Posted on: May 1st, 2009 by Alan Clayton

This article provides some evidence, insight and opinion based on a continuously evolving research programme, which attempts to define the reasons that people do good things.  In this context a good thing is defined as ‘giving money to a charity’.

Conclusions are drawn from a variety of research resources and live testing across a wide client base over the last eight years.

What are we trying to discover?

Why people give.

In twenty years of fundraising, I have never sat at a post-conference dinner table that could come close to consensus on this subject.  I have heard “We are just intrinsically good” from a community fundraiser, “Because God demands it” from a consultant, “People give for selfish reasons” from an agency account director, and “It’s all about sexual advantage” from a slight tipsy journalist.  Of, course, we have all heard a thousand variants on each and every theme, but never the slightest hint of agreement or a definitive answer.

Even a detailed delve into academic texts on the matter, Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” or even Matt Ridley’s “Origins of Virtue” provides more questions than answers.  Is it about benefiting our children, peer pressure, or is it about increasing the evolutionary chances of one’s genes’ own survival?

Not even the ubiquitous focus group provides the answer.  In fact, the focus group is perhaps the worst source of distraction of all.  Experience tells us that the only time people consciously think about their giving behaviour is when they are asked about it.  Heisenberg style, people’s behaviour changes as soon as it is observed.

The focus group assumes a “decision making” based approach to giving:

Feel – Think – Say – Do

Whereas any front line fundraiser worth their salt knows that the vast majority of donors go straight from:

Feel – Do

Giving people the opportunity (through surveys or focus groups) to post-rationalise their giving behaviour simply retrospectively adds in “Think – Say” and so leads to misleading intellectualisations.

The only conclusions we can come to by collating all the above sources (the fundraiser’s opinion, academic research and market research) are:

• There are many potential reasons an individual may give
• The reasons are mainly either emotional or genetically programmed.  They are certainly not, in general, driven by logic

So what we are trying to create is:

• A model of “Why different people give for different reasons” which covers the leap from basic needs to the act of giving
• A model which identifies different groups of people who give for the same reason
• A model for making different fundraising asks to these different groups

It is a work in progress and, I suspect, always will be.  We’re all just too complex an animal for a single and definitive answer.

Why will this knowledge be useful?

It will help us raise more money.

Every marketing manual, course or degree opens with the basic economic driver of “You must know what your customer needs.”  If different people need different things, you must have different products.  So either target your audience or have a portfolio of products and messages.  Or vary your creative treatments to different segments.

It is astonishing and wonderful that the fundraising “industry” has become the multi-billion dollar beast it is without being able to define the needs of its donors, in all their variety.  Imagine how much we can raise if we actually know the motivations that drive our donors and their behaviours?

How are we trying to discover it?

Through research and testing the population of the UK.

I must confess, we have a slight head start here. 

Firstly, Abraham Maslow has very helpfully created his own model of basic human needs which has pretty much stood up to inspection over the years and in marketing trials in the commercial world.  His defining work “Motivation and Personality” was first published in 1954.  At the top level, he defined four major levels of human need:  Sustenance needs, Outer Directed needs, Inner Directed needs and Self Actualisation needs.  He defined these as a hierarchy and determined that the number of people in the population with each set of needs tapered by volume.

In very simplistic terms, one can get one’s head around understanding these groups by considering three different ways to complete the following sentence.  It is simplistic and exaggerating, but will give you a good gut-feel for the groups’ needs.

“I am eating less these days because ….”

• Sustenance Driven needs people will answer “… food is getting so expensive”
• Outer Directed needs people will answer “…. I want to look better”
• Inner Directed needs people will answer “… I want to feel better”
• Self Actualised people will probably say “I’m not eating less.”

Secondly, we have been using a philanthropy version of Maslow’s human needs model for about eight years to analyse and predict the behaviours of different groups within the existing warm donor files of some of our clients.  Without exception, when used to create hypothetical motivations models and applied to segmentation and variable creative treatments, the model has seen increases in both response and value.  The model has been created from scratch for every client because different types of people give to different causes. 

This technique has its limitations.  It relies on analysing historical transactions (based on scoring different creative treatments) and therefore only works on existing files with a large and varied communications history.  The next step has been to try and find a way to model this knowledge into the wider population – so it can be applied to donor recruitment, welcome process, engagement process and the supporter journey.  Simply cross referencing to geo-demographics didn’t work.  So we needed to find another way.

So, The Good Agency have teamed up with a small but extremely clever market research and insight company in the UK called Cultural Dynamics.  They have a 25 year history of using Maslow needs and values modes to provide targeting and messaging models for the commercial, government and military sectors – and 25 years worth of historical data to underpin their theories.

Tapping into this historical knowledge was the first leap forward.

The second has been the first inclusion of charitable and philanthropic questions in the British Values Survey, which we completed in the autumn of 2008.  The more astute of you will remember I “dissed” the integrity of simplistic surveys in paragraphs above.  This one is different. It is one of those really clever surveys with over 1,000 questions which double and cross check each other to strip out the “Think-Say” stuff and get statistically to the “Feel-Do.”  5,700 people responded, giving 5.7million data points to provide controls, interrogate and segment.

Finally, we have carried out creative testing (both theoretical and live) and “media-match” analysis to find out how to reach different types of people.  This knowledge is building up across our client base – from the national mega-brands to the small local single-fundraiser charities, and everything in between.

The accumulation of knowledge from the above sources is giving a real insight into the different reasons people give.

What is the model of “giving needs?”

At this point, there will be people wondering “Is this it – the magical solution, in a one size fits all format which will transform my fundraising?”  Well, sorry to disappoint…

At a detailed level, the motivations matrix is different for every organisation.  The good news is that there is a starting point which every fundraising marketeer can use.

Taking the top level of Maslow segmentation, and discarding Self Actualisation needs (the volume is too low for them to be of any benefit to us in mass marketing terms) we can create a “giving needs” version of the three main groups as follows:

Community Driven donors.  These are the Sustenance Driven needs people.  Their needs are about survival, family, friends, work and money.  Their community or cultural frameworks define their giving behaviour – frameworks like religion, trades unions, membership clubs or small local organisations.  They will say things like “charity begins at home,” “I help people like myself” and “I can sympathise with those people.”  Giving, to these people, involves sacrifice and is therefore a very financially valuable transaction.

Peer Driven donors.  These come from the Outer Directed needs people.  Their needs are about success, material goods, respect, competition and, most crucially, the acceptance and respect of their peers.  These people spend and drive the economy.  In terms of their giving, they will need tangible and visible proof of their generosity.  These people need to give because their peer group demands charitable behaviour in order to provide acceptance into social groups, as a badge of wealth and honour or even simply to be “cool.”

Self Driven donors.  These come from the Inner Directed needs segment.  They are inquisitive, exploring and personally very confident.  They do not feel the need to prove anything, but simply seek to get the very most out of their life.  The value and values of what they do are defined by themselves or a few people very close to them with whom they discuss and debate the issues of the day.  These people will give large amounts of their income, but be discerning and discriminating about the causes they choose.  It is no exaggeration to say that the fundraiser is selling these people a little bit of the meaning of life.

When presenting this model, the immediate questions are always about the correlation between the three groups and age, wealth and education.  There is some truth that the more aged, wealthy and educated the donor, the more they trend towards Self Driven giving, but it is neither exclusive nor necessarily cause and effect.  There are large clusters of outer and inner directed people in all demographic groups and some, even very wealthy, philanthropists remain sustenance driven until the day they die.

The only conclusion we can come to is there are multiple reasons that someone will develop a certain values and motivations set, and that human beings’ psychology is almost infinitely complex.

However, the fundraising marketer does not need to know “why”, just “what” at any given point in time to better create and distribute their communications.

Have we scientifically proven this model?

No. 

Scientifically proving human giving needs would be as likely as proving the existence of God or finally deciding Nature v Nurture.   We will never scientifically prove to the standard of academic publishing why people do anything.

That said, the good businessperson always knows that you need to be no more than 70% sure to make a sound business decision.  And that’s what fundraising marketing is all about – the hypothesis, trial and error that make us better at what we do. 

A simple set of twelve questions can now define which of the three main Maslow groups an individual fits into with an 83% certainty.  Our live testing is showing an uplift.  So, this imperfect model works, is the best we have, is a long way ahead of previous thinking, and will do the job very well until something better comes along.

This model will morph and improve over time, and may well be superseded one day.  But it will not be proven until somebody works out what human consciousness and emotions actually are.  I suspect we are a long way away from that.

What have we found out?

Different types of people prefer different causes

Community Driven donors prefer causes close to them: hospices, ex-armed-forces and of course their pets, their family, companions and friends.  “Aged” also features highly, presumable because family and security in their own old age is important to these groups.

Peer Driven donors certainly seem to prefer causes where the person being helped can be clearly identified and seen.  Tangible outcomes are important – help “that blind person” or purchasing a named piece of equipment for a hospital give obvious immediate evidence of one’s efforts and generosity.

Self Driven donors prefer the seemingly more abstract and intellectually challenging “big picture” causes such as Human Rights or International Development.  The environment is huge and growing for them too.  They want big solutions to big causes and the chance to let their intellect and curiosity wander.

The population is changing

The Maslow pyramid is no longer a pyramid.  It is almost a rectangle.  Over the last twenty years:

• The number of sustenance people has shrunk dramatically
• The number of outer directed people has grown a bit
• The fastest growth has been in the inner directed needs segment

All three segments have more or less one third of the population, now, in 2008/9.

At a glance, this explains why more traditional charities such as disability are finding it harder, whilst the modern “movements” of human rights and environment are the growing trend.

That we are going through a “valley of ignorance”

The decline in the number of Sustenance Driven needs people is causing a decline in Community Driven donors.  This can be simply seen in the numbers of “Dorothy Donor” decreasing and therefore the traditional “guilt driven” proposition and traditional media such as direct mail going into decline.  Dorothy prefers one off cash donations and is quite quiet, accepting and trusting of charities.  She may do a little volunteering but is extremely unlikely to campaign or be politically active.

The rapid rise in numbers of Inner Directed needs people is causing an increase in Self Driven donors making themselves known in the market place.  This is the new Selina Superdonor.  Selina is really into what she does.  She uses new media a lot, asks a lot of questions and prefers monthly direct debit.  She prefers to really get involved in her causes and will engage in debate, campaign, change her lifestyle behaviours and try to convince others of her beliefs.

Dorothy’s behaviour is straightforward and simple to predict.  Selina is complicated, difficult but very valuable if she joins your cause.

All fundraisers know how to work with Dorothy and we all wish there were more Dorothy’s around, because our life would be very much easier if there were.

Nobody yet knows everything about Selina, but we are learning fast. 

So we are in a “Valley of Ignorance.”  Soon, Selina will be in the majority and we need to learn all about her before we run out of Dorothys.

The emotions that trigger giving are changing

One way of trying to analyse Dorothy v Selina is through their behaviour rather than demographics.

We know that Dorothy prefers just to give simply (probably to a lot of causes), whereas Selina prefers to get really involved in a big way and give, and do a lot more besides.

So, we have researched the “emotional trigger to give”, separating out “Those who just give” from the “Superdonors” – those who give and do something else too, such as campaign, advocate or change their lifestyle behaviour.

Any fundraising marketeer who has analysed the lifetime value of their file knows that the Superdonors are worth more.

The difference is stark, but entirely explainable in terms of Maslow groups.

• Dorothy is compassionate (she cares about people and things close to her)
• Selina needs to be inspired (she will buy into the big picture and big change)

 

What is the conclusion?

Our conclusion is a hypothesis based on this imperfect but extremely insightful research:

The fastest growing “product” for fundraisers is “Inspiration.”

And so, to the final question:

What is inspiration?

Surprisingly, it is very simple.

Research, observation and vox-popping suggest that inspiration is made up of only two things:

• “The people I knew and loved”
• “The things I did”

People give to people and the closer the fundraiser can bring people together, the more money they will raise.  If the donor loves their new “friends” as much as their family, the answer to the legacy question becomes easy.

Superdonors also give to gain experiences and achievements.  If they can change the world in their lifetime, they will be inspired to give.  It makes their life worth living, which is the basic tenet of all giving frameworks – community, social, political, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Humanist.

Of course, when lots of people get together, and become friends and allies in trying to achieve something very big and have life changing experiences on the way, every inspiration box is ticked.  Which explains why “building movements” is becoming so popular.  The much discussed social network is merely the most efficient current tool for doing this.

And so, this all seems remarkably simple, except that it demonstrates a seismic shift in what the fundraiser actually sells:

• Compassion is about giving money to make a bad feeling go away
• Inspiration is about buying in to a good feeling

Which means we need to think (and feel) about fundraising in a very different way.

 

© Alan Clayton, The Good Agency, May 2009

Research credits:  Pat Dade, Cultural Dynamics & Roger Lawson, The Good Agency