"Every penny helps" outperforms "Please give generously" on collecting tins

Howard Lake | 1 May 2007 | Blogs

Which call to give do you use on your collecting tins to secure the best response? According to some research Richard Wiseman featured in the Daily Telegraph, collecting tins with the phrase “Every penny helps” far outperform those with alternatives such as “Please give generously”, “Every pound helps”, and “You can make a difference”.
Wiseman placed National Literacy Trust collecting boxes, each with one of four different calls to give printed on them, in various branches of Borders in the UK for a week and then monitored the results. He also tested different coloured collecting boxes, and the amounts donated in different towns.
His conclusion? “Charity boxes can become up to 200 per cent more effective by being painted red, labelled “Every penny counts”, and placed outside Birmingham.”

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.