Many of us assume donors make careful, considered decisions about how much to give and why. In reality, our brains rely on mental shortcuts far more often than we realise.
At Fundraising Convention 2026, Meredith Niles, co-editor of a book on decision science and fundraising and former Executive Director of Fundraising and Engagement at Marie Curie, joined Marina Jones, Executive Director of Development and Public Affairs at English National Opera, came together to share what decision science tells us about donor behaviour, and how fundraisers can use it without spending a penny.
Decision science draws together psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics to explain why people behave the way they do, especially when they are not thinking things through carefully.
Meredith and Marina shared what they called their 8¾ small decisions - a set of low cost, high impact shifts that any fundraiser can try.
Here are 8 ¾ takeaways every fundraiser can use…
Small, unconscious cues shape decisions more than we like to admit. When a National Trust donation box had a pound coin sticker added, people gave larger coins simply because they had been shown what was expected.
Marina used the same principle at English National Opera, testing different starting figures on a basket donation ask. Raising the first number people saw from £1 to £5, then £10, lifted the average gift each time, without reducing the proportion of people who gave.
It is worth noting the effect had limits. Pushing the anchor too high, to £25, saw average gifts fall again. The lesson is to test steadily rather than assume higher is always better.
Donors are emotional decision makers, not purely rational ones, and appeals that lead with feeling tend to outperform those that lead with facts.
Behavioural psychologist Robert Cialdini's well known Paris street experiment found people were more helpful after simply hearing the word love, and later studies found heart shaped tip jars and donation boxes increased giving.
Marina's own Love ENO campaign, and a heart placed beside a call to action on BookTrust's site, use the same principle. Simple emotional cues, used honestly, can do a great deal of work.
Psychologist Paul Slovic's well documented research on giving found that people donated more than twice as much when told a story about a single named child they could help than when asked to help millions of children facing the same hardship.
Adding statistics to the story of one child reduced giving further still. The explanation is that donors can picture helping one person, but a crisis affecting millions feels too large to make a dent in.
Give your donor a problem sized so they can imagine solving it, and think carefully about who tells the story, since the same words carry different weight depending on who says them.
When people are unsure what to do, they look to others. Charity website donation sliders that show what most people give, of the kind previously used by Macmillan and CARE, work on this basis. The effect is well evidenced in legacy giving too.
Research by the Behavioural Insights Team and the University of Bristol found that when solicitors told clients that many people choose to leave a gift to charity in their will, the number who did so roughly doubled compared with simply being asked, and the value of those gifts rose considerably further still.
The more specific and relevant the comparison group, the stronger the effect, so a message tailored to a donor's own community or peer group tends to work better than a generic one.
We instinctively look where other eyes are looking, and a well-known nappy advert redirected attention to its call to action simply by changing the direction the baby's eyes were looking.
In an office coffee point, a photograph of eyes above the honesty box increased contributions compared with a photograph of flowers.
Marina's Royal Opera House campaign used a dancer looking and pointing towards the donation ask, and Liverpool's Bluecoat Gallery uses its mascot's gaze to draw visitors towards its collection box, which was part of the world’s largest arts fundraising experiment.
If a photograph appears in your appeal, donors' eyes will follow it whether you have planned for that or not, so it is worth being deliberate about where it leads them.
A sense of scarcity, whether that is a ticking clock or a matched funding deadline, reliably drives action, which is part of why campaigns like the Big Give see a surge of donations in their final hours.
The same principle can be built into individual appeals through countdown timers or match moments. Used well it creates helpful momentum, used too often, it risks losing its power, so it is best kept for genuine deadlines.
Reciprocity can be a powerful motivator of generosity. In fact, giving and receiving gifts activate the same reward pathways in the brain, which is why offering a small token, such as a museum's free gift token or a keepsake Christmas ornament, tends to increase what people go on to give in return.
Offering donors an action that is easy to say yes to – like signing a petition or making a small initial gift – and then reminding them of this prior action creates a sense of commitment. Friends of the Earth used this well, sending wildflower seeds before later inviting recipients to become regular donors, reminding them of an action they had already taken that was consistent with the identity of someone who cares about bees. Naming that identity, in the way Médecins Sans Frontières calls its regular givers field partners, can strengthen the effect further.
Slightly unusual numbers catch attention precisely because they break an expected pattern. At the English National Opera, Marina's Marriage of Figaro campaign was built around the opera's Köchel catalogue number of 492 and saw a quarter of gifts come in as variations on that figure. A number with a genuine connection to your cause gives donors an extra reason to feel their gift belongs to them.
Asked directly whether these prompts always have to be true, Meredith was unambiguous - they do. You can choose the most relevant truthful comparison for a particular donor, for example the average gift among supporters in their own city rather than the national figure, but inventing a statistic or misrepresenting the facts is never acceptable.
Public trust matters, and ethical fundraising is at the heart of everything the sector does. Decision science offers real, low-cost ways to improve fundraising results, but only when it is applied honestly and tested with care, rather than used to manipulate or mislead.
Building fundraisers' confidence and skill in this area also supports a wider goal of helping people start, grow and stay in fundraising, through good quality, practical learning that they can put to use straight away, whatever the size of their organisation or team.
(Please note that the video below shows you the slides from the session with the audio recorded from the speakers)
AI disclosure statement - This article was created using the support of AI, based on the transcript from the session recording. It has been reviewed, edited and approved by a member of CIOF staff and the speakers mentioned in this article.
