Give Me a Minute: Donor Motivations Among Impulse Givers and Letter Readers

• In Event: Motivations for giving

Abstract

A robust body of literature examines people’s responses to fundraising choices (Bhati & Hansen, 2020). Much of this focuses on direct mail appeals, a popular form of fundraising that lends itself to experimental study. A smaller body focuses on decisions made under time constraints (Carlson, Aknin, & Liotti, 2016). Studies have also examined what motivates people to give; but to date, there has been little consideration of whether motivations are stable within individuals, or vary systematically according to factors such as the setting of the request to give, or the time available to consider the request.

There is reason to expect that the time available for decision-making plays a role in charitable giving. Rand et al (2012) find that those under time pressures give more generously than those without those same pressures. Dickert et al (2011) model a two-stage mechanism of decision-making for charitable giving, in which quick emotion governs whether or not to give, while deliberative information processing relates to decisions of how much to give. They tie the decision to give to mood management on the part of the donor, and empathy to the donation amount. Yet in a recent study, Bago et al (2021) suggest that prosocial tendencies are stable within individuals, such that giving relies wholly on intuition.

We enter this discussion by observing reported motivations to give among respondents. We use data from a national sample of individuals aged 18 or older (N=1,400) living in the United States. In one of the first studies to use an adaptation of the Motivations to Give (M2G) scale developed by Konrath and Handy (2018) to assess participants’ motives for charitable giving, we explore the motivations reported by participants who indicated intent to donate after reading an appeal letter for a children’s cancer research hospital (88% of sample), compared to motivations reported by participants who reported having given spontaneously at a store checkout during the previous year (53% of sample). Respondents answered questions as part of a larger research study. Konrath & Handy find that motivations generally most strongly correlated with giving are altruism, trust in the organization, and social considerations. Early analysis confirms stronger motivations to give along each of these factors among donors than among nondonors within our sample.

Our data allows us to test the tension between Bago and Dickert. If Dickert et al (2011) are correct, we can expect that people who respond to appeal letters may show different M2G profiles than those who respond to time-sensitive impulse giving. If Bago (2021) is correct, then the M2G results should be similar among both groups of givers, but different from non-givers.

Our study contributes to the broader scholarly understanding of the decision processes tied to charitable giving. These findings also have practical implications for nonprofit organizations seeking to increase charitable giving. Nonprofit organizations can implement better strategies in their fundraising if they are aware of likely donors’ motives to give, and whether they are stable or vary by type of solicitation.

References

Bago, B., Bonnefon, J. F., & De Neys, W. (2021). Intuition rather than deliberation determines selfish and prosocial choices. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(6), 1081.
Dickert, S., Sagara, N., & Slovic, P. (2011). Affective motivations to help others: A two‐stage model of donation decisions. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 24(4), 361-376.
Konrath, S., & Handy, F. (2018). The development and validation of the motives to donate scale. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(2), 347-375.
Rand, D. G., Greene, J. D., & Nowak, M. A. (2012). Spontaneous giving and calculated greed. Nature, 489 (7416), 427-430.

Authors

• Lauren Dula, Binghamton University, SUNY

• Ruth K. Hansen, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater