Charities and Nudge

Some research indicates “every penny counts” might lead to more donations, with no drop in donation amount

One of the things I have vague interest in is behavioural economics, largely because I wrote my undergrad dissertation on the ultimatum game. Since that time, behavioural economics has become perhaps best known (or recognised) under the label ‘nudge’. I have various things to say about this (many of them not terribly positive) but I was wondering recently whether people had done much around charities and nudge. A (terrible lit review method) search for “nudge+charities” gives me lots of result-repetition after page 5, so I had a browse through the key things there. Some interesting discussion about whether charitable giving is emotional, while philanthropic is not – explaining why [showing donors impact measures seems not to change their behaviour]¹ much, and what kinds of (nudge based) experiments could be conducted around that. With a [nice summary]² of a behavioural insights team [(or nudge unit) report]³ discussing 5 ways to increase fundraising, and another site giving examples of [web-design to implement some nudge]⁴ strategies. But while the [nudge unit report]³ has some interesting behavioural insights it’s basically entirely focussed on financial giving – which I’m not terribly interested in. There’s a promisingly titled piece on [nudging people towards green]⁵, although not much in it – and in any case, that’s more about nudging people towards your direct goals, rather than to volunteer time. So, I wonder about how organisations are dealing with that, how do they nudge to onboard volunteers, to help them sustain their volunteering (and volunteer their full expertise), and so on…

Footnotes

1. http://givingthought.org/2014/04/10/not-a-measured-approach-does-the-hewlett-foundations-decision-indicate-the-failure-of-impact-measuring-approaches-to-philanthropy/ ↩

2. http://www.fundraising.co.uk/2014/01/30/five-philanthropic-nudges-behavioural-science-insights-can-steer-donations/ ↩

3. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/applying-behavioural-insights-to-charitable-giving ↩ ↩²

4. http://boagworld.com/design/charity-web-design/ ↩

5. http://sustainmagazine.com/nudging-towards-green-living/ ↩