good people: a work in progress

International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector MarketingInt. J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark. 14: 387–393 (2009)Published online 25 August 2009 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/nvsm.382
Good people: a work in progressy

Alan Clayton*The Good Agency, 8 Boundary Row, London, SE1 8HP, UK

� This article provides some evidence, some insight and some opinion based on a

continuously evolving research programme conducted by the Good Agency which

attempts to define the reasons that people give to charity. Conclusions are drawn

from a variety of research resources and live testing across a wide client base over

the last 8 years.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Why do people give?

In 20 years of fundraising, I have never sat at apost-conference dinner table that could comeclose to consensus on this subject. I have heard‘We are just intrinsically good’ from a com-munity fundraiser, ‘Because God demands it’from a consultant, ‘People give for selfish

reasons’ from an agency account director, and‘It’s all about sexual advantage’ from a slighttipsy journalist. Of course, we have all heard athousand variants on each and every theme, butnever the slightest hint of agreement or adefinitive answer.

Even a detailed delve into academic texts onthe matter, Richard Dawkins’ ‘The Selfish

Gene’ or even Matt Ridley’s ‘Origins of Virtue’provides more questions than answers. Is itabout benefiting our children, peer pressure,or is it about increasing the evolutionarychances of one’s genes’ own survival?

Not even the ubiquitous focus groupprovides the answer. In fact, the focus group

*Correspondence to: Alan Clayton, The Good Agency,8 Boundary Row, London, SE1 8HP, UK.E-mail: [email protected] Good Agency is a London (UK) based social market-ing agency working with about 100 non-profit clients,mainly in the UK. Alan Clayton is The Good Agency’sDirector of Innovation. # Alan Clayton, The Good Agen-cy, May 2009. Research credits: Pat Dade, CulturalDynamics & Roger Lawson, The Good Agency.

Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int.

is perhaps the worst source of distraction of all.Experience tells us that the only time peopleconsciously think about their giving behaviouris when they are asked about it. Heisenbergstyle, people’s behaviour changes as soon as itis observed.

The focus group assumes a ‘decision mak-ing’ based approach to giving:

Feel–think–say–do

Whereas any front line fundraiser worth theirsalt knows that the vast majority of donors gostraight from:

Feel–do

Giving people the opportunity (through sur-veys or focus groups) to post-rationalise theirgiving behaviour simply retrospectively adds in‘think–say’ and so leads to misleading intellec-tualisations.

The only conclusions we can come to bycollating all the above sources (the fundraiser’sopinion, academic research and marketresearch) are:

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here are many potential reasons an individ-ual may give.

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he reasons are mainly either emotional orgenetically programmed. They are certainlynot, in general, driven by logic.
Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., November 2009

DOI: 10.1002/nvsm

Alan Clayton

So what we are trying to create is

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model of ‘Why different people give for

different reasons’ which covers the leapfrom basic needs to the act of giving.

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model which identifies different groups ofpeople who give for the same reason.
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model for making different fundraisingasks to these different groups.
It is a work in progress and, I suspect, alwayswill be. We’re all just too complex an animalfor a single and definitive answer.

Why will this knowledgebe useful?

It will help us raise more money.Every marketing manual, course or degree

opens with the basic economic driver of ‘Youmust know what your customer needs.’ Ifdifferent people need different things, youmust have different products. So either targetyour audience or have a portfolio of productsand messages. Or vary your creative treatmentsto different segments.

It is astonishing and wonderful that thefundraising ‘industry’ has become the multi-billion dollar beast it is without being able todefine the needs of its donors, in all theirvariety. Imagine how much we can raise if weactually know the motivations that drive ourdonors and their behaviours?

Figure 1. Maslow’s heirarchy of human needs.

How are we trying to discover it?

Through research and testing the populationof the UK.

I must confess, we have a slight head starthere.

Firstly, Abraham Maslow has very helpfullycreated his own model of basic human needswhich has pretty much stood up to inspectionover the years and in marketing trials in thecommercial world. His defining work ‘Motiv-ation and Personality’ was first published in1954. At the top level, he defined four majorlevels of human need: Sustenance needs, Outer

pyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int.

Directed needs, Inner Directed needs and Self-Actualisation needs. He defined these as ahierarchy and determined that the number ofpeople in the population with each set ofneeds tapered by volume as shown inFigure 1.

In very simplistic terms, one can get one’shead around understanding these groups byconsidering three different ways to completethe following sentence. It is simplistic andexaggerating, but will give you a good gut-feelfor the groups’ needs.

‘I am eating less these days because . . ..’

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ustenance driven needs people will answer‘. . . food is getting so expensive’.

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uter Directed needs people will answer‘. . .. I want to look better’.
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nner Directed needs people will answer ‘. . .I want to feel better’.
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elf-Actualised people will probably say ‘I’mnot eating less’.
Secondly, we have been using a philan-thropy version of Maslow’s human needsmodel for about 8 years to analyse and predictthe behaviours of different groups within theexisting warm donor files of some of ourclients. Without exception, when used to cre-ate hypothetical motivations models andapplied to segmentation and variable creativetreatments, the model has seen increases inboth response and value. The model has beencreated from scratch for every client because


DOI: 10.1002/nvsm

Good people: a work in progress 389

different types of people give to differentcauses.

This technique has its limitations. It relies onanalysing historical transactions (based onscoring different creative treatments) andtherefore only works on existing files with alarge and varied communications history. Thenext step has been to try and find a way tomodel this knowledge into the wider popu-lation—so it can be applied to donor recruit-ment, welcome process, engagement processand the supporter journey. Simply cross-refer-encing to geo-demographics did not work. Sowe needed to find another way.

So, The Good Agency has teamed up with asmall but extremely clever market researchand insight company in the UK called CulturalDynamics. They have a 25 year history of usingMaslow needs and values modes to providetargeting and messaging models for the com-mercial, government and military sectors—and 25 years worth of historical data to under-pin their theories

Tapping into this historical knowledge wasthe first leap forward.

The second has been the first inclusion ofcharitable and philanthropic questions in theBritish Values Survey, which we completed inthe autumn of 2008. The more astute of youwill remember I ‘dissed’ the integrity of sim-plistic surveys in paragraphs above. This one isdifferent. It is one of those really clever surveyswith over 1000 questions which double andcross check each other to strip out the ‘think–say’ stuff and get statistically to the ‘feel–do’.5700 people responded, giving 5.7 million datapoints to provide controls, interrogate andsegment.

Finally, we have carried out creative testing(both theoretical and live) and ‘media-match’analysis to find out how to reach differenttypes of people. This knowledge is buildingup across our client base—from the nationalmega-brands to the small local single-fundraisercharities, and everything in between.

The accumulation of knowledge from theabove sources is giving a real insight into thedifferent reasons people give.


What is the model of ‘givingneeds’?

At this point, there will be people wondering‘Is this it—the magical solution, in a one size

fits all format which will transform my

fundraising’? Well, sorry to disappoint. . .At a detailed level, the motivations matrix is

different for every organisation. The goodnews is that there is a starting point whichevery fundraising marketeer can use.

Taking the top level of Maslow segmenta-tion, and discarding Self-Actualisation needs(the volume is too low for them to be of anybenefit to us in mass marketing terms) we cancreate a ‘giving needs’ version of the threemain groups as follows:

Community driven donors

These are the Sustenance Driven needs people.Their needs are about survival, family, friends,work and money. Their community or culturalframeworks define their giving behaviour—frameworks like religion, trades unions, mem-bership clubs or small local organisations. Theywill say things like ‘charity begins at home’,‘I help people like myself’ and ‘I can sym-

pathise with those people’. Giving, to thesepeople, involves sacrifice and is therefore avery financially valuable transaction.

Peer driven donors

These come from the Outer Directed needspeople. Their needs are about success, materialgoods, respect, competition and, most crucially,the acceptance and respect of their peers. Thesepeople spend and drive the economy. In terms oftheir giving, they will need tangible and visibleproof of their generosity. These people need togive because their peer group demands chari-table behaviour in order to provide acceptanceinto social groups, as a badge of wealth andhonour or even simply to be ‘cool’.

Self driven donors

These come from the Inner Directed needssegment. They are inquisitive, exploring and

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390 Alan Clayton

personally very confident. They do not feel theneed to prove anything, but simply seek to getthe very most out of their life. The value andvalues of what they do are defined by themselvesor a few people very close to them with whomthey discuss and debate the issues of the day.These people will give large amounts of theirincome, but be discerning and discriminatingabout the causes they choose. It is no exagger-ation to say that the fundraiser is selling thesepeople a little bit of the meaning of life.

When presenting this model, the immediatequestions are always about the correlationbetween the three groups and age, wealth andeducation. There is some truth that the moreaged, wealthy and educated the donor, the morethey trend towards Self-Driven giving, but it isneither exclusive nor necessarily cause andeffect. There are large clusters of outer andinner directed people in all demographic groupsand some, even very wealthy, philanthropistsremain sustenance driven until the day they die.

The only conclusion we can come to is thereare multiple reasons that someone will developa certain values and motivations set, and thathuman beings’ psychology is almost infinitelycomplex.

However, the fundraising marketer does notneed to know ‘why’, just ‘what’ at any givenpoint in time to better create and distributetheir communications.

Have we scientifically proventhis model?

No.Scientifically proving human giving needs

would be as likely as proving the existence of

Figure 2. Favoured charity by Maslow group.


God or finally deciding Nature vs. Nurture. Wewill never scientifically prove to the standardof academic publishing why people do any-thing.

That said, the good businessperson alwaysknows that you need to be no more than 70%sure to make a sound business decision. Andthat’s what fundraising marketing is allabout—the hypothesis, trial and error thatmake us better at what we do.

A simple set of 12 questions can now definewhich of the three main Maslow groups anindividual fits into with an 83% certainty. Ourlive testing is showing an uplift. So, thisimperfect model works, is the best we have,is a long way ahead of previous thinking, andwill do the job very well until something bettercomes along.

This model will morph and improve overtime, and may well be superseded 1 day. But itwill not be proven until somebody works outwhat human consciousness and emotionsactually are. I suspect we are a long way awayfrom that.

What have we found out?

1. D

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ifferent types of people prefer differentcauses (See Figure 2)

ommunity Driven donors prefer causesse to them: hospices, ex-armed-forces andcourse their pets, their family, companions

friends. ‘Aged’ also features highly, pre-able because family and security in their

n old age is important to these groups.eer Driven donors certainly seem to preferses where the person being helped can be

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clearepua hon

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arly identified and seen. Tangible outcomesimportant—help ‘that blind person’ or

rchasing a named piece of equipment forospital give obvious immediate evidence ofe’s efforts and generosity.elf-Driven donors prefer the seeminglyre abstract and intellectually challenging

g picture’ causes such as Human Rights orernational Development. The environmentuge and growing for them too. They wantsolutions to big causes and the chance to letir intellect and curiosity wander.

2. T
Figure 4. The Maslow shape of the UK population 2008.
he population is changing (see Figures 3and 4)

The Maslow pyramid is no longer a pyramid.It is almost a rectangle. Over the last 20 years:

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he number of sustenance people hasshrunk dramatically.

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he number of outer directed people hasgrown a bit.

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he fastest growth has been in the innerdirected needs segment.

All three segments have more or less one-third of the population, now, in 2008/2009.

At a glance, this explains why moretraditional charities such as disability are find-ing it harder, whilst the modern ‘movements’of human rights and environment are thegrowing trend.

ure 3. The change in size of Maslow groups.


3. That we are going through a ‘valley of

Drthedouseand

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ignorance’ (see Figure 5)

he decline in the number of Sustenanceiven needs people is causing a decline inmmunity Driven donors. This can be simplyn in the numbers of ‘Dorothy Donor’

creasing and therefore the traditional ‘guiltven’ proposition and traditional media suchdirect mail going into decline. Dorothy pre-s one off cash donations and is quite quiet,epting and trusting of charities. She may do

ttle volunteering but is extremely unlikely topaign or be politically active.he rapid rise in numbers of Inner Directed

eds people is causing an increase in Self-iven donors making themselves known in

market place. This is the new Selina Super-nor. Selina is really into what she does. Shes new media a lot, asks a lot of questionsprefers monthly direct debit. She prefers to

ure 5. The valley of ignorance.

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Figure 7. Propensity to give trigger: Superdonors.

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392 Alan Clayton

lly get involved in her causes and willage in debate, campaign, change her life-

le behaviours and try to convince others ofbeliefs.orothy’s behaviour is straightforward andple to predict. Selina is complicated, diffi-t but very valuable if she joins your cause.ll fundraisers know how to work with

rothy and we all wish there were morerothy’s around, because our life would bey much easier if there were.obody yet knows everything about Selina,

t we are learning fast.o we are in a ‘valley of ignorance’. Soon,ina will be in the majority and we needlearn all about her before we run out ofrothys.

4. T
he emotions that trigger giving are chan-ging (see Figures 6 and 7)
One way of trying to analyse Dorothy vs.Selina is through their behaviour rather thandemographics.

We know that Dorothy prefers just to givesimply (probably to a lot of causes), whereasSelina prefers to get really involved in a big wayand give, and do a lot more besides.

So, we have researched the ‘emotional trig-ger to give’, separating out ‘Those who justgive’ from the ‘Superdonors’—those who giveand do something else too, such as campaign,advocate or change their lifestyle behaviour.

Any fundraising marketeer who has analysedthe lifetime value of their file knows that theSuperdonors are worth more.

The difference is stark, but entirely explain-able in terms of Maslow groups.

� Dorothy is compassionate (she cares about
people and things close to her).
ure 6. Propensity to giver trigger: All donors.


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elina needs to be inspired (she will buy intothe big picture and big change).

What is the conclusion?

Our conclusion is a hypothesis based on thisimperfect but extremely insightful research:

The fastest growing ‘product’ for fundraisersis ‘Inspiration’.

And so, to the final question:

What is inspiration?

Surprisingly, it is very simple.Research, observation and vox-popping

suggest that inspiration is made up of onlytwo things:

� ‘
The people I knew and loved’. � ‘ The things I did’.
People give to people and the closer thefundraiser can bring people together, the moremoney they will raise. If the donor loves theirnew ‘friends’ as much as their family, theanswer to the legacy question becomes easy.

Superdonors also give to gain experiencesand achievements. If they can change theworld in their lifetime, they will be inspiredto give. It makes their life worth living, whichis the basic tenet of all giving frameworks—community, social, political, Christian, Muslim,Jewish or Humanist.

Of course, when lots of people get together,and become friends and allies in trying toachieve something very big and have life chan-ging experiences on the way, every inspirationbox is ticked. Which explains why ‘buildingmovements’ is becoming so popular. The


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much discussed social network is merely themost efficient current tool for doing this.

And so, this all seems remarkably simple,except that it demonstrates a seismic shift inwhat the fundraiser actually sells:

� Compassion is about giving money to make a

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bad feeling go away.
� I nspiration is about buying in to a good
feeling.

Which means we need to think (andfeel) about fundraising in a very different way.


Biographical note

Alan Clayton is the Director of Innovation at‘The Good Agency’. He has 15 years of experi-ence in the UK fundraising sector, started hiscareer at the British Diabetic Associationbefore founding direct marketing agency ‘Cas-caid’. Cascaid merged with two other compa-nies to create ‘The Good Agency’ in 2007. Alanhas worked strategically and creatively withover 100 charity and other non-profit clients inUK. His area of specialization is donor motiv-ations and he regularly publishes and speakson this subject at fundraising conferencesaround the world.

J. Nonprofit Volunt. Sect. Mark., November 2009

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good people: a work in progress

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