Do you often aim to activate feelings of guilt in your charity campaigns? This can be an effective way to boost donations because feelings of guilt are unpleasant, and people will try hard to rid themselves of these feelings.
However, activating feelings of guilt might not be enough to increase charitable donations to the fullest. People need to know that there’s something that they can do to help. The feelings of guilt should be resolvable. To this effect, people need to know how their donation will help the charity.
The importance of indicating a time frame
An important factor here is the time frame of the donation: will there be a positive outcome of the donation in the near future, or will it take longer?
Ye et al. demonstrated that if the outcomes of the donation are soon, the donors would rather know about the direct benefits that their donation will have for the target group of the charity. The more uncertainty about where the money is going, the less people are willing to donate.
Empathy creates greater urgency to take action
Besides activating feelings of guilt, it’s important to activate feelings of empathy. A study done by Basil et al. showed that it’s more effective to use a sentence that evokes empathy: “Imagine you’re a child without a home” than to mention a fact: “Many children don’t have a home”.
This change in perspective allows the donor to put themselves in the shoes of those in need and really think about how such a situation would make them feel. Making a situation relevant to ourselves makes us feel a greater sense of urgency to act.
A good example is the campaign “Walk in my shoes” by Caritas. This campaign invites people to imagine what it’s like to be a refugee. By imagining ourselves in this situation, our empathy increases, making us more inclined to donate.
For an effective charity campaign, it’s important to activate the right emotions in your potential donors and make them aware of how their donation can help to solve the problem at hand.
