How to buy happiness: a useful little guide
- Tue, September 22 2009
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
Happiness? by me.
Did you know can?
According to this article, “Happiness: A Buyer’s Guide” by Drake Bennett:
A few researchers are looking again at whether happiness can be bought, and they are discovering that quite possibly it can – it’s just that some strategies are a lot better than others. Taking a friend to lunch, it turns out, makes us happier than buying a new outfit. Splurging on a vacation makes us happy in a way that splurging on a car may not… The problem isn’t money; it’s us. For deep-seated psychological reasons, when it comes to spending money, we tend to value goods over experiences, ourselves over others, things over people. When it comes to happiness, none of these decisions are right: The spending that make us happy, it turns out, is often spending where the money vanishes and leaves something ineffable in its place.
Dear fundraisers, this is good news.
The article (which is a must-read, if only to convince you it’s time to take out dear friends for dinner) draws ties to charity. Giving to charity or “prosocial spending” makes you happy, it finds. We’ve heard of this so-called “helper’s high” before. Giving to charity makes you feel good, perhaps even euphoric.
Read the article and remember this: Asking for money is not about your need. It’s about what you can make your donors feel—happy. You’re in the business not only of doing good; you’re in the business of making people feel great.
Comments
I have to admit that I find it nearly impossible to spend loads of money on a vacation when I know I could decorate my whole living room for the same amount. But it’s something we need constant reminding of: “The spending that make us happy, it turns out, is often spending where the money vanishes and leaves something ineffable in its place.” That’s said so well.
And you’re right - it has perfect application in the world of fundraising. The ineffable can actually be more lasting than the tangible.
It’s surprising that no research has apparently yet been done that differentiates whether the types of gifts we give to charity make us more or less happy.
In other words, if I donate $10 because a charity sends me address labels in the mail, does that yield the same level of happiness as if I give $10 to a family from my church who is struggling?
Take it a step further and ask:
If I give $2 million to build a building for a homeless shelter (who then, perhaps coincidentally, engraves my name on it), will that yield the same amount of happiness as if I designate that that same $2 million be spent on discipling and rehabilitating the homeless people who are normally helped inside of the shelter’s existing building—people whom I then meet because along with donating the $2 million I also decide to volunteer to mentor homeless people in the shelter’s rehabilitation program?
Sum it up and ask:
Is all charitable happiness created equally?
I like this post a lot because it reminds us about the importance of focusing on benefits when marketing anything from ordinary goods and services to important causes. Marketers - even those working for non-profits - can’t afford to forget that consumers are always asking “what’s in it for me?” In order to be successful, marketers must answer this question.