What Motivates Charitable Giving?

If you are a nonprofit, you know how critical direct mail is to your fundraising efforts. But do you know what motivates your donors to give (or not)?

Most nonprofits might say that the most important factor is having a personal connection to the charity or to the recipient of the donation. But according to YouGov’s “Giving Report 2013,” it’s trust.  

When asked the biggest factor that motivates them to donate,

·         12% of those giving to charities cited “trusting a charity/nonprofit”;

·         8% cited “seeing a child, adult, or animal which will directly benefit from my gift”; and

·         6% cited “easily seeing exactly how and where my money will be spent.”

The single biggest deterrent to giving? Inflated salaries and excessive administrative expenses followed uncertainty about how the money would be spent.

Next time you send out a fundraiser, think through the issues of trust and personal connection carefully. How can you tweak your message so that it focuses not just on the mission of your organization but any projects you might be working on? Also work in issues related to trust. While donors want to know how their money will be spent, only 3% said that “easily being able to do their own due diligence” was a motivator for giving a donation. It’s up you to get that message across.

Need help planning your next giving campaign? Give us a call!

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

We make a living by what we get.  We make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

“Make It Easy for Me to Buy”

Want to boost responses to your marketing campaigns? Here is a simple tip. Tell people what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it.

One of the most common mistakes marketers make, especially in direct mail, is burying the offer or forgetting to include a call to action. So get it out there. Every direct mailer or direct marketing piece should contain the following three elements:

1. The offer. What do you want people to do? Make a purchase? Call for a free consultation? Ask for the free information kit?

2. The call to action. Don’t assume people will know what you want them to do. Ask them to request a brochure, call for a free appointment, or sign up by scanning a QR Code.   

3. Response mechanism. Make it easy to respond. If you are asking them to send away for more information, prefill the BRC with their name, addresses, and other information. If you want them to make a phone call, put the phone number to call in larger font or in a different color so it’s easy to find.

Assume that your audience is busy and you only have a few minutes of their time. Within just a few seconds of scanning the piece, they should know what you are selling, what action you want them to take, and how to do it.

Need help? Give us a call! 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many. – John Naisbitt

Some Customers Still Hard to Reach by Email

Did you know that, even in today’s multichannel media environment, some customer segments are more difficult to reach by email than others? For example . . .

• 41% of U.S. consumers aged 65+ still do not have Internet access.
• 53% of U.S. consumers in this group do not have broadband.
• 18% of these consumers do not have smartphones.[1]

Particularly for older retirees in lower income households, print remains a critical part of the multichannel mix. For many, it may be the only way to reach them. Even those who do go online may require text-only emails rather than the HTML versions many marketers are geared up to send.

But before you write off U.S. retirees as non-email-reading, non-Internet using consumers, remember that not all consumer segments look the same. In fact, among younger, more affluent, and more educated retirees, 90% have Internet access and 82% have broadband. That’s higher than the U.S. adult population overall. For this segment, email is an important tool for marketing communication, both as a primary means of messaging or as a follow-up to print communications.

So before you reach out, know your audience, their media use, and their channel preferences. It can have a critical impact on your multichannel mix.

Need help figuring it out? Give us a call.

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[1] Pew Research Center (April 2014)

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Winston Churchill