{"id":18707,"date":"2019-11-25T02:36:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T02:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18707"},"modified":"2019-11-26T19:10:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T19:10:05","slug":"calling-donors-to-thank-them-doesnt-make-them-more-likely-to-give-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/calling-donors-to-thank-them-doesnt-make-them-more-likely-to-give-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling donors to thank them doesn’t make them more likely to give again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anya Samek<\/a>, University of Southern California \u2013 Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Donors gave US$380 million<\/a> to nonprofits during 2018\u2019s Giving Tuesday<\/a> donation drive.<\/p>\n

Many of the groups getting donations like those follow up by calling donors to thank them, leaving a voicemail if nobody picks up the phone.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a behavioral economist<\/a>, and I study the effectiveness of fundraising practices<\/a>. I wanted to see if these calls made people more likely to support a charity again.<\/p>\n

Half a million<\/h2>\n

To find out, I teamed up with Chuck Longfield<\/a>, who recently retired from a cloud software company<\/a> that has many nonprofit clients.<\/p>\n

For our study<\/a>, we partnered with nearly 70 public television stations and one large national nonprofit. They sent us lists of half a million new donors from 2011 through 2016. The average size of a first donation was $150 for the public TV stations and $70 for the nonprofit.<\/p>\n

We randomly assigned some of the donors to get thank-you calls \u2013 which can cost the charities about $1 each to outsource<\/a>. The rest didn\u2019t get calls.<\/p>\n

The calls were personal, emphasized the impact of the gift and didn\u2019t ask for another donation. <\/p>\n

Believe what I do, not what I say I do<\/h2>\n

Google \u201cthank-you call\u201d and you\u2019ll get over 50 million results, including loads of advice<\/a> about how to make them more likely to keep donors on board<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The evidence offered is largely anecdotal. This makes sense to me, because I often encounter fundraisers who say something like, \u201cWe know calls work, because when I called to thank Ruth she said she appreciated the call and wanted to give again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, nonprofits pose this question to their donors \u2013 most of whom say the thank-you calls can make a big difference.<\/p>\n

The problem is that what people say often doesn\u2019t match what they do<\/a>. That applies in many situations, including charitable giving.<\/p>\n

Of the several hundred nonprofits I\u2019ve surveyed, 80% said they make thank you calls at least some of the time<\/a>. <\/p>\n

One big reason for the calls is to encourage donors, especially new ones, to give again. Fewer than half of all donors do that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We also surveyed fundraising experts and the general public<\/a> about what they believe should be the impact of thank-you calls as we conducted them. Both groups believed that thank-you calls would increase the probability that someone would donate again within 12 months by 50%.<\/p>\n

Why bother?<\/h2>\n

As the data rolled in, we began to see a pattern that surprised us. Making thank-you calls made no difference at all.<\/p>\n

About 28% of the donors to the public TV stations who got thank you calls gave to the same charity within the next year. And 28% of the donors who didn\u2019t get the calls did as well. <\/p>\n

Likewise, about 31% of the donors to the national nonprofit gave to that group again, whether or not someone called to thank them for their first donation.<\/p>\n