The Power of Elites: A Survey Experiment of the Impact of Strategic Messaging on Donations to Nonprofits

ABSTRACT

Nonprofits engage in various service and advocacy efforts to support their missions, and it is critical to effectively communicate the importance of these activities and their missions to donors. In these communications, it remains unclear the extent to which messaging from nonprofit elites such as coalitions and other nonprofit infrastructure organizations (NIOs) shapes donor support for service and advocacy activities, and which messages exhibit the strongest influence on donors. This survey experiment tests the effects of three strategic messages from a fictional NIO on respondents’ allocation of donation budgets between traditionally service-oriented nonprofits engaging in varying levels of service and advocacy activities. Results show messages promoting advocacy and social change yield substantial donation increases to nonprofits engaging in low and high levels of advocacy work. Messages pushing direct service failed to produce effects on donor intentions; however, findings suggest direct service may enjoy an inherent advantage in donor preference.

KEYWORDS:

• Elites
• nonprofit infrastructure organizations
• strategic messaging
• donations

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest that relate to the research, authorship, or publication of this article.

Notes

¹ Li and McDougle (2017) find that reliance on information from nonprofit accrediting agencies is associated with increased willingness of donors to volunteer time but not give money.

² We chose not to identify a specific NIO as the high-status elite delivering the message to remove the possibility that results would be driven by reference to a specific organization or nonprofit coalition.

³ Type 1 = 100% direct service activity mix.

⁴ Type 2 = 25% advocacy, 75% direct service activity mix.

⁵ Type 3 = 75% advocacy, 25% direct service activity mix.

⁶ The exception is the pro-advocacy (Treatment B) group’s average donations to the Type 2 low-advocacy nonprofits.

⁷ Type 1 = 100% direct service activity; Type 2 = 25% advocacy activity mix; Type 3 = 75% advocacy activity mix.

⁸ t (488) = −6.78, p = .000.

⁹ t (488) = 5.62, p = .000.

¹⁰ t (488) = 2.53, p = .012.