Conventional wisdom. Best practices. The way it's always been done.
Every so often it's a good idea to dust off the things "everybody knows" and hold them up to the light, just to make sure they're still relevant and true.
For example, "everybody knows" that the best way to motivate donors is to appeal to both the heart and the head. You need to tell a powerful story to engage their emotions, and then show them some statistics to illustrate the need and give you credibility. It's only logical.
Problem is, people aren't logical. This becomes unsettlingly clear in a study you may have heard about. It was done at Carnegie-Melon and written about several years ago in the excellent book, "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" by Chip and Dan Heath.
Here's what happened:
Researchers invited participants to take a survey about some technology products. Each person was paid with five one-dollar bills. They also were given a letter asking them to donate to "Save the Children" and a reply envelope.
Researchers divided the participants into two different groups, and each group got a different letter. One letter featured stark and disturbing statistics about child poverty in an Africa. In one country, 3.2 million people lived on the verge of starvation. In another, 2.4 million had access no to clean water. In a third country, 4 million children needed emergency shelter. Serious, urgent crises affecting a huge number of children.
The other letter had none of that. All it did was tell the story of a little girl. "Rokia," it said, "is a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa. She's desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift.
"With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia's family and other members of the community to help feed her, provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education."
You're a professional fundraiser, so you don't need me to tell you which letter generated more donations from the participants. Rokia's letter brought in an average of $2.38, while the letter with the statistics generated an average of just $1.14. Not surprising, because "everybody knows" that stories increase results.
But here's where things got interesting.
The researchers didn't stop there. They brought in a third group under the same pretense of taking a survey about tech products. This time though, everybody got the same letter. And it was a letter with all the right stuff, telling Rokia's story and backing it up with the powerful numbers.
Heart and head. The winning combination, right?
Wrong. The heart and head group gave just $1.43, almost a dollar less than the group who'd gotten the story alone.
But wait, there's more.
To verify their conclusions, the researchers brought in a fourth group. This time, everybody got the best performing letter, the story of Rokia. But before they read the letter, they had to perform an exercise.
Half the group did some simple math problems. The other half was asked to make a list of "feeling words." This is the amazing part. The group that had been primed with the math questions gave less than the people who'd been primed with the emotional words. A lot less. An average gift of $2.34 from the feelings group, and only $1.26 from the group who'd performed the analytical math exercise.
The math questions were totally unrelated to the letter and the appeal. But just putting the readers in an analytical frame of mind was enough to dramatically suppress results.
In other words, analytical thinking can reinforce people's beliefs, but it actually discourages them from taking action. If you really want to motivate people to give, you have to go beyond what they believe and touch the feelings they have about those beliefs.
This presents a real challenge to the conventional wisdom. Unfortunately though, the status quo is incredibly powerful. I've yet to hear of anyone actually testing this for their own organization.
Sure there've been plenty of story vs. something-else tests. But who has been willing to really do the test with absolutely nothing but the story? Not one supporting number or credibility-building statistic anywhere in the package? Nothing but a well-written story and an ask?
A direct-mail package is a big investment, and stepping this far outside "the way things are always done" can make people very uncomfortable. Yet if the study is right, the potential gain is pretty impressive.
Willis Turner believes great writing has the power to change minds, save lives, and make people want to dance and sing. Willis is the creative director at Huntsinger & Jeffer. He worked as a lead writer and creative director in the traditional advertising world for more than 15 years before making the switch to fundraising 20 years ago. In his work with nonprofit organizations and associations, he has written thousands of appeals, renewals and acquisition communications for every medium. He creates direct-response campaigns, and collateral communications materials that get attention, tell powerful stories and persuade people to take action or make a donation.