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Want to be a better fundraiser? Learn to think like a social scientist!

Fundraising can't be a casual enterprise built on blogging, Facebooking, and Tweeting. You need to do that sort of thing in the 21st century, but you need to go beyond posting and monitoring your results. No, I am not hinting at SEO. There is a scientific approach to fundraising that can add value to your work though.

The trick here is to start thinking like a scientist. This scientific mindset involves using the tools of the working (social) scientist to develop and test ideas for events, Web copy, subject lines, and calls to action.  You need to know what other researchers have learned. You need to learn how to collect data and interpret the data, and you need to learn how to apply what you learn from theory and research too.

Fundraising Literature Reviews

What have people done before you? What did they learn that's relevant to the problem you are working on now? Science generally requires us to build upon work that's already been done. Why would you set off to test ideas about why people give? We know quite a bit about why people give to Cause X and why they might give more in one situation or another. Dive into the literature on behavioral science research into fundraising. 

Do a little online research to find fundraising-related research. Try "behavioral science" and "fundraising" along with a keyword that describes your challenge. You could, for example, add the words "online" or "email" or "subject line" to get targeted results. At least that's the idea. You might also want to cruise a couple of specific Web sites - Behavioral Science Hub and Behavioral Scientist. 

Everything written here applies to social marketing as well. If you want to change peoples' behaviors, you can use previous social science research to help you select the right language, marketing tactics, and messages. 

Learn to Conduct Experiments

Don't just try some new copywriting trick and see what happens. That is not an experiment and it isn't going to be efficient. Instead, set up a test the way a sociologist or psychologist might conduct a quasi-experiment 

Consider the common scenario where you want to see if a call to action gets more visitors to click that Donate Now button. You have nothing right now. Just a button labeled in bold text. So, after some cajoling and reminding, you have decided to test a couple of options. You decide to run an experiment on two options that came to mind earlier this morning. 

Option A: Can we count on your 100% tax-deductible support today? 

Option B: Can you help us keep the Cumberland River clean? 

Now, why are those the options? I selected these two options to make a little point about calls to action. Option A is based on the idea that your donors have a low level of commitment to the organization and cause. In these situations, research suggests that a crass appeal to self-interest is better. In Option B, I am assuming a high commitment to conservation or to the organization. 

Run each option for a couple of weeks to a month or more. How long you run the experiment depends on your site's traffic. If you've averaged 50 visitors a day, running each option for a week won't yield much data. Better plan using each option for at least a month. With 50 visitors on an average day, you might only get one or two people to click that Donate Now button. Over two weeks, that is only 14 clicks. What if  Option B gets 17 clicks in two weeks? Who knows. Each result could be random. 

After gathering data for a few weeks it should be easy to tell whether Option A or B is better. If you get 400 clicks using Option A and 500 using Option B, it is safe to (unscientifically) conclude that Option B is better. If you want to teach yourself some advanced statistical techniques, like regression analysis and analysis of variance you can learn quite a bit about the relative effectiveness of your fundraising tactics. 

Put on Your Social Science Hat

In addition to data and theory, you need experiments, and you need to know what's been learned through prior research on fundraising. In fundraising, you want to learn about all aspects of your messaging. The same is true for social marketing. 

You now have a little more knowledge of how to use literature and experiments to improve your fundraising. Next time, I will go into more detail on mining data and using theory. Later, I'll come back to all of these social science topics but with a focus on social marketing. 

If you would like some additional, practical guidance on how to use behavioral science to raise money, check out The Science of Fundraising on my Etsy store. I also have a bunch of other resources related to planning, social marketing, and fundraising there as well. 


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