Literature Review

Methodology

Mainwaring and Skinner used interpretive phenomenology to determine if people reveal which SRS they prefer through the language they use. Twenty-one adults ranging in age from 22 years to post-retirement were chosen. Participants in small groups watched four advertisements that focused on abuse at home. Immediate reactions to the ads were captured and recorded. The ads were deliberately chosen because they were available and participants were already familiar with the work of the organization. As they were all starting from the same level of information, they were able to focus on merely reacting to the advertisements. The authors used non-sensory language when asking questions in order to not influence responses.

The authors observed no noticeable difference in response owing to age, gender or occupation. The responses show at least some relationship between whether a person is visual, auditory or kinaesthetic and the marketing messages that they found to be most compelling. Only visual and kinaesthetic preferences were seen in the responses. As the sample size was very small, no generalizations could be made.

Discussion and conclusions

Advertisements affect people differently, and the way that people describe their reactions is sensory-based. The participants clearly demonstrated that they filtered the information they received and how they filtered it was affected by their visual, auditory or kinaesthetic preferences. This was evident in the use of sensory language in their responses. It is also notable that the visual participants and one participant exhibiting visual/kinaesthetic synaesthesia found the ad with the most pronounced shock value to be the most compelling.

There are significant potential impacts for charitable organizations. It would be prudent for organizations to craft appeals that would appeal to more than one SRS. This is especially important for small charities with tight marketing budgets. The effective use of NLP provides a meaningful way to segment an audience as well as to develop meaningful client relationships.

Methodology

University foundations typically serve a single related institution. They are autonomous with their own board of directors. The sample of 235 university foundations was selected from the Guidestar database. All institutions reported complete data on IRS form 990 for 2003.

The two control measures used were the Carnegie designations for larger doctoral and research institutions, masters colleges and universities, bachelor's granting institutions and institutional size calculated as the log of total assets. Cluster analysis was used to identify strategic groups. The clusters were then subjected to extensive variance analysis.

Five strategic groups ranging in size from 15 foundations to 76 foundations were identified.

Discussion and conclusions

The authors note five major benefits for nonprofit research. First, the study provides a model for identifying organizational strategies in the nonprofit arena. It moves away from using measures such as Carnegie designation or size to classify university foundations. The results show a correlation between strategy and performance. The study may provide a model for studying attributes other than strategy that relate to performance. Finally, it can be replicated in other areas of the nonprofit sector.

University foundations should examine the various strategies and determine the proper balance of cultivating and harvesting for their resource base. They should also pay more attention to fund-raising activities as compared to program services or investments.

The model can also be used to examine other types of nonprofit organizations to determine strategy groups and their related performance factors. As the highest performance levels were found among the smaller strategic groups, this indicates that there may be barriers to movement between groups. In addition, the model can also be used for goal setting, benchmarking and managerial decision making.

Marlin, Ritchie and Geiger caution that the nonprofit environment has become more complex, with better-informed donors, more financial instruments for donor needs, and changing donor demographics. Strategic groups may change in response to these developments.

Methodology and sample

Twelve 3-hour workshops were held. Six were for donors aged 25–50 years and six for age 50 years and older. There was a mix of cash donors, defined as those who had given two or more gifts to a charity with at least one in the last 2 years, and committed donors who had made an ongoing commitment to donate through a direct debit arrangement. The workshops were further broken down into lapsers, who had canceled their debit arrangement within the last 24 months or those who had made two or more cash donations but not within the last 24 months and workshops with active donors who had made two or more cash gifts during the last 24 months or had an active debit arrangement. Donors were chosen from the files of 11 UK charities.

In the workshops, donor retention issues were described and the participants were asked to play the role of fundraiser. Participants were asked to think about ideal stewardship scenarios and also to replay their thoughts and feelings at the time they decided to stop giving. The workshop findings were used for 110 semi-structured phone interviews lasting around 20 min. There were additional undocumented phone conversations with people who were invited but could not attend the workshops.

Reasons that donors stopped giving

Donors who lapsed did so in response to specific charities. The majority continued to donate to other organizations. A small minority deliberately moved from charity to charity. The authors found no specific personality type. Lapsing was because of either something the charity did or did not do and changes in personal circumstances. Donors ranked who they gave to and dropped their least favorite organizations first. Preference was based on the sense of engagement and closeness to the cause. Within this group of donors, support of an individual child was the most important priority. Smaller charities were favored over large ones. Organizations that benefited children in general ranked third, followed by donations for medical research connected to a family member or close friend and charities with which they had long-term relationships.

There were several other observations related to recruitment and establishing a relationship with the charity. Donors were most likely to stay if they thought about it before making the commitment. Follow-up after recruitment was critical to reinforce the decision. On the other hand, some donors gave with no plan for further engagement. This applied to both cash givers, who simply stopped giving, and those who set up a direct debit with the attitude that the arrangement was easy to cancel. Those who had no plan to commit cited reasons including lack of trust in charities, a desire to give broadly out of fairness and simply liking to do something new and different. Donors lapsed because they did not engage and form a bond with the charity, even though they remained committed to other organizations.

Lapsing was not always problematic for a donor. Cash donors simply stopped responding to requests. For those with a debit arrangement, canceling often resembled a purchase/return decision. Canceling was usually owing to one of three factors – a change in financial situation, realizing that they were donating and not being able to remember why, or persistent dissatisfaction with the charity. Most donors moved on quickly after canceling.

For others, the decision to break off the donor relationship was not so easy. The decision to cancel took as much or more time than the decision to give. Some experienced guilt over the decision. If the reason for canceling was financial, some reduced their gift rather than canceling outright. Some participants reported not being able to figure out how to do this. There was often a desire to avoid communication or confrontation with the charity about canceling. Calls to try to persuade them to give again were a real source of aggravation as were ongoing appeals that implied that the person had never been a donor at all. Of post-cancellation communication, ‘lapsers said that an ideal post-cancellation communication would both acknowledge the situation, and say thank you for their gifts to date’ (p. 327).

Recommendations for retaining donors

Nathan and Hallam identified a lack of understanding and respect on the part of both donors and charities as the underlying theme of the evidence they gathered. Donors do not necessarily need charities and get no tangible benefit from giving. They lose very little when they disengage. Charities need to find ways to encourage donors to stay in the relationship at some level.