What You Can’t Change
Here or There? Where Donors Prefer to Give is the latest study of donor behavior and preferences from Grey Matter Research. We focus on whether donors prefer to support work that’s being done locally, nationally, or in other countries.
You can change many things about your organization according to what works for donors. Your brand, your communication frequency, your sustainer program, how quickly you send receipts, etc.
You can’t really change where you do your work based on donor preferences. A local food bank is not suddenly going to start work in Haiti. So why do these preferences matter?
Because you can change the donor experience. What you say about your work. What you emphasize. You can tap in to how donors think and what biases they have, and work with that. But first, you have to understand their thinking. That’s where Here or There? provides value.
Here or There? is free upon request (ron@greymatterresearch.com).
As experts in serving donor-supported organizations, Grey Matter Research surveyed over 1,100 donors to non-profits. We examined where they prefer to give, where they actually give, and why.
Staying Local
Only 3% of American donors say their preference is to support areas outside the US with their giving. One out of four prefers helping domestically, but not necessarily in their local community. Half would rather give to help in their local community. Twenty-three percent have no preference.
Preference Is Not Exclusivity
Here or There? finds donors follow their preferences with a majority of their gifts, but only 38% stay exclusive to one type of area. Just 2% of all donors give only to work outside the US, 15% give exclusively to national efforts, and 21% give just to local work.
For example, those who prefer giving locally estimate 71% of their giving is to organizations that work locally. But this still leaves an average of 24% for national organizations, and 5% for work outside the US. The situation is similar for those who prefer national or global giving. For many givers, other factors are overriding their natural bias of where they want to give.
How Does This Impact You?
You may not be able to change where donors like to give. But we explored why donors have these preferences. For instance, people who prefer to support work throughout the US tend to be older and more loyal in their giving. They emphasize group over individual. They want to help other Americans, and they feel it is easy to overlook needs in the US.
By comparison, those who favor supporting local work tend to favor individual over group. They are far more likely to volunteer, to want to see the work first-hand, and to see their local giving as more personal.
These feelings and perceptions can be used in communication. Local organizations can do a lot to involve donors personally, and make their support feel more personal, in ways it is difficult for national or global organizations to accomplish. But national and global organizations have their own advantages which they can reinforce with donors.
We’re not advocating making this some sort of competition, such as “It’s more important to give locally/nationally/globally.” But when you understand how donors think, you can craft communication that reinforces their natural preferences – or make points which can encourage them to think a little differently.
Learn more about where donors want to give, and why, in Here or There? Where Donors Prefer to Give, from Grey Matter Research. Here or There? is free by request – just e-mail ron@greymatterresearch.com.
How Can We Help You?
Grey Matter makes reports such as these publicly available, but most of our work is for individual clients, whether the topic is donating, branding, religious beliefs, consumer behavior, or anything else.
Just a few recent projects:
- A survey of Jewish people across 16 different countries in four continents, understanding their experiences and perceptions.
- A tracking study for a faith-based organization to measure their target market’s awareness and consideration of their brand, along with perceptions of their work.
- Research for a fundraising agency to explore the experiences of Christian mid-level donors.
- Qualitative research to help a donor-supported media organization understand why people choose to support them.
What do you want to learn? What upcoming decisions could you make in a more informed manner if you knew what your target market thinks and feels about your organization, why they give (or why they stopped giving), or what they want, need, and expect from you? We answer these kinds of questions for non-profits, faith-based ministries, companies, and the agencies and consultants which serve them.
How can Grey Matter help you?
We have A Passion for Research That Makes a Difference. Talk to us about how we can make a difference for you.