Charitable donations Archives

Search other Insights in the Classroom\u200b<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////www.ama.org//2022//03//30//gift-or-donation-increase-the-effectiveness-of-charitable-solicitation-through-framing-charitable-giving-as-gifts///">Read a managerial summary of this article<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nMore from the <a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////www.ama.org//journal-of-marketing///">Journal of Marketing\u200b<\/a>\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n","post_title":"Gift or Donation? Increase the Effectiveness of Charitable Solicitation through Framing Charitable Giving as Gift","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"gift-or-donation-increase-the-effectiveness-of-charitable-solicitation-through-framing-charitable-giving-as-gift","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-03 17:04:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-03 23:04:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.ama.org\/?p=99844","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":97859,"post_author":"129780","post_date":"2022-03-30 05:02:00","post_date_gmt":"2022-03-30 05:02:00","post_content":"\nIndividual giving is the biggest part of giving in the U.S., making up 69% of total contributions in 2019. However, charitable organizations worldwide are challenged by the task of effectively encouraging individuals to contribute to charitable campaigns. A <a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////doi.org//10.1177//00222429221081506/" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recent Journal of Marketing <\/em>article<\/a> has shown that framing charitable giving as gifts rather than donations significantly increases solicitation effectiveness. Charitable giving is traditionally termed as \u201cdonations,\u201d whereas an increasing number of charity organizations have recently started to semantically frame charitable giving as \u201cgifts.\u201d Our research team analyzed the wording of charitable appeals that appeared on the solicitation pages of the 100 largest U.S. charities. We found that donation framing as \u201cdonation\u201d and \u201cdonations\u201d and gift framing as \u201cgift\u201d and \u201cgifts\u201d are indeed the two most common semantic framings used by charities. Yet charity organizations\u2019 decision to use donation framing or gift framing appears quite random, as if the two are interchangeable. For instance, Feeding America and Food for the Poor require donors to indicate their gift amount, whereas Feed the Children and Good 360 ask donors to indicate their donation amount. Apparently, charity organizations have not fully grasped the impact of framing charitable giving as gifts or donations on the effectiveness of their solicitation campaigns. To fill this knowledge gap, our research team investigated whether the new gift framing results in more charitable contributions than the traditional donation framing. In addition, we are interested in what the underlying mechanism is if the effect indeed exists and under which circumstances gift framing is more effective than donation framing. Through six studies, we find that framing charitable giving as gifts rather than donations not only increases donors\u2019 intention to contribute, but also enhances their real contributions. This happens because framing charitable giving as gifts rather than donations makes donors feel psychologically closer to beneficiaries. For example, in our third study we collaborated with a company to organize a charitable campaign about contributing books to poor village students and we measured employees\u2019 actual charitable contributions. Specifically, one half of employees received a solicitation email adopting gift-related words, while the other employees received a solicitation email using donation-related words. We found that the employees assigned to a gift-framed email not only were more willing to contribute, but also actually contributed more books than those assigned to a donation-framed email. The findings of this research provide substantive practical implications to policy makers, marketers, and charity organizations by identifying a quite simple and highly actionable strategy to promote charitable giving. Charity marketers often use donation framing and gift framing interchangeably in their advertisements in an apparent underestimation of their differences. We suggest that gift framing is a more effective strategy for soliciting contributions. Although more and more charities have started to use gift framing in their daily practice, the best way to employ this strategy remains largely opaque to them. In our first study, we found that jointly using both donation and gift framings weakened the effectiveness of gift framing in promoting charitable giving. Therefore, we suggest that when charities use gift framing in their appeals, they should avoid the use of donation-related words. In addition, charitable marketers should be aware that the effectiveness of framing charitable giving as gifts rather than donations varies across beneficiaries and donors. Based on findings of our fifth and sixth studies, marketers can benefit from framing charitable giving as gifts when soliciting contributions for general or distant beneficiaries, or from donors with a low need for status. However, this strategy may be less effective when soliciting contributions for beneficiaries who are physically or psychologically close to donors, or from donors who see social distance as desirable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////doi.org//10.1177//00222429221081506/" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read the full article<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom: <\/strong>Phyllis Wang, Yijie Wang, and Yuwei Jiang, \u201c<a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////doi.org//10.1177//00222429221081506/" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gift or Donation? Increase the Effectiveness of Charitable Solicitation through Framing Charitable Giving as Gift<\/a>,\u201d <a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////www.ama.org//journal-of-marketing///" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Journal of Marketing<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGo to the <a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////www.ama.org//journal-of-marketing///" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Journal of Marketing<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:40px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:40px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n","post_title":"Framing Charitable Donations as Gifts [Fundraising Strategies]","post_excerpt":"Here\u2019s a simple and no-cost way to drive charity fundraising: Ask for a gift, not a donation.","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"gift-or-donation-increase-the-effectiveness-of-charitable-solicitation-through-framing-charitable-giving-as-gifts","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-07-02 09:46:32","post_modified_gmt":"2024-07-02 14:46:32","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.ama.org\/?p=97859","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":57582,"post_author":"72871","post_date":"2020-04-16 21:07:51","post_date_gmt":"2020-04-16 21:07:51","post_content":"\n\n\nAmericans have consistently demonstrated generosity with regard to charitable donations. In fact, the United States ranks in the top five nations for giving to charities, collecting close to $300 billion in 2018. However, this constitutes around 2% of the United States\u2019 disposable income, a rather small percentage that has been a consistent limit to U.S. donations for over 40 years. Why does this 2% giving cap exist? What factors are at play here? <\/em><\/strong>These questions are significant when we consider that not-for-profits are one of the most important agencies in solving social problems such as poverty, inequality, and pollution at a global level. Our society is rife with not-for-profits that are determined to make a difference in the world but are heavily reliant on their donors. Although not-for-profits take advantage of donation days and various other charitable drives that occur throughout the year, and see higher donations in times of natural disasters, they still struggle with the 2% giving cap. The impact of the current COVID situation on the global society underscores the importance of understanding the drivers of giving behavior and donations and breaking through this giving ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen someone gives to a good cause, their identity almost becomes tied to that mission. For instance, people donating to a clean water campaign might label themselves environmental activists, while people donating to an inequality campaign may consider themselves humanitarians. But in these two examples, does it matter whether a man or a woman donated to these campaigns? Does gender influence the dollar amounts donated? Shang and colleagues\u2019 <a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////journals.sagepub.com//doi//abs//10.1177//0022243719892592?journalCode=mrja\%22>recently published research<\/a> addresses these critical questions with regard to charitable donations by positioning their research between the pillars of moral identity, gender, and the role of giving behavior in reducing moral identity discrepancy (the gap between actual and ideal moral identity). <\/em><\/strong>The authors\u2019 finding that women (but not men) who are primed with moral traits give approximately 20% more to charitable causes, suggesting gender differences in supporting a not-for-profit mission. Specifically, giving campaigns that shrink this gap between actual and ideal moral identity (in women) can receive more generous donations than campaigns that simply ask for donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe reached out to the authors to understand their motivations behind this unique study and to explore their findings in greater detail. We were curious to understand how the authors pinpointed the moral identity between men and women as being the focal point behind the study. The authors, fundamentally, were inspired by classic evolutionary theories of social agency that suggest different motivational drivers for men vs. women to interact with the world around them. For instance, women in traditional \u201croles\u201d have been socialized over time and rewarded as caretakers and nurturers in their family roles. Research has found that these roles create a tendency to be more \u201ccollective.\u201d On the other hand, men tend to be rewarded for their social capital linked to power and wealth creation, and studies show that this relates to a tendency to be more \u201cindividualistic.\u201d<a href=https://www.ama.org/"#_ftn1\">[1]<\/sup><\/a> This led the authors to wonder whether these differences might potentially lead women and men to respond differently to external triggers and the possible impact on their giving behaviors. The authors were also interested in whether women and men would be differentially sensitive to a moral prime that would invoke thoughts related to kindness, compassion, caring, etc. Furthermore, they wondered if this difference would lead to different experiences among women vs. men with regard to their moral image vs. desired ideal moral image (moral discrepancy). Finally, the authors wanted to examine the impact of this moral discrepancy in terms of marketplace donation behavior and philanthropic giving.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe delved further into gender differences between the giving tendencies of men and women. In the experiments conducted by the authors, donors were thanked for their donation with words of affirmation, like \u201ckind\u201d and \u201ccaring.\u201d We wondered whether men were subconsciously averse to this language when describing their actions, such that they might instinctively \u201cswat the hand\u201d that pats them on the head for doing a good job, whereas women view those words of affirmation as encouraging words that reaffirm their groundedness in society. The authors clarified that this \u201cswatting away,\u201d if you will, is not out of stigma, and it may just be that men are not \u201ctuned\u201d to that kind of feedback in the same way women are. Thus, women do not respond in the same way. While the authors do not claim that men do not give, or will not give under other circumstances, they simply explored the differences that may be invoked as a function of exposure to certain cues that may trigger thoughts about kindness, caring, compassion, etc. The authors wanted to see if the difference between how one sees one's moral image compared to one\u2019s ideal moral image may change as a function of giving, and how that giving may reinforce their identity differently as a function of gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen the authors began to uncover the reasons why men and women differ in their giving tendencies, we thought it was wise to discuss related questions for subsequent authors who are looking to research in this area. First, we wanted to know if there might be other underlying mechanisms (apart from encouragement and upliftment) of giving behavior, for instance, social image or social impressions. The authors stressed that additional mechanisms could have to do with personal pride, or what researchers might refer to as an emotion of morality that one may experience. The authors were particularly interested in the concept of \u201cwarm glow\u201d (feeling good about yourself because you know that you did something good) and emphasized how giving may solidify one\u2019s status in society. For instance, people may perceive strong philanthropic givers as \u201cestablished\u201d and there may be external praise heaped upon the giver. While these are just a few possible reasons that can be explored in future research, they may also reveal robust differences in how the genders experience differential giving as a function of external and internal cues.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSecond, from a methodological perspective, we wondered how the authors approached the moral identity discrepancy scale development measures. Specifically, we were interested to understand the detailed process required to develop the moral identity discrepancy scale, as well as possible challenges that researchers might encounter in this regard. The authors emphasized that while they were proud of their article in taking baby steps towards a preliminary moral discrepancy measure, more psychometric work needs to be done to develop the scale and ascertain its statistical properties. Although, there is always concern with \u201csocial desirability\u201d when asking a person to introspect on how they see themselves as a moral being, the authors believed that the idea of measuring any identity discrepancy (where there may be internal and external factors that shrink and expand such a gap) is indeed a logical next step in research on identity more generally, and more specifically, in research in the moral domain. At the end of the day, the authors felt that the development of a scale would become an empirical question. The authors believed that a scale having robust properties would predict things in a logical and systematic fashion, in much the same way that the moral identity scale by Aquino and Reed (2002) has proven to be able to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the context of donation behavior and philanthropic giving, it was difficult not to touch on the COVID-19 situation, and how that affects businesses around the world, especially not-for-profits who rely on donations to function. The article indicated that a shift in marketing to potential donors was undoubtedly necessary, and we wanted the authors\u2019 views on whether this 2% donation cap can be solved mainly through a shift in marketing tone, for instance, centered around benefiting society at large, benefiting the community in which we operate? Furthermore, it seemed to us like donations go through ups and downs, shifting depending on the world\u2019s events, and time of year. But we wondered whether a mentality shift, where people in our society began to look at charity giving as another monthly budget item that benefited the community they reside in, might create a more significant positive effect for both men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe authors felt that these were interesting potential implications of their research, with the global COVID-19 pandemic possibly leading to very interesting shifts in market donations and giving patterns. The authors felt that this could work both ways. People viewing the global threat as a trigger might choose to give more and more often outside their close circle of moral regard. People could also view this situation in the opposite way, whereby this threat to the common good could trigger a need to protect those that are closest to them and that are most vulnerable in their inner circle. The authors believe that there are probably lots of different moderators at play, including many of the ones studied in their article. According to the authors, marketing tone will play a key role in influencing giving behavior, but so will the way in which the benefactor of the donation is framed to the potential donor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<a href=https://www.ama.org/"#_ftnref1\">[1]<\/sup><\/a> We thought it important to clarify the authors\u2019 position here: \u201cWe are not saying that men cannot be kind, caring, giving, nurturing, etc., but it is a matter of degree and the external things that trigger potential different amounts of giving for men vs. women might be different.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3>Full Article<\/h3>\n\n\n\nShang, Jen, Americus Reed, Adrian Sargeant, and Kathryn Carpenter. \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////journals.sagepub.com//doi//10.1177//0022243719892592/" target=\"_blank\">Marketplace Donations: The Role of Moral Identity Discrepancy and Gender<\/a>.\u201d <a href=https://www.ama.org/"https:////www.ama.org//journal-of-marketing-research///" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Journal of Marketing Research<\/a><\/em> 57, no. 2 (April 2020): 375\u201393.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","post_title":"My Dollar Is My Identity: How Moral Priming of Women and Men Affects Charitable Donations","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"my-dollar-is-my-identity-how-moral-priming-of-women-and-men-affects-charitable-donations","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-08 14:56:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-08 20:56:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.ama.org\/?p=57582","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}]" />

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Do Self-Donations Work in Fundraising? A New Study Finds That Creators Who Contribute Their Own Funds See Better Results

Highlight Facts or Appeal to Feelings? The Psychology of Persuading Consumers to Contribute to a Collective Goal

Gift or Donation? Increase the Effectiveness of Charitable Solicitation through Framing Charitable Giving as Gift

Framing Charitable Donations as Gifts [Fundraising Strategies]

My Dollar Is My Identity: How Moral Priming of Women and Men Affects Charitable Donations