Every fundraising appeal should be a learning experience
- Sat, February 05 2011
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
Next week I resume my ongoing posts on the fascinating book, The Science of Giving, which covers a range of seminal studies about giving psychology. But today, instead of posting on a chapter, I’m going to pause to highlight why I’m spending so much time talking about research!
We don’t measure enough. We guess too much. Do you know which emails you sent were most read last year? Do you know what phrasing on your DonateNow page resulted in the most donations?
Here’s what one of the book’s editors, Daniel Oppenheimer, pointed out in an interview on the book via email. I asked him what charities need to do differently.
I’d approach my fundraising with an empirical mindset. Instead of trusting my gut about how to raise money, I’d run experiments. I’d make every fundraising appeal a chance to study what is most effective.
Amen to that!
Comments
Good luck in your research, hopefully we’ll have some answers to your question. I would like to know too if my emails were read. Thanks
I really find this interesting. Thanks for sharing such information to us 
More power
Great point, Katya. The only way we can know if our messaging is effective is through measurement. Organizations should make a point to A/B test their donation pages and constantly examine if their copy, images and layout is doing the job.