Increasing the average gift in crowdfunding
File under: Nudging upwards
How to boost the average gift in a crowdfund campaign
(well, maybe)
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I didn't know Ruth "Diamond" Madsen. But loads of other caring people did, and they admired her. She'd been homeless herself, got housed, helped so many others. I learned this about her from a well-told email I happened to get from a local charity. They were raising money for her funeral expenses, through a crowdfunding platform called Ever Loved.
So I gave.
My little experiment
The campaign to cover Ruth "Diamond's" funeral expenses attracted an explosion of small gifts. The largest was $100.
I gave $150 instead, in memory of Simone Joyaux.
It was the highest donation to the campaign until that time ... but not TOO much higher. It needed to remain affordable, an easy-enough stretch for certain wallets.
I wasn't trying to be the biggest contributor. That was not the point. I just wanted to see if I could maybe nudge the average-gift amount up a bit by publicly spending a little more.
Ever Loved made the experiment easy. The campaign for Ruth Madsen's funeral listed what each person gave, on which day, at what time, by name (or anonymous). As you can see from the gift board below, after my $150 donation, a few later gifts were bigger: $250, $250, $500.
It was crude research without a lick of scientific validity. On the other hand....
What happened?
Before my $150 contribution, the gift average had been $81.
After my $150 donation, the gift average to Diamond's campaign jumped to $166.
The voice in your head says: I don't know what I should give, so I'll give what other people are giving, if I know what that is. It's also called "social proof," a term coined by psychologist Robert Cialdini.
This campaign for funeral expenses easily surpassed its $4,000 goal. Rest in peace, Ruth. I wish I'd known ye. And thank you for this chance to experiment with average gift amounts! Blessings....
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