Charitable Giving: Even the Willing Need to be Persuaded

Abstract

Nonprofits that depend on charitable giving operate in a competitive context and cannot simply expect to receive donations because they represent a “good” or “deserving” cause. To increase the chances of receiving donations, they have to communicate the positive impact of the donor's actions (perceived efficacy) and ensure that the appeals are seen as motivating (persuasiveness). We sampled donors from the database of a local charity and found that perceived efficacy for the charity was significantly influential. We also found that persuasiveness of an appeal fully mediated their charitable giving behavior. Thus, to receive a fair share, or any share, of an individual's donations, even the willing need to be persuaded.

Acknowledgments

This article was accepted by Claude Martin and James Leigh, previous editors of the Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising.

The authors thank Deepshika Bijjula and Julianne Wickland for help in designing and administering the survey and collating data and the Amherst Survival Center for access to their database.

Notes

Note. Adj. R ² = .42, F _{3, 278} = 67.64.

^a Appeal was coded as a dummy variable and guilt and altruism appeals were combined.

^b VIF represents the variance inflation factor, where values above 10 indicate multicollinearity.

¹ANOVA analyses showed that these appeals were not significantly different in their persuasiveness (F_{2, 279} = 1.61, p>.3), perceived information content (F_{2, 274} = 1.44, p>.24), and readability (F_{2, 274} = 2.76, p>.07). Therefore, we collapsed all of our data and restricted our attention to the other remaining research questions. However, to be consistent with our a priori theoretical prediction, we entered Appeal as the first independent variable in the hierarchical regression.

Note. Sig., significance.

−2 log-likelihood (0) = 194.08.

−2 log-likelihood (β) = –159.9.

Nagelkerke R ² = .16, adjusted ρ² = .21.

Note. Sig., significance.

−2 log-likelihood (0) = –194.08.

−2 log-likelihood (β) = –166.14.

Nagelkerke R ² = .12, adjusted ρ² = .15.

Note. Sig., significance.

−2 log-likelihood (0) = -194.08.

−2 log-likelihood (β) = -156.13.

Nagelkerke R ² = .19, adjusted ρ² = .22.