Fundraisers must put aside personal prejudice to understand donors' motivation
Howard Lake | 21 August 2007 | News
Fundraisers need to put aside their personal prejudices about why people should give to charity and look at why people give in the first place, delegates to the International Fundraising Congress in Holland in October will hear.
In a session on donor motivation, managing director of Cascaid, Alan Clayton will say that many fundraisers act unprofessionally if they do not try to understand this basic question.
The reason for giving is at the root of every communication we should produce, Clayton will tell delegates. So why is the answer to this question at best simplified, and at worst avoided in so many conversations and at so many conventions?
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Worse is when somebody chooses to argue that ‘why someone does give’ is not as important as ‘why someone should give’, which reduced the debate to a subjective rant rather than an empirical marketing study, says Clayton, who has made donor motivation his specialism.
In his session – ‘Science, religion and emotion: the real reasons why people give’ – Clayton will say there is no one single model of donor motivations, and that possible models of giving will encompass matters of evolutionary biology, religious imperaties and philanthropic duty.
Session highlights for the 27th IFC, organised by the Resource Alliance and being held in the Netherlands from 23-26 October include
• Examining global giving trends among children and young people
• The importance of benchmarking for non-profits
• Trends in European grantmaking
• Understanding global fundraising markets
• The potential of long-form DRTV
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.