Share your fundraising data with us, academics ask practitioners
Howard Lake | 23 April 2014 | News
A conference hosted by Bristol and Warwick universities to share latest academic research about fundraising with practitioners has concluded with a call for charities to share more of their data with researchers.
Speaking earlier in the day, Kimberley Scharf, professor of economics at Warwick University, had explained how she set up lab experiments to test predictions on the public’s attitudes to fixed costs because she couldn’t find any relevant data among charities.
And when asked from the floor during the closing panel discussion how practitioners could help with academic research, the response was clear: share your data with us.
Professor Jen Shang of Plymouth University’s Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy also pointed out that philanthropic research was a niche area compared to commercial marketing. There were around 5,000 professors of marketing, but only 20 of so professors of philanthropy in the world, she said.
Academic presentations
Here is a playlist of some of the speakers’ presentations:
View speakers’ slide decks
The Fundraising Insights – New Research Findings conference, sponsored by JustGiving, was held in at Westminster University in London on Friday 28 March. Presentations included:
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- Professor Sarah Smith of Bristol University presented findings from a 2012 analysis of the behaviour of fundraisers and donors using JustGiving pages. This has been previously reported on UK Fundraising. Read the full report, Peer effects in charitable giving: Evidence from the (running) field.
- Professor Kimberley Scharf of Warwick University looked at the implications of fixed costs and competition for fundraising.
- Dr Beth Breeze of Kent University and AJ Nagaraj of the Advisory Board Company in the USA presented preliminary findings from different studies into the attributes of successful major gift fundraisers. Dr Breeze’s study focused on the Formation of Fundraisers (PDF, 196 kB), and AJ Nagaraj’s study looked at Gifted and Talented fundraisers.
- Associate professor Alex Imas of Carnegie Mellon University in the USA shared the results of tests into prosocial behaviour.
- Michael Sanders of Bristol University, who is also head of research at the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team, ran through details of the team’s findings on field experiments in giving, which were first published last May.
- Professor Jen Shang of the University of Plymouth concluded the day reiterating the need for rigorous testing in academic research before all speakers convened for a panel Q&A session.
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.