Fundraising without asking is hardly fundraising at all

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09 January 2012

Fundraising without asking is hardly fundraising at all

When people are asked why they don't give to charity, one of the most common answers is, I wasn't asked to give.

Asking is our job.

And a recent study reported at the Neuromarketing blog shows how important asking is: Nine Words Nearly Double Results.

The study compared Salvation Army red-kettle bell-ringing fundraisers who simply rang the bell to those who also said to passersby: Hi, how are you? Merry Christmas. Please give today.

Those who asked got 75% more donations in their kettles.

Yeah, everyone knows what the Salvation Army kettle is for. But asking still makes all the difference.

You can download the study: Avoiding The Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving (PDF).

Posted by Jeff Brooks on 09 January 2012 at 07:26 | Permalink

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The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It's not about any technology, medium, or technique. It's about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It's already here. More.

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Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. More.

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