When John Mace and other fundraisers at the Union of Concerned Scientists brainstorm ideas to attract donations, they pore over data on the organization’s donors, scan studies on generational differences among likely supporters, and work to figure out which of the nonprofit’s appeals have brought in the most money.
But even though the group’s mission is focused on getting more people to use science in policy making elsewhere, it never relies on the work of scientists who study why people give to charity.
“I’m aware of the studies, but I can’t say we’ve put one to use to craft our messaging,” says Mr. Mace, the group’s membership director.
The nonprofit is hardly alone. Very few groups are using the growing amount of data from brain scientists, behavioral economists, and others in recent years that often suggest conventional fundraising wisdom is entirely wrong.
Mr. Mace says groups like his often don’t use the research because they lack the time to translate sometimes-arcane studies to their own purposes.
What’s more, even though science is the group’s focus, the nonprofit lacks the kind of employees who can boil down complex research papers into bullet points that the organization’s fundraisers can use.
“If someone in our shop has an advanced degree, it’s an MBA,” says Mr. Mace. “I do believe the studies are worthwhile. It would be great if we had the time to adapt the studies and make good use of them.”
Findings Often Go Unheeded
Mr. Mace’s sentiments are echoed by many others. Often organizations instead favor the use of marketing research and data analysis, much of it performed by fundraising consultants, while a relatively small number of groups test their own pitches and strategies.
Many charities contend that differences between organizations make it difficult to form a critical mass that would apply studies on the brain and giving behavior to their work.
“It’s a challenge to find and apply these studies,” says Danny McGregor, deputy executive director for development at Amnesty International USA. Instead of tapping scientific findings, the group regularly performs its own type of experimentation: testing which colored labels and decals in its direct-mail appeals get the best donor response or having its street canvassers take note of which types of messages resonate best with people on their doorsteps.
“We’ve been doing it for years, and it specifically suits our purposes in a way that academic research can’t,” Mr. McGregor says.
Knowledge of Human Behavior
To navigate today’s challenging fundraising environment, some observers counter, groups should move past merely studying their donor-response rates and toward investigating a broader giving landscape.
Some fundraisers, as well as a raft of frustrated scientific researchers, say organization leaders need to understand more about human behavior and what science has to say about it to be effective at getting donations well into the future.
“When it comes to giving, most fundraisers believe they understand people,” says Chris Olivola, an assistant professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University.
Mr. Olivola has studied the “martyrdom effect,” in which people donate more when giving involves pain or effort. Researchers gave people money they could keep or donate, and found they were more likely to give — and donated more — when doing so involved pain, like putting their hand in very cold water for 60 seconds. “But often our intuitions are off. People are more complex than we think.”
To better understand how potential donors think, Mr. Olivola and others advise charities to worry less about whether donors will react negatively to controlled testing of charity appeals. Since revelations last year that Facebook was manipulating online messages to see how unwitting users would react, several charities have shied away from becoming involved with double-blind studies that would involve unwary donors, researchers report.
“Charities are scared of their donors,” says Uri Gneezy, a professor of behavioral economics at the University of California at San Diego. Mr. Gneezy has studied a wide variety of charity fundraising practices, including whether larger donors will give more if groups’ administrative costs have already been paid for.
“Instead of shying away from the costs and risks of experimentation, they need to be upfront with donors and tell them that they need to run their operations like a business, seek out the best science, test out their methods, and express that they are doing everything they can to get the most out of the donor’s dollar,” he adds.
Researchers complain that organizations won’t provide them with data that could in the long run lead to findings that might increase their fundraising success. Occasionally, groups ask researchers to critique their appeal letters, but rarely do they join up with scientists as partners.
“The real problem is getting them to participate in experiments,” says Mr. Olivola. “There is a lot of resistance.”
The Risks of Experimentation
Those who raise money for a living say there’s much more to the issue than opposition to science.
Though researchers say meaningful experiments can be done inexpensively, charity leaders say they still entail risk. Using staff time to run them sometimes takes energy away from the fundraising drive of the moment, which can affect how much a group takes in. And several charity leaders say they would never test new appeals during the holiday season for fear they’d lose gifts.
Charity managers who push for testing that ultimately leads nowhere may be viewed poorly by their boards or staff members, possibly risking their jobs.
Since many charities are already cash-strapped, any tinkering with fundraising strategies could backfire, leaving a manager accountable. Many executives lack the confidence in the available science or their own abilities to test their approaches to take on that challenge, observers say.
“I don’t think nonprofits are resistant. If they knew something worked and wasn’t costly, they’d change in a nanosecond,” says Jan Brazzell, chief executive of Advancement Consulting and chair of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ research council. “Right now, there’s a lack of certainty and capacity to take those risks.”
The Association of Fundraising Professionals has been encouraging members to take a deeper look into both the available research and the workings of their own fundraising departments, she adds. In recent years, it has attempted to create and run an easily searchable database of scientific findings that pertain to fundraising.
But finding the money and a think tank or university to start a comprehensive database and keep it running has been an issue.
“That’s been if not the Holy Grail, then at least an extremely high priority,” says Andrew Watt, the association’s chief executive. “At our executive-team level, there’s a belief that this research is really important.”
That doesn’t necessarily follow for working fundraisers, Mr. Watt says. Part of that has to do with how studies are presented.
“There’s this perception that academic research isn’t all that accessible,” he says. “There’s a lot of academic literature that is close-typed with lots of footnotes and appendices. It would be helpful if there were more graphic representation we could quickly get at and a better presentation of the takeaway points. Also, scientists aren’t very good at getting their work out to people. If no one sees it, what use is it?”
Many fundraisers concur. Several charity leaders say that they see research only after it’s been dissected in books by popular authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Kristof.
Mr. Mace from the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests that a better way to reach fundraisers would be to publish data using a case-study approach.
Though much of what science is learning apparently ends up in a vacuum these days, Mr. Watt says he sees signs of hope.
Fundraisers and organizations have become much more open to the idea that science can teach them something, he believes. And for their part, researchers say they are heartened that more and more charities are doing their own experimentation.
“Since the recession in 2008, a lot of us have been blown out of our comfort zones,” he says. “We’re seeing a lot more professionalism emerging, a lot more openness.”
Along with that professionalism comes the idea that organizations need to understand that the donor of today isn’t likely to be the donor of tomorrow.
“It’s not enough to be donor-focused,” Mr. Watt says. “Groups need to think about how they can be sustainable 20 years from now. A lot of the studies we’re seeing show that donors have options for giving — and they use them.”
“Today’s answer is not tomorrow’s answer,” adds Ms. Brazzell. “Fundraisers should be worried about more than how many pages they should include in an appeals letter. There’s a lot of research into how humans make decisions that will help inform what we do in the future. How we deal with that information could say a lot about whether we can successfully change the landscape of fundraising.”