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You omitted the PS from the CARE appeal, Katya:

“P.S. In order to make sure my Thanksgiving appeal didn’t ruin your appetite, I’m enclosing my family’s age-old recipe for cranberry sauce. As you spoon the blood-red berries onto your Thanksgiving plate, don’t give a moment’s thought to the children whose blood is on your hands because your family chose to gorge itself instead of responding to my earnest request for funds.”

OK. So I totally made that up.

But I couldn’t agree with you more, Katya. The economy sure has put relief charities in a foul mood. CARE is normally such a great charity in its approach to giving—World Vision is, too. And yet both have been pouring on the guilt gravy of late.

Did you see the World Vision online ad that said, “Every four seconds a child dies…” accompanied by a crying child and a digital stopwatch that screams down down from 4.0 to 0.0 before the child is vaporized from the picture? And then up pops another child and another 4.0 seconds. Eek.

It’s always touchy to talk about these things, since the problem of hunger is so achingly real. But as you pointed out, if we’re serious about mobilizing a counterattack on hunger, we’ve GOT to stay away from approaches like that taken here by CARE.

Paul Slovic had a powerful way of putting it in an article I referenced in a blog post earlier this year (URL noted above): “The more who die, the less we care.”

Death stats do more than ruin people’s Thanksgiving. They paralyze people from acting. If we want to impact world hunger, we’ve got to do better than this.

I’ve never thought about this in exactly this context but it makes sense. You don’t want to feel bad. You want to do good. We’ve given to Heifer on and off for years. And that goat is awesome!

You hit the nail on the head. People donate because they want to feel good, and the first example doesn’t make anyone feel good. Plus, people want to be on the winning team. In the second example, even a small gift makes a difference. In the first example, even a large gift won’t make a dent.

Nice point. Being a part of a winning team does seem important, even if winning is defined as something other than biggest or most popular. In the real world, there are a lot of ways to win.

I find the MercyCorps appeal very effective, since it gives manageable and specific amounts and tells the story of what “your” money will do.  This is not likely to bring in the large donations, but is useful for an online campaign trying to cast a wide net.

The Mercy Corps is by far the best.  I was feeling pretty good about the holiday until I read the CARE message.  Yes, I know it is an issue, but there are a lot of different ways to approach that issue.

Thanks everyone for your comments - and I agree with your reactions.  Doing good should feel good!

Love the MercyCorps piece because it helps donors tell people what they did, which is important. We even get photos of donations in action. That’s normally the strength of Heifer, though this particular example isn’t so dynamic—or rather, the goat section is great but the white box below looks empty. MercyCorps’s layout is striking and easy to follow.

The MercyCorps appeal also focuses on helping people help themselves over the longer term, which is more appealing than trying to keep a critical situation from getting even worse.

And it’s great that over time groups have moved away from the old images of helpless people in developing countries. If anything, the people in the MercyCorps photo look like they’d invite you over for tea. That helps bridge the differences of nationality, race, etc.

Great analysis, Tracy!

Its interesting to look at the collapse model in light of the fundraising for Haiti which (depending on which figure you rely on) may have raised upwards of 200 million dollars following the deaths of 100,000 plus people.

Of course the Haiti appeal “benefitted” from acres of media coverage, both online and offline, and its a ‘current disaster’ which people can do something about contributing to in real time.

Maybe the apparent contrast between Slovic’s research and the Haiti fundraising lies in the development of technology in the meantime - for example the vast numbers of people who can donate five or ten dollars by text.

So, looking at an ad, like your #1 above that said “25000 people will die” provoked a mental response “nope, too big a problem for me to deal with”, whereas an appeal to relieve Haitain plight by texting “5 dollars or whatever you can afford” provokes a different reaction.

There is some food for thought for non-profits and their marketing people in particular arising from this.

www.non-profitplace.com

I like your article!

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