News flash: The way people decide to give to charitable causes is not rational.
One of the common critiques of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has gone something like this:
We shouldn’t be paying so much attention (and money) to ALS, because it’s a relatively rare disease. So many more people die from [name a more common disease that you think matters more than ALS], that’s where the money should be going.
Then there’s this strange infographic, that first appeared in a Vox article, The truth about the Ice Bucket Challenge: Viral memes shouldn’t dictate our charitable giving.
Ignore the extreme factual cherry.jpgcking the graph demonstrates and take note of what it seems to imply: The amount of money being raised for these diseases has no correlation with the number of deaths they cause. Something is wrong with donors!
The problem is, donors will never base their giving on numbers. Never. And there’s nothing we can do to change that. It’s the way our brains work.
The fact is, a lot of people gave to ALS recently because famous people picturesquely dumped cold water on themselves. Or, to put it in a more general way: People donate to the causes that are best at reaching them.
The organizations that rake in the donations are the best fundraisers.
There are some truly superb organizations that do great work on extremely important issues — but they’re lousy fundraisers. There are ineffective organizations that are great fundraisers.
Guess who raises more money.
It’s not fair. It’s not rational. But it’s reality.
You can complain about it all you want, but it won’t change.
You can spend millions of dollars trying to supply donors with “better” information. That’s what the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation tried to do. It didn’t work. They’ve given up.
Until some nightmare dystopian future overtakes us and reduces us all to robots, humans will continue to be ruled by their hearts, not their rational, calculating heads.
There’s one solution: Be a better fundraiser.
Meet donors where they are — not where they “should” be. Speak to their dreams — not your dreams. Don’t complain about them — win them over.
Being a better fundraiser is possible for anyone who wants to do it. And it’s the only way to raise more money — no matter what your cause.
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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