Key Research Findings for Fundraisers and Other Nonprofit Executives: Roundup

The Chronicle provides regular updates on research that will help nonprofit leaders, especially fundraisers, stay on top of their professions.

Here’s a collection of some of the most important and interesting research we reported on in the past year to help you move forward in the year ahead.

Transparency

Watchdogs often try to goad nonprofits into providing greater financial transparency. Two researchers wanted to find out whether more transparency led to better fundraising results.

They found that well-run, professional organizations tended to gain the biggest increases in donations when they provided more information. However, even organizations that performed poorly had increases when they were more forthcoming.

Motivating Donors With Guilt

Guilt is seen as a powerful ally for some cause marketers. Just ask whoever thought up those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLachlan. But how does the public receive those messages? Does guilt induce good will, or does it turn off potential supporters? A study published in the Journal of Advertising Research found that people reacted with suspicion to high-guilt ads.

Matching Gifts

To attract more contributions, many donors offer large gifts that are contingent on other donors’ chipping in a specified amount. But matching gifts don’t always attract as many additional donations as a simple contribution does, according to a paper by two researchers at Texas A&M University.

Gender Bias

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wanted to find out whether a double-blind grant-making process was effective at weeding out gender bias when evaluating grant applications. Researchers studied the foundation’s Global Challenges: Exploration program and found that applications written by women were disproportionately rejected, even though the identities of the applicants were unknown to those making the grant decisions.

The researchers said a big reason was that the men tended to use “broad” words to describe the sweep of their work, while women preferred “topic-specific” vocabulary to describe how their work would advance causes like agriculture and nutrition.

Keeping the Glow Going

Researchers have long known that people’s happiness with almost anything new — income level, type of food — diminishes over time.

However, two researchers concluded that the phenomenon doesn’t hold true for giving. “The happiness we get from giving appears to sustain itself,” they wrote. The findings suggest that fundraisers may want to play up the emotional value of steady, long-term support in their pitches to donors.

Act Fast

Charities may be waiting too long to get back in touch with potential donors they have provided services to. That decreases the likelihood of a gift, according to a study from the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania.