For donors, $1 does not equal $1

Here's an article in Condé Nast Portfolio that gets right to the point: Giving Makes You Rich.

It works like this: Give away $100, and you'll earn (on average) an extra $375. That's an ROI of 3.75:1. Not too many investments can beat that.

How the heck does that work? would be a fair question to ask. Shouldn't giving away $100 make you $100 poorer?

There's a spiritual explanation: "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Luke 6:38; you can find similar statements in many faith traditions.)

There are also prosaic, researched, secular explanations:

... charity stimulates parts of the brain called the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens, which are associated with meeting basic needs such as food and shelter -- suggesting to the researchers that our brains know that giving is good for us. Experiments have also found that people are elevated by others into positions of leadership after they are witnessed behaving charitably.

Whatever the cause, charitable donors are tapped into something powerful. Most donors are unaware of and unmotivated by material return -- and if they knew, most would says it's the least of the good things they get from giving.

So many fundraisers are crippled by a belief that giving is extractive from donors; they feel guilty for impoverishing these good-hearted people. Don't feel guilty about asking; your donors get more out of the gift than you do.

(Disclosure: The author of the article quoted here is my brother. The material comes from his book Who Really Cares, which you can find reviewed here.)

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