Volunteer Nicolle Eagan plays the violin for dogs being cared for at the ASPCA animal recovery center, Friday, April 21, 2023, in New York. Many nonprofits use images of suffering and need to motivate people to give, but a recent study from economists found there may be other effective strategies for prompting acts of generosity. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
Those ads showing caged dogs and desperate looking cats while Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan's “Angel” played in the background have been not just effective at making viewers sad, but also remarkably successful at raising money for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals since 2007.
However, a new study shows other strategies may also be effective at motivating people to give, apart from all that “ sadvertising.” Maybe try “Hakuna Matata.”
The study from Nathan Chan, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Casey Wichman, assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, found that people in good moods are more likely to donate to a charitable cause.
The study gathered posts made to Twitter, the social media platform now called X, from people who gave to Wikipedia and posted a hashtag acknowledging the donation. The researchers analyzed the posts from before and after the users made a donation and found that it improved shortly before they gave.
“It suggests that rather than this conventional notion that people give because it makes them feel good about themselves for doing the right thing, we found that people were in a good mood prior to donating, and that’s potentially the causal factor for why they decided to give," Wichman said.
The findings indicate charities may want to improve a potential donor's mood before making the ask, Wichman said.
Their study isn't the first to find a connection between well-being and generosity, said Lara Aknin, professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University, but it does a provide a valuable look at a person's specific feeling at a specific moment in a real world example. One takeaway could be that it would be beneficial to reach people at times when they are already feeling good, like on holidays or a loved one's birthday, she said.
But people give for many reasons and many levers motivate that generosity, Aknin said, including showing how a potential donor can make a meaningful impact on other people, animals or causes they care about. She also warned that people are very attuned to ulterior motives attached to requests for help.
“If people feel that they’re insincerely being fattened up before the request, then that could that could really spoil giving,” she said, “which I think for many people is truly a pretty wonderful experience when they get to give in ways that they care about and feel like they’ve chosen to do so.”
The researchers used natural language processing tools to analyze the sentiments of a person's tweets and identify their mood based on their posts.
They also designed a second experiment to test their findings where they asked online volunteers to decide how to split $50 between themselves and a charity. They showed some a clip of “Hakuna Matata” from from “The Lion King,” while others watched a science video about microbes. Those who watched the dancing warthog gave a little more to charity and were more likely to give the whole amount, though the results are less conclusive because of a small sample size.
While nonprofits always want to attract additional donations, many feel a particularly acute need right now. Human service, arts and educational organizations among others were profoundly stretched and stressed by the pandemic. Many continue to report increased demand for their services at the same time, economic conditions like inflation and major declines in the stock market impacted philanthropic giving. Last year, the overall amount of donations dropped for only the fourth time in four decades, according to Giving USA.
The trend also continued of fewer donors giving more, and so Michael Thatcher, CEO of Charity Navigator, encouraged nonprofits to experiment carefully and keeping true to an organization's mission.
"I think we need to be trying new things right now because there is donor fatigue," he said. But also, he added, “Don't try every new fad.”
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On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: CEO of HereAfter AI discusses how artificial intelligence can be used to preserve family history and stories, and allow you to 'talk' to loved ones that have passed; Creator of the board game 'Travel Explore Discover' explains how she came up with the idea for this informative and educational board game, and how she's using the proceeds to give back to her community; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'The Humboldt Current.'
According to the Federal Reserve, the investment gap between Black and white Americans has remained substantial, with only 34 percent of Black households joining in on the historic rise in the markets. Stacey Tisdale, the first Black woman to have reported from the NYSE and the CEO and president of Mind Money Media Inc., said that the data might not be as disheartening as it seems. "I think that number is very deceiving. That Federal Reserve study is actually from 2019, and it's very important that we all look beneath that number and look beneath the surface because there is nothing short of an investing revolution going on in the Black community," Tisdale said.
James Vlahos, Co-Founder and CEO of HereAfter AI, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how artificial intelligence can be used to preserve family history and stories, and allow you to 'talk' to loved ones that have passed.
Ava Rathenberg, Creator of the board game 'Travel Explore Discover,' joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how she came up with the idea for this informative and educational board game, and how she's using the proceeds to give back to her community.
An award-winning performance by the LSU Tiger Girls dance team is going viral on TikTok, but like many other viral tiktoks, this one had a larger story to tell. The story goes back to 2021 when for the first time in 22 years, the LSU dance team was informed it could not compete at Universal Dance Association Nationals. The team made their anticipated return to UDA Nationals this year with a performance that delivered a strong and clear message to their university. The LSU Tiger Girls walked away from the competition with their first national championship title in 12 years, redemption against the university that held them back, and of course- millions of new fans and friends on TikTok.
Solid-state battery maker Factorial Energy recently raised $200 million in a Series D round led by Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis. Factorial says the funding will be used to accelerate commercial production and deployment of its solid-state battery technology, which the company says is safer, and offers up to 50% more driving range than current lithium-ion technology. Factorial also has joint development agreements (announced in late 2021) with Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Hyundai, three of the top 10 global automotive manufacturers, to commercialize its batteries. Factorial CEO Siyu Huang joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against the NFL over racial discrimination, exposing a long-running problem the NFL has had with diversity in its top coaching and management positions. Eric Mitchell, the president and CEO of public relations and communications company LifeFlip Media, joined Cheddar News to delve into the scandal rocking the pro football world just before the Super Bowl. "There is a problem. If you look at who owns teams in the NFL, it's right, it's a good old boys club, it's a bunch of old white guys," he said. "So, it's exposing something that's been around for ages and now that we're sitting in 2022 has come up."
This April, Madison Square Garden will be hosting the first-ever women's boxing match to headline at the arena in its 140 years of history in boxing. Undisputed lightweight champion, Katie Taylor, and seven-division champion, Amanda Serrano, will go head-to-head for a career-high guaranteed seven-figure purse for both of them. The pair joined Cheddar News to talk about the upcoming "fight of their lives." "I mean, this is the first step I believe," said Serrano. "Unheard of, two women headlining the Garden, we get in the biggest paydays of our career, I hope it continues to break down barriers."
