What Motivates Donor to Support Your Nonprofit ?

[MSONGA The Consultant]

Motivations for donors vary as widely as there are donors. As you begin to develop your appeals, you’ll want to understand why donors give so you can craft an appeal that speaks to the primary motivations of your donor audience.
Who Donates? Before proceeding to know what motivates a donor to support your organization, a nonprofit should first know who donates. A recent survey conducted by the Independent Center and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, shows that donors share a number of characteristics when it comes to donation, some of their data can be illustrated as follow;

• Gender. Males give a higher average amount than females
• Age. The average amount of fund donated increase as the age of a person increase.
• Education. Giving increase as the level of education increase.
• Employment. Employed people tend to donate more than unemployed.

What do these data mean to a nonprofit? they provide variety insights to nonprofit when it designs fundraising appeals. What motivates these people to donate to your organization? The question is very important to think about, knowing donor’s motivation to support, helps a fundraiser to know what mechanism/strategy should be used to stimulate a particular donor to give away his/her something of value, it is due to the fact most individuals will not give unless they are asked to do so. What motivates them to support your nonprofit can be;

• Recognition: Donor may be motivated by the recognition that they will get after supporting your organization. To cultivate a Donor by this motive, your nonprofit should have a clear strategies and infrastructures for support recognition.
• Social Justice. When people witness suffering, their belief in a just world becomes threatened, therefore they will experience the emotion of sadness that will motivate them to make a donation.
• In memorian: Some donors give in memory of a friend or loved one. They treat donation as the celebration of their friend’s, or loved ones’ life. In most cases, gift motivated by in memorian tend to be personal and feelings expression.
• The economist James Andreoni (2001) argued that, giving to nonprofit can also be motivated by Public Good Theory. James Andreoni postulates that people will support the nonprofit because they recognize that society as a whole will benefit from the donation. They are thus being rational because as a member of that society they too will derive benefit from the donation.
• Tax Relief. In the country like United States, tax relief for giving is considered an important motive for nonprofit giving.
• Empathy. Some people are motivated to donate when imaging how the beneficiaries must feel when attacked by a calamity/problem

OMAR MSONGA
CONSULTANT
Project Management, Strategy, Fundraising & Training
Call: +255 719 518 367
Email: omarmsonga8@gmail.com
DAR ES SALAAM
TANZANIA