Change is here.

Mount Holyoke nails the Thank You video.

$305.4 million as of June 30, 2013.

 

The importance of communication: math anxiety and giving.

My thought of the day…

Does math anxiety keep people from giving? Or, does math anxiety hold giving lower than it otherwise could be if we removed math from the equation?

A little while ago, I ran across an article from the June 17, 2013 issue of Chronicle of Philanthropy that described the unwillingness of American’s to push giving beyond 2% of national GDP. This article presented a bleak picture about a ceiling in philanthropy. The author, Suzanne Perry, wonders if there is any chance to “…move the dial significantly…” in terms of influencing more giving as a total percentage of GDP.

Interestingly, I read another article that same afternoon from “The Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.” The article, “Math anxiety and its effect on consumer’s preferences for price promotion formats” looks at the following issue:

This research examines whether preference for certain price presentations observed in past research could be explained by either consumers’ math anxiety or their math abilities. Previous research suggests that math anxiety not only increases tendencies to make computational errors but also influences cognitive abilities to make numerical judgments. In four studies we document an effect of math anxiety whereby price promotions, whose net prices are simply derived, like those in a dollars-off format, were preferred over a competing percentage-off format. We explain this effect in terms of consumers’ inability to expend cognitive resources due to their math anxiety rather than their math ability. We also identify a boundary condition with such effects of math anxiety occurring when price information is presented in a computationally complex manner and when consumers are making important product judgments.  

What do “price presentations” have to do with philanthropy or efforts to increase the percentage of giving? Well, let’s take a moment and revisit the original Chronicle article. Under the sub-heading “Failed Efforts,” Perry details the admirable work of Give Five, an organization with lots of support and funding aimed at convincing people to give 5% of their gross income to charity. Perry also writes about the NewTithing Group, “a charity that aimed to get affluent people to figure out how much they could afford to give by looking at their total wealth, not just their income.”  The failures of these groups and others were attributed to several issues: 

• Giving is a “very personal thing,” and some people didn’t like being told how much they should give.
• That wealthy people give top priority to themselves and their families.
•  Fear over the ups and downs of an uncertain economy.
• Tuition and healthcare costs crowding out philanthropy.

No surprises here, right? As a fundraiser, I hear these objections all the time.

If the Journal article is right, and there is indeed an “inability to expend cognitive resources due to their math anxiety…” it makes sense that the Give Five campaign failed - in part or in whole - because it relied on a percentage-of-income approach. Could the campaign have communicated a similar message without using a percentage-format? If so, could it have succeeded? Maybe.

Historical context is important in this discussion. The Give Five campaign occurred prior to our ability to use advanced analytics in advertising and communication. We can now, if we have the investment, slice and dice consumer and donor data to such a degree that we don’t really have to use percentage formats. We can now, based on what we know about people’s incomes, suggest a specific dollar amount and then tie that to a percentage if we want. Through targeted digital and print (yes, print!) advertising, we can remove the abstract nature of a percentage of income and tie it to a real figure based on live data.

I think it’s time to revisit the idea of Give Five. But let’s do it with the kind of donor analytics that could actually help, as Suzanne Perry wrote, “move the dial.”

Hybrid Organizations Need More Study

An interesting piece from the HBR on Hybrids. I particularly like the fact that the authors noted the risk of mission drift.

In dealing with customers and beneficiaries, hybrids face difficult tradeoffs in determining the best ways to price goods. Often there is a mismatch between the people who would most benefit from the product or service and those who are able to pay. Hybrids thus risk mission drift, as they may over time start targeting wealthier and more profitable market segments.

Read the article.

Frumkin part two

A little while ago I posted a supplementary article about Frumkin's Diamond. Recently, a student wondered if Frumkin's Diamond related to other aspects of a development office or was more exclusive to the fundraiser-donor relationship. The answer is simple - the Diamond has a major impact on the development office as it requires a high-level of donor stewardship.

If, for example, a donor makes a gift using a blend of positivistic and normative measures, and those measures were supplied in part or in whole by your development office, then it falls to your organization to ensure that some sort of follow-up occurs to demonstrate impact and effectiveness. You and your stewardship staff (assuming you are lucky enough to have stewardship staff) need to not simply document who or what was impacted by the gift, but you need to demonstrate what effect the gift had. Presenting that information in an unbiased and honest way allows the fundraiser and organization to maintain a close relationship with the donor, and if the numbers are good, provides a good chance of future gifts.

Remember, though, that this level of stewardship requires a great deal of time and energy. Smaller, less well-resourced NPO's, need to be cautious that they don't over-promise or neglect other donors.

Invest in Fundraising!

Wow! What a fabulous post over at HBR about the power of philanthropy when directed to the FUNDRAISING arm of the nonprofit.

Read the article here.

Thanks, HBR, for making such a cogent argument for something most people want to avoid.

Gift of William Blake Featured at Amherst College

It's not everyday that one gets to close a gift of a rare William Blake painting, but that's what happened to me last Fall. Read about the gift in the Winter 2012 Amherst College Magazine.

Here's how the story starts...

On his birthday in 1962, Henry deForest Webster ’48 received an unusual gift: a small tempera painting, well over a century old. The gift was from Webster’s mother, who’d inherited it from her second husband, Webster’s stepfather, who’d received it from his own father, William Augustus White, a prominent art collector.

For decades, Webster kept this 10-inch-by-15-inch painting on a wall near the kitchen door of his Bethesda, Md., home. It hung in his house as he built his career at the National Institutes of Health, which he joined as a young neurologist in 1968. It hung there as he and his wife, Marion, raised their daughter and four sons. When the couple sold their house and moved to an apartment, the painting came, too.

The painting is The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter, by the poet, painter and printmaker William Blake, a towering figure, unappreciated in his lifetime, whose artwork is today concentrated in a very small number of repositories, among them the Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Very few American museums own even a single Blake painting. (More common is to see his engravings in U.S. museums.)

Click here for the full article.

Planned Parenthood for the Win

A fantastic analysis of how PP turned the Komen decision to their benefit:

http://gettingattention.org/2012/02/komen-planned-parenthood/

A good reminder that a well cultivated base and a strong message machine will succeed every time.