The Donation Equation

9 years ago, I went from gift officer to “giving geek.”

I transitioned from front line fundraiser to become a benchmarker, strategist, consultant, marketer and doctoral student. I had been a successful development officer, but with no real unifying strategy. Going full on nerd with fundraising required effort. I signed up for a ton of mailing lists and read dozens of books, academic articles, and talked with hundreds of fundraisers .

I began to file everything I heard about fundraising into buckets. I was looking for common threads about what we know about donors and how they respond. I wondered: with the proliferation of fundraising advice out there, is there a way to get it all into a single, comprehensive “grand equation” of why people give? And then, after talking with many friends to test it out, that’s what I did.

My goal was to create a list of ingredients that influence giving, like a chemical formula. These six clusters of giving ingredients are where all my research, experience, and experiments landed. The key question: how do we provide a better donor experience? And here it is, a quick look at the Donation Equation, my “full on nerd” approach to fundraising.

The Donation Equation starts with a base of two ingredients:

• Philanthropy: How giving has been learned and practiced as part of the donor’s life, their passion about this specific cause, and their capacity to give.
• Gratitude: What a donor “gets back” from giving, including social rewards, physical rewards, and even tax incentives.

These two key baseline factors set the environment for giving, before we even ask. We know that philanthropy is a learned behavior . We also know that how we thank donors, and how we provide real incentives, can greatly influence giving. Gratitude is the ingredient here more in our control as fundraisers. In practice, we can’t change a donor's capacity or the giving education for a donor quickly, but we can definitely thank donors better.

After these two baseline variables of give and get, there are three ingredients that boost the chance that a donor takes action. I call them the ‘accelerants’:

• Connection: The donor’s closeness to the cause, to the person asking, and to peers who are engaged with this cause or organization.
• Story: The compelling narrative of the cause’s impact, the tale of real people impacted, and the donor’s history with the organization.
• Urgency: The answer to “why give now?” including things like matches, challenges, and deadlines that add a time component to the ask.

This group of three things is where fundraisers can really innovate. On Connection, every time we change the “sender” of an appeal, like switching from a staff member to a fellow giver as the signer a fundraising letter, we see a different group respond. The asker matters. How you explain the Story of impact is crucial, and we’re also all very used to reminding a donor of their past giving. And, any way you can make giving immediate, manufacturing Urgency with a deadline, you will increase response. These are just a few examples of how giving “accelerants” can be harnessed to increase giving.

Then, there’s one final ingredient, and this one we definitely want to reduce:

• Barriers – Friction that makes giving harder, annoying or impossible.

There are a ton of ways we can make it easier to give, from user-friendly giving pages, to better payment options , to things like reducing major gift contracts to a single page (yes, I'm serious). Reducing Barriers is a key thing we should all be focused on as fundraisers.

These six variables form the Donation Equation. A few ways to say it:

• Full on Nerd Version: ((P+G) x (C+S+U))/B.
• Use Your Words Version: Philanthropy and Gratitude, amplified by Connection, Story and Urgency, all of them influenced by Barriers to giving, will largely determine the chance that a donor will respond to your appeal for charitable support.

And in a graphic:

This is what happened when I went “full on nerd” to describe what influences a donor to respond to a fundraising appeal. I made it look real science-y. There are a few reminders in here, like “TtDS: Tell the Donor’s Story.” Grab me if you want a deep dive.

That’s a quick overview of the Donation Equation. It has held up pretty well as I’ve used it over the years, and I can fit most fundraising tactic questions into one of the six buckets. ?Feel free to throw one at me, or ask me to rate any campaign on these variables.

A historic example: 1985’s We are the World set giving records even though the average American didn’t have that much knowledge about famine in Africa before the song came out. (Relatively low “P” at the start). You got a record, which was a Gratitude incentive. The selection of artists across music types gave everyone a chance for Connection, the Barriers to buying a record were low, and Urgency was a key motivator. The lyrics themselves drip with Story: “We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving.”

A common example from today: Giving Days market to a broad supporter base of all giving capacities. The best giving days use peer ambassadors (Connection), tell a Story of combined impact, and the one-day event emphasizes Urgency (as do matches and challenges). The best giving days really remove Barriers to giving. And, the giving days that execute on Gratitude after the event will do a lot for renewals and major gift pipeline down the road.

Crafting fundraising strategy can seem like a massive undertaking. The value I’ve found with the Donation Equation is that it lets you focus for a moment on a specific area. I recommend that an organization take the six variables and ask some key questions like: Who are we asking? How have we thanked them? Can we connect them to peers? Have we shared their impact? Why give now? Can we make it easier to give? Then, pick one ingredient and make a few impactful changes.

Like any chemical cocktail, when you change the ingredients, you’ll see a result. Amplifying any of the first five ingredients and lowering Barriers will have an immediate impact on your donor response. Maybe even, to use the chemistry metaphor, create an explosion of giving.

Thanks for geeking out with me once again, and if you’d like to see how the Donation Equation might apply to your strategy, or to order up a presentation for your team to get your creativity flowing, drop me a line. Just be ready to go “full on nerd.”

And yes, there’s a book coming, featuring examples you’ve all shared. Look for The Donation Equation in 2024.