Great piece. I’m curious—how much do you think things like this would apply to other activities than fundraising, like campaigning/persuasion, public advocacy, etc? Obviously matching isn’t relevant but the identifiable victim effect and drop in the bucket effects do seem relevant.
The identifiable victim effect and drop in the bucket effect would apply in a similar fashion. However, while this may seem obvious, I want to be super-clear and add the caveat to remember to also apply the strategy of learning about your audience. For instance, advocacy targeting political officials would be quite different from advocacy targeting the public more broadly.
The approaches would be different. As an example, if you want to convince a politician to direct money toward a cause that suffers from the “drop in the bucket effect,” provide her/him with talking points and stories s/he can use to communicate this to her/his constituents, as opposed to trying to use stories to convince the actual politician.
Peter, if you have some additional perspectives on this topic, please jump in.
Great, thanks for your and Peter’s comments. My guess would also be that these things are more helpful for getting specific actions by people who already agree (e.g. getting people to become advocates) than persuasion since in the context of charitable giving most people are already persuaded it’s a good idea.
Yup, these things are helpful from moving people from agreeing in the abstract—thinking it’s a good idea—to taking active steps to help, namely donating their money, time, expertise, social capital, etc.
To my knowledge, all of these, bar matching, are good rules of thumb to work off for virtually all contexts where you are attempting to encourage prosocial (i.e., helping/other serving) behavior (i.e., volunteering, philanthropy, or activism on behalf of others) to the general public.
However, as Gleb points out, the most effective persuasion is very much about tailoring the appeal to the specific context, such as the people involved. For instance, if you were targeting people who were low in persuadability, high in persuasion knowledge, or need for cognition etc., then you might be better off going with something that focused on statistical/quantitative information rather than creating empathy by focusing on individual victims. That sort of target audience might see through this and be unaffected, or even dissuaded as they experience reactance at feeling manipulated.
Once I can free up some time, I intend to produce a lot more of persuasion guidelines, hopefully with Gleb and other collaborators (if I can keep/get them).
Great piece. I’m curious—how much do you think things like this would apply to other activities than fundraising, like campaigning/persuasion, public advocacy, etc? Obviously matching isn’t relevant but the identifiable victim effect and drop in the bucket effects do seem relevant.
Glad you like the piece!
The identifiable victim effect and drop in the bucket effect would apply in a similar fashion. However, while this may seem obvious, I want to be super-clear and add the caveat to remember to also apply the strategy of learning about your audience. For instance, advocacy targeting political officials would be quite different from advocacy targeting the public more broadly.
The approaches would be different. As an example, if you want to convince a politician to direct money toward a cause that suffers from the “drop in the bucket effect,” provide her/him with talking points and stories s/he can use to communicate this to her/his constituents, as opposed to trying to use stories to convince the actual politician.
Peter, if you have some additional perspectives on this topic, please jump in.
Great, thanks for your and Peter’s comments. My guess would also be that these things are more helpful for getting specific actions by people who already agree (e.g. getting people to become advocates) than persuasion since in the context of charitable giving most people are already persuaded it’s a good idea.
Yup, these things are helpful from moving people from agreeing in the abstract—thinking it’s a good idea—to taking active steps to help, namely donating their money, time, expertise, social capital, etc.
Thanks zdgroff :)
To my knowledge, all of these, bar matching, are good rules of thumb to work off for virtually all contexts where you are attempting to encourage prosocial (i.e., helping/other serving) behavior (i.e., volunteering, philanthropy, or activism on behalf of others) to the general public.
However, as Gleb points out, the most effective persuasion is very much about tailoring the appeal to the specific context, such as the people involved. For instance, if you were targeting people who were low in persuadability, high in persuasion knowledge, or need for cognition etc., then you might be better off going with something that focused on statistical/quantitative information rather than creating empathy by focusing on individual victims. That sort of target audience might see through this and be unaffected, or even dissuaded as they experience reactance at feeling manipulated.
Once I can free up some time, I intend to produce a lot more of persuasion guidelines, hopefully with Gleb and other collaborators (if I can keep/get them).