The Pentera Blog
New Study Confirms That Men and Women Should Be Asked for Donations Differently
While not specifically about planned gifts, a new study by researchers at Stanford and Columbia universities confirms other research that men and women donors make philanthropic decisions differently and that charities should work with them in different ways.
One of the study's key conclusions is that "different groups of people find different messages more or less persuasive." The study found that women are more moved to give by appealing to their empathy for the poor, while men are more moved by messages that address the impact of poverty on everyone.
Pentera offers a whitepaper on women in philanthropy with specific strategies of how to work with women donors. One of the strategies is to appeal to empathy and the desire to help since "making a difference" has been found by other research to be the overriding concern of most women philanthropists.
Women are more empathetic and thus more charitable
The new study - "What Drives the Gender Gap in Charitable Giving?" - was published in the professional journal Social Science Research last year. While it researches outright gifts of small amounts, the study's conclusion that men and women donors should be treated differently supports other research of high-net-worth donors who do make planned gifts. The researchers cited numerous studies concluding that more women give to charity and that they also do more volunteer work. This study set out to find why fewer men give to charity and to see if men could be motivated to increase their giving. In keeping with other research, the new study found that men have less empathy than women - a significant reason why men are less charitable.
Men give more when self-interest is triggered
The researchers invented a fictional charity, the Coalition to Reduce Poverty (CRP), and then asked for donations from men and women in a number of different ways. Males were triggered to give more by a statement appealing to their self-interest that began, "When you give to CRP, your donation addresses a problem that hurts us all." This statement of "aligned self-interest" went on to say that poverty leads to more governmental spending and exacerbates social issues such as crime. The statement caused men to report "significantly greater willingness to give, contributing at levels comparable to women," the researchers reported. They believe that the gender gap in charitable giving could exist because typical fundraising messages appealing to empathy do not resonate as strongly with men, and that the gap could be reduced by using different messages with different types of donors.
The messages targeting men should not be used with women
While the "self-aligned" statement that poverty hurts everyone in society did increase men's willingness to give, it did not significantly increase men's willingness to volunteer - and actually decreased women's willingness to volunteer. The researchers theorized that women found the self-interest message to be "inconsistent with feeling empathy for the poor." The researchers said that the self-aligned message that was found to be effective among men should not be used with women - who might find it particularly ineffective. They said such messages should not be used indiscriminately and that varying the message among different groups of donors is likely the most effective approach.
Pentera's whitepaper - "Women in Philanthropy: They Have the Wealth. Do You Have the Tools You Need to Work with Them?" - explains three key ways that women donors are different from men and offers seven strategies for working with women donors one-on-one.
