The paper broadly addresses what type of language to include in a donation solicitation to motivate people to donate. The authors show that the decision of whether to donate is separate and differentially motivated from that of how much to give. They ran four field experiments partnering with a variety of nonprofit organizations to show that language about the donors, themselves, motivates the decision of whether to give, more so than the decision of how much. Language about the cause and those being helped does more to motivate larger donation amounts than whether someone donates or not.
“I am delighted that this paper is recognized by the AMA,” said Townsend. My hope is that the recognition will make this research more visible to the general public, nonprofit managers, and fund-raisers who can then leverage our findings to increase both the number of donors and the dollar amounts received from their solicitations.”
The AMA-EBSCO Annual Award for Responsible Research in Marketing honors outstanding research that produces credible and useful knowledge that can be applied to benefit society. Nominated works needed to be published within a specific window of time and exemplify the Responsible Research in Business and Management organization’s seven principles of responsible research, which supports the general notion of “better marketing for a better world.”
