Newspapers' influence on donors wanes, says CAF
Howard Lake | 24 February 2010 | News
Television coverage inspires many more people to donate than newspaper reports do, according to research for Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in the Haiti Disaster Emergency Appeal. The research undertaken for CAF by GfK NOP, asked 1,005 people which medium influenced them to donate. Stories and adverts in newspapers encouraged only 6% of those who gave to the Haiti appeal, compared to 12 % during the DEC Burma appeal of 2008, and 11% during the DEC Asia-Pacific Appeal of 2009.
Television coverage inspired 75%, 8% higher than with the DEC Asia-Pacific appeal in 2009. Stories and adverts on radio, which was included in the DEC Haiti appeal survey for the first time, inspired 5% of people to donate.
Commenting on the results Liz Goodey said: “This research shows that newspapers have become less important than they once were in campaigns in inspiring people to donate. Readership figures of the national dailies have dropped by around 10% between the Burma and Haiti DEC appeals and their ability to inspire donations has dropped over the same period too.
“This is news that all charity fundraisers will be interested in as society moves into a digital world, but it still shows the power that another traditional medium, television, holds in inspiring and moving people to donate to disaster appeals and charity more generally.”
www.cafonline.org/disastermonitor
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.