People try so hard to learn deep new truths about fundraising. Here's an effort to see if nonprofits can use nostalgia to motivate donors to give, reported at Third Sector a UK publication for nonprofits: Nostalgia as a fundraising tool (registration required).
But here's how the research happened:
... asked more than 500 US donors who had given to charity in the previous 12 months about what made them feel happy, sad, lonely or angry. They were encouraged to remember significant events in their lives and write down how these made them feel. They were also asked if they were more likely to donate if the events were linked with a cause.
Wow. That's a lot of heavy lifting to learn something you can't really use in real life.
Problem is, there's no relationship whatsoever between what people tell you in an artificial, clinical setting and what they'd actually do when looking at the stuff in their mailbox. Folks can tell you they'd be likely to give after you've got them thinking about their past, but that doesn't mean if you evoke nostalgia in direct mail you're going to get a higher response rate.
That's not to say you won't find nostalgia a useful tool in your motivational toolbox. It might help.
But this study doesn't tell you that.
The only research into how people respond that you can take to the bank is disciplined direct-response testing. That's how you find out what people really do in the fundraising situation that matters. Not what they feel comfortable telling a researcher in an artificial setting.
(Same goes for focus groups: they can kill you.)
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