Unsiloed: How to Leverage Behavioral Science to Market Your Mission and Raise More
With Evelyn Gosnell
When it comes to making consumer choices, it’s well known that humans don’t always act rationally. In fact, as amply documented by economists, we very often actually act against our own best interests! This episode of What the Fundraising is about the science of giving. Behavioral science, that is! If you haven’t been using the powerful tools and research out there, Irrational Labs Managing Director Evelyn Gosnell is here to demonstrate all the ways in which nonprofits might be missing out. She shares a ton of fascinating research and practical tools for tackling common fundraising issues, like building organizational trust and recapturing lapsed contributors. Understanding the evolutionary conditioning and reflexive responses behind human decision-making is key – and a first step towards unlocking what motivates donors, who after all are also the everyday users of Lyft, Google and other platforms that Evelyn and her team advise.
Fundraising: The Behavioral Science
You’ll learn how to build specificity and concrete bite-sized goals into calls to action as well as why we fundraisers don’t always have to project perfection. Flaws are fine with constituents, says Evelyn, so long as we can demonstrate at least incremental progress. Host Mallory Erickson and Evelyn also explore how to design in-house pilot studies that pinpoint why some pitches appeal to our base of supporters while others do not. What are their norms, what resonates with their identity? Are you communicating something personal and immediate? There’s so much packed into this episode that you might need to listen twice.
- () About the mission of Irrational Labs and how it helps large organizations
- () The core principles behind behavioral economics.
- () The science behind human irrationality.
- () Warm-Glow Giving
- () Goal Gradient Effect
- () Creating goals through the lens of behavioral science.
- () The evolutionary roots of the human tendency to react to things that are personally relatable, identifiable and immediate.
- () About the impacts of “recency bias” and the tension between transactional versus marketing-oriented fundraising campaigns
- () Evelyn highlights an Irrational Labs case study
- () How to reconnect with lapsed donors:
- () About norms and keeping our nonprofits relevant even when they are displaced by other compelling world events.
- () Considering demographic and behavioral norms as possible leverage in targeting and building up donor identity online and elsewhere.
- () Behavioral science-based strategies for building donor identity
- () What is donor trust really about and how do we maintain it?
- () Thoughts on using behavioral science to challenge the Overhead Myth
- () Tools, research and other eye-opening info you won’t want to miss out on!
