Renewal in Philanthropy
Hello everyone,
I hope you are enjoying your day! I am back from a recent spring break vacation. It was a great trip, and our first vacation without our oldest son being with us because his college spring break does align with our other kids’ break. It reminded me of a time of renewal. As a family, we had to create a new approach to spring break built on an existing model. Same activity, but now with different relationships involved. This aligned with how spring is about renewal.
This month I want to draw on that sense of renewal and share a few things that illustrate that renewal doesn’t always mean new 😊. Sometimes it means understanding that which is old and that which is new.
“Everything old is (re)new(ed) again”
Below represents some varied research on donor behavior that reinforces a few key points. Points that won’t be new to you. They are what the field has been teaching about true philanthropy for years, but still relevant:
1. Donors give first from emotions and then validate that through statistics and logic.
2. Warm glow is real – donors do give with a thought of how it will make them feel after they make the gift.
3. Donors respond to a sense of moral implications, helping someone be stronger, better, empowered, etc.
4. Every donor wants to know that their gift is truly making a difference. We should inspire the lower gift level donor as much as the higher level donor in making a difference.
5. Donors find confidence in organizations that can engage grass roots efforts to mobilize relationships, donors, volunteers or advocates.
Now, for a couple of varied new research findings that are “new” news:
1. Online donors make a decision to give within 15 seconds of coming to your site.
2. Oxytocin – a hormone – actually promotes giving behavior. Varied modes of giving and volunteering (variety) actually increase this hormone and cause people to give more, to a point. So mix it up a bit with how you engage people to give and volunteer.
3. Video does better than email in conveying a sense of impact and support.
4. Repeating the ask in an appeal letter, over and over and over, diminishes a donors sense of autonomy and control, and reduces their desire to respond.
So there you have it. Some of the most impactful research going on right now in the field is still a mix of “old” truths and new findings. So what does this have to do with renewal? We often get pressured in this field that we have to keep reinventing donor engagement and find new donors every time there is a concern in the field (economics, labor, giving, etc.). But maybe a better approach is to look at what is old, and yet still effective, and grow it. Then look at what is new and enhance with it.
Those who are generous today will be generous tomorrow. This is tried and true. Yet I will often hear people in the field encouraging us to go find the new donor at the cost of the generous donor who is already giving. Maybe instead we look at who will be generous tomorrow (those who are generous today), engage them, and enhance them with those who may be new tomorrow.
This month’s podcast is on a different topic but still connected. The podcast is focused on unlocking forgiveness and building a healthy workplace. This focus is critical to the information I presented earlier as without a healthy workplace of relationships, it is very hard to build on the old and enhance it with the new.
Warmly,
Jamie
