If you want an effective campaign for your charity, make sure it doesn’t look too expensive.
If people believe that a charity campaign has cost a lot of money, they’ll be less likely to donate. It becomes unclear to the donor whether their money is being used to help to solve the problem or if it’s being spent on expensive campaigning.
Bekkers and Crutzen studied this phenomenon in the Netherlands. When sending out fundraising letters to donors across The Netherlands, they used envelopes with a printed-on coloured picture and envelopes without a picture.
The envelopes with the coloured picture yielded both fewer responses and a lower donation amount per envelope. This shows that the simpler envelope was more effective in increasing donations.
These results were explained by the potential lowered levels of trust that donors had in charities that used high-priced methods of obtaining donations. People are donating to the charity organisation because they want to help to solve the problem. If they believe their money if being used for other purposes, such as printing images on envelopes, they’ll be less likely to donate.
So, be aware of the look and feel of your campaigns. A campaign can still be effective without it looking too expensive.
