Why People Give II
- Thu, November 05 2009
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
There is a fascinating discussion going on over at Sean’s Tactical Philanthropy blog about ideas in the book The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan by Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon. Yesterday’s post asks us to think about why we give money. Today’s post features a book excerpt. I’ve also been having an interesting discussion on these topics with Eric Foley and plan to blog on that with him in the coming days.
This is a fascinating topic - and one I’ve been contemplating a long time.
I think I (and almost everyone else) give for two reasons: personal and social ROI (a great semantic framing I got from Eric Foley). You give for 1.) how it makes you feel about something you care about or some other form of personal benefit, and 2.) you give to make a difference. It might be to make a difference in an empirical way with respect to an organization OR to make a difference in a social relationship (like when a friend asks you to support her cause). Almost everything comes back to these two things. Really.
A while back (3 years ago!), I blogged my own list – FYI here it is. I don’t think it’s changed much.
Reasons I give:
a. Someone I know asked me to give
b. I felt emotionally moved by someone’s story
c. I want to feel I’m not powerless in the face of need and can help (this is especially true during disasters)
d. I want to feel I’m changing someone’s life
e. I feel a sense of closeness to a community or group
f. I need a tax deduction
g. I want to memorialize someone (who is struggling or died of a disease, for example)
h. I was raised to give to charity – it’s tradition in my family
i. I want to be “hip” and supporting this charity (ie, wearing a yellow wrist band) is in style
j. It makes me feel connected to other people and builds my social network
k. I want to have a good image for myself/my company
l. I want to leave a legacy that perpetuates me, my ideals or my cause
m. I feel fortunate (or guilty) and want to give something back to others
n. I give for religious reasons – God wants me to share my affluence
o. I want to be seen as a leader/role model
I can’t tell from today’s book excerpt where the writers of this new book are going, but it seems they are urging us to focus on the #2 - the making a difference part of giving - in a more dispassionate way. I think most donors want to know their gifts have impact but unless they are a high net worth individual or an outlier like giving circle member, the amount of effort the average donor will expend on determining their impact and using it to shape their giving patterns is going to be minimal. Heck, we don’t even spend that kind of time on management of our 401k. So the key is going to be easy, apples-to-apples measurement of nonprofit effectiveness. Like 3 stars. And that is really hard to accomplish. In short, if we’re being urged to think in business terms, we have a supply problem (no great, consistent, comparable data from nonprofits, though GreatNonprofits, Charity Navigator and others are trying to get us there) and we have a demand problem (not that many donors are going to spend a lot of time and energy analyzing their impact - they want simple answers). That’s going to make this kind of change very slow.
But that kind of change has to happen to some degree. Donors want a feeling they ARE having SOME KIND of impact, and they want SOME feeling of involvement in the cause they are supporting. We have to do better to meet those needs. Of that much, I’m sure. Because if we feel our money is wasted, we lose on both forms of ROI - personal AND social.
Comments
I hate to admit it but sometimes (not often) I feel obliged to give, or guilty if I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I try to donate when I can, but there are occassions when it almost feels like it was not my choice,..
Katya, I love this post so much that I am going to needlepoint a copy of it to post on my wall…if I ever learn how to needlepoint.
There’s no doubt that social impact is absolutely vital. It’s price of entry (or ought to be) for a nonprofit to exist, anyway: if a nonprofit can’t make a difference in the real world—if it’s all outputs and no outcomes, in Jim Collins-type terms—then of course it ought to fold up its tent and go home.
But as you’re pointing out here, social impact is a necessary but NOT sufficient explanation of donor behavior. I would contend that very few of the major philanthropic “hits” of the last three decades came because donors knew that a major impact could be made in a cause. Instead, the “hits” came from donors discovering that THEY THEMSELVES INDIVIDUALLY could make a major impact on a cause.
And, frankly, it just stands to reason; after all, why do we get involved in one cause and not another in the first place? Do we begin by saying, “I would like to give to the cause where money can make the biggest difference”? Of course not. The rank ordering of causes by social impact can’t explain initial involvement.
Instead, we get involved in one cause and not another for the reasons you identified above, which fit under the category of personal impact.
Social and personal impact aren’t mutually exclusive, as you rightly noted—they’re complementary. Causes that are high in the one but low in the other just don’t grab any of us.
Question: What has driven increased involvement in cancer-related charities over the last decade? Is it strictly the sense that we’re closing in on a cure? That’s vitally important, but I would contend it’s not sufficient to explain what we’ve seen. To understand the growth in involvement in cancer-related charities, we’d have to think about pink ribbons and races for the cure.
Now hard core social impact folks might dismiss all of this as just marketing flash, but that seems to me a seriously diminutive approach to the psychology of human growth. My guess, Katya, is that this is where we’re going to have to prove the most to our colleagues in the days to come.
Looking forward to the challenge with you!
Likewise!
I’m afraid I too have to admit that feeling fortunate (and/or guilty) is generally the reason I give. We do regularly support a couple of our preferred charities, but the guilt still kicks in.