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What the research says: telephone thanking
Donna Day Lafferty | 31 July 2026 | Blogs
You’ve been thinking about a telephone thanking, but are not sure about whether it is worth the resource-cost.
Will it increase donor giving, if not immediately then at least in the midterm?
Let’s have a look at what the research tells us…
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Data seems to be initially ambiguous; Samek and Longfield (2019) report results from an experiment that tracked “600,000 donors and 500,000 thank-you calls over 6 years*”, there was no difference in repeat giving, whether donor got a call or not. There’s a shocker!
If something is that counterintuitive, it’s important to dig deeper. Two sets of authors, both with strong pedigrees (academic and practitioner) tell a different story. First, Shang, Sargeant, Carpenter, and Day (2018, p. 17) lay some important foundations for an effective thank you call; they have six core criteria. Then Burk (2018) reports a 30% increase in giving following thank you calls based on extensive professional experience.
Step away from the big data and Lawson and Turner (2022) trace the direct relationship between one thank you call and two legacies. This is insight that will be missed by a quantitative study like the ones above, but with the increasing importance of legacies worth noting.
How to act on differing results?
So, why such different results, and what can you learn from them?
Shang et al. argue that effective thanking should do more than acknowledge a gift: it should deliberately enhance donor wellbeing. They identify six higher-order needs that a good thank-you can support: competence, autonomy, relatedness, personal growth, purpose in life, and self-acceptance (Shang, et al., 2018, p. 17). In fundraising terms, this means a thank-you call should help donors feel that their gift was effective, freely chosen, connected them to people or causes they care about, helped them become the kind of person they want to be, clarified why their giving matters, and affirmed who they are as generous people.
These six criteria matter because donor retention is not only a behavioural outcome (more giving) but a relational and psychological one. Shang et al. explicitly distinguish between thank-yous that produce a second gift and thank-yous that make donors feel adequately appreciated; they argue that an acknowledgement can “fail” even if it produces another donation, if the donor does not feel properly thanked.
I just called to say… thank you
The Samek and Longfield (2023, Appendix B, p.46) scripts fail against the six criteria because they are largely transactional and generic (I recommend you have a look at them). The public television script thanks the donor for becoming a member and says their support helps keep “quality programming on the air,” but it does not invite the donor to reflect on their own effectiveness, values, voice, or identity. It weakly addresses competence by naming a broad impact, but it does not make the donor feel personally capable of creating change. It also does little for autonomy, because the donor is not invited to express why they gave or what they care about.
The national non-profit script is warmer, saying the call is “simply to say THANK YOU” and recognising the donor’s “support and partnership,” but it still frames the donor as one of many supporters in a campaign rather than as a person whose values, generosity, or moral identity are being affirmed.
Relatedness is attempted through phrases such as “with supporters like you by our side,” yet the call does not create genuine connection through dialogue, story, or personal recognition. The enhanced public television script improves slightly by asking which programmes the donor enjoyed, potentially supporting autonomy and connection, but this question is about consumer preference more than philanthropic meaning.
Overall, the scripts thank the gift more than the giver. This helps explain why Samek and Longfield found precisely estimated null effects on subsequent giving despite the large scale of their experiments. Now you know why, and how-to, you can do better.
Bibliography
Burk, P. (2018). Donor-centered Fundraising: How to Hold on to Your Donors and Raise Much More Money (2nd ed.): Burk & Associates/Cygnus Applied Research.
Lawson, R., & Turner, R. (2022). SolarAid: When a personal thank you can lead to so much more… [Retrieved from https://www.about-loyalty.com/post/solaraid-when-a-personal-thank-you-can-lead-to-so-much-more ]
Samek, A., & Longfield, C. (2019). Do thank-you calls increase charitable giving? expert forecasts and field experimental evidence. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 15(2), 103-124. [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=3371327]
Shang, J., Sargeant, A., Carpenter, K., & Day, H. (2018). Learning to say thank you: the role of donor acknowledgments. Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy, Plymouth, UK. [https://www.philanthropy-institute. org. uk/s/Learning-to-Say-Thank-You_eBook-271220]
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About Donna Day Lafferty
Donna Day Lafferty, MSc, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chichester, UK. She has worked as a professional fundraiser and project manager since 1997. She founded the first undergraduate degree dedicated to non-profit fundraising in 2014, and the first dedicated master’s degree in 2023.
She is also co-author, with Beth Breeze and Pamala Wiepking, of The Fundraising Reader, a one-stop body of over 80 pieces of literature that shine a light on fundraising as a practice and a profession.