Why One Charity Gave Up On a Scientific Experiment

Even as researchers do more and more experiments designed to show how charities can best fill their coffers, some groups with a history of participating in research have turned their backs on science.

Smile Train, an organization that raises money to pay for cleft-palate surgeries in the developing world, used scientists to help it measure the effectiveness of a variety of its direct-mail pitches.

Findings from those studies showed that white Americans responded most favorably to images of children with cleft palates who were also white. They also found that donors who were told that Smile Train would not solicit them again after they made a donation gave more than those who weren’t offered the same promise.

Despite the success of theno-more-solicitation promise, which ran from 2008 to 2012, Smile Train decided to pull the plug on it.

“We collect our own data and listen to what our donors tell us,” says Susannah Schaefer, the organization’s chief executive.

While the appeals raised a lot more money than traditional direct-mail solicitations, she says, the charity felt it was losing out because it no longer had as much leeway in how it followed up with donors, nearly half of whom asked not to be solicited again.

“We’ve learned since then that we need to resonate with people emotionally about the lives we’ve changed, but we couldn’t communicate with the 46 percent that opted out. We were denied the chance to develop those relationships.”

One of the scientists who evaluated and wrote about Smile Train’s campaign expressed surprise that the organization chose to discontinue it.

“It was a great success for them,” says Uri Gneezy, a professor of behavioral economics at the University of California at San Diego. “The charity can save a lot of money on direct-mail costs and postage when people tell them they don’t want to be solicited, plus they get a donation they might not usually get.”

Beyond her group’s experience with research, Ms. Schaefer says that the different nature of most groups makes the use of scientific findings chancy.

“It’s not apples to apples out there,” says the CEO.

“Each appeal, each charity is different, and each has to constantly adapt in its own way to the changing environment of fundraising.”