Donor Responses to Out-group Beneficiary Profiles in Direct Mail Fundraising: A Canadian Case Study

ABSTRACT

Charities that fundraise from the public can feel competing pressures to be as efficient as possible in their fundraising efforts and to accurately and ethically reflect their services and beneficiaries in their fundraising materials. At the same time, the number of donors giving to charity is in a long-term decline. These pressures may lead charitable managers to make trade-offs when designing and implementing their fundraising programs. In this case study, two direct mail solicitations using different types of beneficiaries from one Canadian charity are examined to see how those trade-offs affect fundraising results. When aggregated, the differences between an out-group beneficiary profile and an in-group beneficiary profile appear subordinate to larger market-level externalities when all else is held equal. When disaggregated, there appears to be a change in donor behavior at the lower end of donation amounts in some markets and community types. The results of this study suggest that fundraiser tactics that narrow in on the preferences of a small segment of donors may be contributing to declining numbers of donors.

KEYWORDS:

• Fundraising
• direct mail
• Canada
• out-group beneficiary

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Dougherty and Schmidt; Data curation: Mahon; Formal analysis: Dougherty; Investigation: Dougherty; Methodology: Dougherty and Schmidt; Resources: Schmidt; Validation: Mahon; Writing: Dougherty.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the work of the editor and anonymous peer reviewers in improving this article, as well as Nathan Grasse and Cassandra Chapman who provided feedback on early drafts, and the staff at the charity who generously shared their time and expertise. An early version of this paper was presented at the 2019 ANSER-ARES conference.

Disclosure statement

All authors have had been employed or contracted by the the case study subject in the past.