We're more generous charity donors when we think about benefitting ourselves

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-04-13 01:00

Australia; International; ACT

Reminding potential donors that giving to charity benefits the person making the donation is the best way to encourage generosity, according to researchers from the US and Australia. The team sent postcards to 540,000 Alaskans encouraging them to 'warm your heart' by donating to a charity, or to donate to 'make Alaska better'. Those who received the 'warm your heart' postcard donated 23 per cent more than those who did not receive a postcard, and were 6.6 per cent more likely to donate. While those encouraged to 'make Alaska better' were more likely to donate than people who did not receive a postcard, they did not donate significantly more, suggesting that emphasising selfish benefits is the best way to get people to open their wallets.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Human Behaviour

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The Australian National University, University of Chicago, USA

Funder: Financial support for this project was provided to J.J.M. by the Rasmuson Foundation and to J.A.L. and M.K.P. by the John Templeton Foundation (award # 38909) through the Science of Philanthropy Initiative. M.K.P. acknowledges the National Science Foundation for financial support under grant award #1658743 ‘Using Field Experiments and Naturally Occurring Data to Understand How State Policies Impact Charitable Giving’. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript

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