Audience Awareness. At first glance, the definition of Audience Awareness seems simplistically obvious: understanding who your readers (or listeners) are and, perhaps more importantly for our purposes – what they care about. Hundreds of years ago, classic rhetoricians like Plato and Socrates argued for the importance of audience awareness, and today it’s still a foundation for teaching the craft of writing. And, as I’ve come to learn more and more, both Audience Awareness and social media management are far more complex than they initially appear.

But what has amazed since I began working in the nonprofit world is just how applicable many elements of English and teaching are to nonprofit marketing. I love seeing how seemingly abstract concepts like ‘Audience Awareness’ can make or break things like donor retention, brand awareness, and audience engagement when crafting content for social media posts and email blasts.

Many resources and blog posts offer advice for what does and does not work in generating social media engagement. You probably see posts on a daily basis with titles like, “6 Tips for Effective Facebook Posts.” Certainly, some generalized, universal principles exist.

However, generalizations  for effective social media engagement are only a starting-point. What works for one organization will vary tremendously from what works for another organization.

Take, for instance, this example from The Nature Conservancy. This post was quite successful. A cursory audience analysis reveals why it’s so successful: followers of this organization are likely to be nature lovers; they are likely to be inspired by images of nature; they know enough about nature to engage with the post; because nature generates feelings of happiness or awe in them, the post is light-hearted enough to engender both inspiration and humor.

I don’t know enough about the followers of this organization to say for sure, but I’m also willing to guess that (in general), many of their followers are educated and possibly of liberal political affiliation. The many successful educational and environmental-advocacy posts on the organization’s page supports my theories on their audience.

Importantly, my guess would be that the same post (even with a different image, of course) might not be as successful for an organization whose cause is to support people with a chronic, incurable disease.

For one thing, scarcity theory (proposed by Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir) suggests that when the brain is struggling for insufficient resources fundamental to staying alive – think food, water, social interaction – it has little room or time left to think about anything else. (By the way, as a side note, if you haven’t read Mullainathan and Shafir’s Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, I highly recommend it – especially for people working in the nonprofit world.)

Therefore, while people with a chronic disease are no less creative or fun-loving than anyone else, their minds may be preoccupied with basic needs: money, if they’re struggling to make ends meet while paying for their healthcare needs; companionship, if their disease makes them feel ostracized or lonely; or ridding themselves of physical pain, if their disease is one that causes chronic pain or fatigue.

Certainly, posts that are humorous or inspiring have their place and can, in fact, even be effective coping mechanisms for followers of a chronic disease organization. However, posts that attempt to do the following would be more effective for use on a regular basis:

• Recognize a common value amongst followers
• Use that value to fulfill a fundamental need

With that said, I’d like to advise a word of caution: while audience awareness is an extremely effective tool, we have to be careful that it doesn’t lead to stereotyping or pidgeon-holding of a group of people. Not everyone who advocates for nature is educated or a Democrat voter, and not everyone with a chronic disease is money-deprived or lonely. Stereotypes are likely to create the same types of problems (or worse ones) that nonprofit causes exist to remedy in the first place.

But, when used properly, principles like Audience Awareness derived from Classical Rhetoric can be extremely useful for predicting successful social media posts.

Stay tuned for a soon-in-the-future post, in which I’ll work through an example of the worksheet I provided above! In the mean time, feel free to share your own findings, musings, and experiences with crafting content for a nonprofit organization.