Study: Carefully Chosen Wording Can Increase Donations 300 Percent

A forthcoming study in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, based on the psychology of sympathy, shows that small changes in the wording of a fundraising letter can increase donations by more than 300 percent.

With more than a million registered public charities in the U.S., fundraising for good causes has become more difficult than ever. Annual events like Giving Tuesday increase overall giving, but also increase the competition for funds around those events. For their research, the authors of the study—K. Sudhir of Yale University, Subroto Roy of the University of New Haven, and Mathew Cherian of HelpAge, India—found that leveraging psychological theories on sympathy when drafting a fundraising letter can increase donations enormously.