What makes someone donate

More importantly, why should you? First and foremost, when you contribute to a cause you are making the world a better place. Whether you are donating your time, money or expertise, there are recipient s benefiting from it. Ultimately, giving back shows kindness and those around you see that. While sometimes there are questions about where money goes in the public sector, the fact is, everyone in it is trying to do something bigger than what one of us could do alone.

The fact is this: when you donate to charity you are doing good in the world. What does bettering the world lead to? Feeling good! The act of helping others, donating to charity, or volunteering your time, will give you an improved sense of wellbeing. Receiving notice of the good your money has done in a certain community, or a letter from your foster child, can truly warm your heart.

The Dutch scholars Rene Bekkers and Pamala Wiepking published a paper six years ago that drew from other papers on this topic to identify the key factors that drive giving.

What they found is that for more than 85 percent of charitable donations, people gave because someone asked them to. Most people give to causes that affirm important values, including compassion for those in need. Donors are also more likely to give when they think that their donation will make a difference.

They also consider the costs and benefits of giving, and the benefits to themselves such as feeling good or looking good to others. But there are very few ways to measure what motivates people to give to charity or not. While asking thousands of donors why they give for our research, we have rarely encountered anyone who confessed to giving simply because someone asked them to.

Instead, they describe internal triggers. People often say things like they feel bad for people who do not have homes or it makes them feel good to help others. In a series of experiments, it was found that people are much more responsive to charitable pleas that feature a single, identifiable beneficiary, than they are to statistical information about the scale of the problem being faced. Further work also discovered that advertising which emphasises the proven effectiveness of the charity does not increase giving.

Other evidence suggests that the effect of this information can actually be the opposite. In short, when it comes to charitable giving, we are often ruled by our hearts and not our heads.

Another of the major takeaways from the research in this area is that giving is fundamentally a social act. One study shows that people give significantly more to their university if the person calling and asking for their donation is their former roommate. Researchers found that when JustGiving donors see that the donor before them has made a large donation, they make a larger donation themselves.

Donors to an international development charity were more likely to respond to a match—funding campaign if they knew that that the match came from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation than if it came from an anonymous source. We asked more than donors to share their thoughts on what influences them to give to charity. To find out the key motivations for their charitable giving, we asked more than donors for insight into why they donate.

Here are some of the key findings:. The causes that donors supported were varied, with some concerns broader than others - such as international development or the arts - compared to others that were more specifically focused, for example restoring old buildings.