The ecology of internal workplace giving at Indiana University: a case study of faculty and staff campus campaign communications and fundraising

• This collective case study examines university-specific philanthropic cultures, campus fundraising campaigns, and their impact on faculty and staff giving to the university. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, the study documents fundraising strategies through interviews and materials analysis and assesses their results through quantitative data on characteristics of donors and their philanthropic gifts. Examination of fundraising methods reveals differences between demand and supply-side communication strategies with faculty and staff members as internal stakeholders and donors. Concentrating on the campuses of Indiana University, a large, highly diverse public institution in the American Midwest, this study includes analysis of the outcomes of the fundraising process across institutions of different sizes, demographics, and philanthropic cultures. The findings underscore the importance of exploring the characteristics that influence employee donation behaviors as context for the creation and enactment of fundraising campaigns and highlight the need for future research in the area of workplace giving.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An investigation of the giving behavior of loyal,lapsed, and non‐givers to a religious organization

• This paper provides a comparative study of the giving behavior of current donors (CDs), lapsed donors (LDs), and non‐donors (NDs) in a Catholic diocese in New England. Focus groups were conducted and surveys were administered to Catholics to compare the attitudes and behaviors of lapsed and active donors as well as those who had not given to a recent diocesan annual campaign. The results show significant differences between the groups. Active donors indicate a much greater level of satisfaction with the church, are more aware of its programs, and feel they are more recognized for their gifts than do lapsed or NDs. These findings suggest that relationship fundraising, and creating trust, are critical to forging and maintaining valued donor relationships. The program implemented by the diocese as a result of the study is described.
• Marketing for religious organizations
• Lapsed donors
• Nonprofit marketing
• Marketing for churches

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

George gives to geology Jane: The name letter effect and incidental similarity cues in fundraising

• People tend to like others with attributes similar to their own (the similarity principle) and favor products with names similar to their own (the name letter effect).
• In the present field experiment, the name letter effect and similarity principle are tested in a phonaton among alumni of Utrecht University, The Netherlands. First name and surname initials, fields of education, and association memberships of alumni were matched to those of students soliciting contributions in the phonaton.
• Female alumni with first names and fields of study similar to those of solicitors were more likely to donate, as were male alumni with first names similar to the field of study of solicitors. Both male and female alumni with first names similar to the name of the university donated more often than those with dissimilar names.
• Name letter effects are a cheap and effective instrument to increase donations in fundraising campaigns conducted by telephone.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Benchmarking the fundraising performance of UK charities

• The cost of fundraising and its effectiveness are issues of increasing importance in the UK nonprofit sector. Measuring fundraising effectiveness properly is critical to organisations on two fronts. From a financial stewardship perspective, charities need to ensure that their fundraising is as efficient as possible. From a public relations perspective they need to be able to demonstrate this to donors and our other stakeholders. There are many problems to be overcome in objectively judging a charity's performance relative to other nonprofit organisations. There are significant methodological barriers to be overcome to produce valid and meaningful comparisons. The well established Fundratios study shows that it is feasible to construct a methodology for robust benchmarking underpinned by good quality data which charities can use as a tool to inform the management of their fundraising activities.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using the phone to reduce donor attrition and drive loyalty

• Donor attrition is a major issue for fundraisers. With 40% of new monthly givers lapsing within a year of sign up, new techniques are urgently needed to slow the rate at which donors stop giving. Drawing on the commercial world's long‐established loyalty programmes, telephone fundraising agency, Pell & Bales, designed a programme of pure loyalty calls that reduced donor attrition by more than 10% over a year. These calls contain no ‘ask’; instead, they harness the power of the telephone by talking with and listening to supporters, building real and lasting relationships.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Best practices in noncommercial radio fundraising: a practitioner perspective

• This study uses in-depth qualitative interviews with radio professionals in the United States to identify best practices for noncommercial radio fundraising. Most noncommercial stations use on-air pledge drives to solicit donations from listeners, and this is a major source of revenue for these stations. The interview data are analyzed using the constant comparative method. Findings indicate that radio professionals use a variety of fundraising appeals to reach listeners with different motivations for donating. These fundraising appeals have three dimensions: altruism/self-interest, rational/emotional, and reinforcement/trigger. The data also indicate that noncommercial stations try to foster relationships with their listeners and donors. These relationships are managed through direct communication and through mass communication, which produces parasocial interaction.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficiency,stability and the decision to give to nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in the United States

• Using data from the Cultural Data Project, this study extends the literature by examining the impact of financial disclosure information on donations to arts and culture‐related nonprofit organizations in the United States. Results for organization financial stability are for the most part counterintuitive: financially unstable arts and culture‐related nonprofits receive more donations. The current analysis supports prior research and finds evidence of a “crowding in” effect for fundraising expenses, suggesting that nonprofits that spend more on fundraising and marketing raise more funds than those that spend less. Additional analysis indicates efficiency matters to donors when it comes to fundraising efforts. As the “cost to raise a dollar” increases donations decrease. Nonprofit managers in arts and culture‐related organizations concerned about increasing donations should consider strategies that will increase the efficiency of their fundraising and marketing efforts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

     

Just keep it simple: a field experiment on fundraising letters

• This paper studies how the use of a colour picture in fundraising letters affect response rates and the amount donated in a fundraising campaign. Envelopes, with a full colour picture were tested against envelopes, without a picture in a controlled field experiment at a national religious charity in the Netherlands. Letters (89 937) were sent out to planned as well as incidental donors in four experimental groups. Results show that packages with more graphics yield lower donations, because both response rates are lower and the amount donated per letter is lower. We interpret this finding from donor aversion against high fundraising costs.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Community fundraising 2.0—the future of fundraising in a networked society?

• Over recent years, individual donor fundraisers worldwide have seen the beginnings of a dramatic shift in the way that consumers react to mass fundraising communications, resulting in many of the ‘interruptive’ direct marketing approaches on which individual donor fundraising programmes are traditionally reliant delivering worse and worse returns. This paper examines how the growth of a networked society of increasingly sophisticated and independently informed consumers has contributed to this shift; illustrates how the rise of Web 2.0 has accelerated its impact and considers how individual donor fundraising may have to evolve to more effectively respond to this in the future.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fundraising and public relations: a comparison of programme concepts and characteristics

This study compares characteristics of successful academic unit fundraising programmes and successful public relations programmes. Using interviews and surveys it explores whether academic unit fundraisers value the roles and responsibilities that align with identified strategic‐managerial and historical‐technical characteristics in public relations, whether demographic differences affect the role perception of the fundraisers, and whether the universities provide support for programme excellence. The results indicate that the fundraising programmes exhibit most of the characteristics of successful public relations programmes and that the academic units in which these fundraisers work provide support for them to do excellent fundraising. Demographics do not affect the results significantly. The data lead to questions for further study, including: How should fundraisers balance the benefit of having donors involved in programmes they support, with the university's need to retain autonomy and set its own priorities? Do excellent fundraising programmes strengthen relationships between alumni and universities? Do alumni with stronger relationships with the university contribute more, or more often, than those with less strong relationships? Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Using data in legacy fundraising: a practical approach

• Legacies provide a major source of income to charities, and their importance is only likely to increase with the passing on of the baby-boomer generation. Legacy fundraising is a long-term process, based on developing relationships with donors over time. Data have a key role to play in the development of these relationships, allowing legacy fundraisers to measure and track their donors, and to contribute to the development of effective fundraising strategies. This paper discusses the effective collection and use of data in legacy fundraising, from consolidating data, to analysing the results and building legacy targeting models. The authors discuss how these principles have been applied in UK-based charity, Help the Aged, in conjunction with their Data Agency, Tangible Data (formerly Talking Numbers) and to give practical advice on how they may be implemented in other organisations.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personas in action: linking event participation motivation to charitable giving and sports

• Charitable organizations continue to use sport events to raise money for the cause and provide meaningful experiences for participants. This study analyzes the motivation for participating in a charity sport event. Four segments of participants have been distinguished based upon a cluster analysis; for each of them, personas have been constructed on the basis of qualitative research. How to approach these personas with different propositions has been formulated on the basis of their motivation regarding the cause and/or the actual sport activities. The purpose of this study is to contribute to a common understanding and method of creation of personas, a new and largely untested tool. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the value of detecting the most valuable participant segments in order to influence and leverage future and repeat participation as a basis for success of a fundraising event for a charity's cause.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gendered giving: the influence of social norms on the donation behavior of men and women

• We study if men and women are subject to different influences when determining their level of charitable giving. In particular, we examine differential sensitivities to social norms among donors to a public radio station. Our survey of 975 donors finds that male donors are more likely than female donors to use social norms to inform their own behavior. We conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate the influence of social information on social norm formation and giving. Our results suggest that temporarily created social norms influence giving by men significantly more than by women. This result replicates and establishes the causal relationship between social norms and donations suggested by our field findings. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications of these results.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating fundraising and campaigning

• The world in which we are all fundraising is changing—and changing fast. We are seeing a new generation of donors coming through and the environment (not least the economy) that we operate in has also changed. And, on top of this, our need to engage people in different aspects of our organisations develops all the time.
• As we become more integrated in the way we work, so our donors need us to be more integrated in the way we communicate with them. This paper explores why this is good for the charity and the donor and some of the ways that organisations are making this happen.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finding an academic home for fundraising: a multidisciplinary study of scholars' perspectives

• The high‐demand, high‐paying field of fundraising does not have an academic home in higher education, which hampers fundraising research and education. Recent advances in fundraising education and research can be attributed to four different disciplines: public relations, marketing, nonprofit management, and higher education administration. This disjointed approach has impeded the empirical study of fundraising, the development of theory in the field, and the education of future fundraisers. The purpose of this study is to begin the process to scientifically identify an appropriate academic home for fundraising that benefits fundraising practice, advances scholarship, and strengthens America's nonprofit sector. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 scholars from multiple disciplines who had published articles on fundraising in the three major nonprofit management and philanthropy journals. Findings show that there is no consensus among scholars about whether fundraising belongs in public relations, marketing, or nonprofit management. Although this study found no consensus among fundraising scholars about the appropriate academic home for fundraising, it does identify areas of agreement and disagreement on pertinent topics and provides a benchmark to guide further discussions about locating fundraising within an academic discipline.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Excessive,optimal, and insufficient fundraising among the Nonprofit Times 100

• Using a six-factor model of donations, we estimate the effect on net donations; i.e., donations less fundraising expenditures, of a one percent marginal increase in fundraising expenditures, for each sample nonprofit organization (NPO) from the Nonprofit Times 100 from 2000 to 2002. No prior study of U.S. NPOs estimates the effect of fundraising expense on net donations. We then use these estimates and what we argue is the correct benchmark, the ratio of fundraising expense to donations, to provide evidence, for each NPO, on whether the NPO's level of fundraising is ‘excessive,’ ‘optimal,’ or ‘insufficient,’ relative to the level that maximizes net donations. All prior studies using log-log models use what we suggest is an incorrect benchmark for evaluating NPO fundraising behavior.
• The estimated effect of a 1% increase in fundraising on net donations varies widely across NPOs in our sample—from an increase in net donations of 0.18% of gross donations to a decrease of 0.66% of gross donations. Of the 76 Nonprofit Times 100 NPOs with usable data in 2002, we estimate that 24 engaged in ‘excessive’ fundraising, 18 engaged in ‘insufficient’ fundraising, and 34 did not engage in ‘excessive’ or ‘insufficient’ fundraising; i.e., we could not reject the null hypothesis of ‘optimal’ levels of fundraising.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Faces of the needy: the portrayal of destitute children in the fundraising campaigns of NGOs in India

• This paper focuses on the portrayal of children in fundraising campaigns by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in India and answers the following questions: How do children feel about their portrayal in the images of funding campaigns? How do photographers or managers/directors affiliated with NGOs view their portrayal of destitute children? The study draws on data from analysis of images, focus groups with children, and interviews with photographers and campaign managers from NGOs working in different parts of India. Findings suggest that children like to be portrayed as happy and in a “good light”, telling the whole story about their lives but that also generates awareness about hardships they face, such as child labor; NGOs face a challenge in representing beneficiaries in a good light while also showing “need” to donors; and children interviewed were unaware of the purpose of the images as a fundraising and marketing tool, raising ethical concerns.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Donor retention: an exploratory study of door‐to‐door recruits

• Door‐to‐door fundraising, where recruiters knock on the door of domestic dwellings to solicit a regular donation, is an increasingly popular recruitment technique. However, reported levels of attrition remain unacceptably high and in some cases charities may lose up to 50% of their new recruits in their first year of giving. In this exploratory study of 5000 active and 5000 lapsed recruits the demographic and attitudinal profiles of each group are compared. The paper concludes that lapsed donors are significantly younger than active recruits and experienced some form of pressure at the point of recruitment. Lapsed supporters were also significantly less happy with the quality of ongoing communication.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate funding: A necessary evil?

Earthwatch has a highly successful track record of fundraising from the corporate sector, and developing corporate donors into long-term partners. This paper examines how this has happened in an environment that favours publicity-driven programmes run by large charities, and questions whether the long-term health of the voluntary sector will be better served by such partnerships rather than by high-value transactions.     

A thematic analysis of fundraiser characteristics in high-quality major donor fundraising relationships in US higher education

As nonprofits increasingly rely on large contributions, skillful major gift fundraisers are more important than ever. In contrast to the vast research on donor motivations, there are few examinations of fundraisers or fundraising relationships. This study responds to nonprofits' interest in understanding beneficial fundraising strategies and to the lack of empirical literature with the question: From the donor perspective, what characteristics do fundraisers demonstrate within high-quality major giving relationships? This exploratory, interview-based project used a codebook thematic analysis approach based on HEXACO personality theory to review participants' reflections about fundraisers. The 20 participating donors had given between USD$10,000 and USD$40 million to select colleges and universities in the US Midwest region. This study confirms much of what fundraisers believe to be important to major gift donors, with added nuance about the complex form of professionalism donors appreciate. The fundraiser characteristics show several dual emphases, including on field expertise and interpersonal acumen, attention to donor concerns and institutional interests, patience with the gift-making process and ability to facilitate its progression, and attention to ethical practice and empathetic interactions. The study shows the inner workings of the major giving relationship fundraising paradigm, reveals how societal perceptions of fundraisers are relevant for understanding donor preferences, and provides a framework for fundraisers to assess and enhance their interactions with major donors.