What makes people give?

Work
At 1:30 am this morning over 60,000 people were dead or missing in Burma (or Myanmar depending on your politics) and several ‘Blue Northers’ were working furiously to get a fundraising piece in the mail for World Vision. Unlike many agencies we try not to burn the midnight oil any more than absolutely necessary but when a world emergency happens that all changes.
It got me thinking about what makes people give?
It really comes down to two things—first they’ve got to care, and second they need to feel like their gift or donation can make a difference.
People can care for natural reasons like proximity. When 9/11 happened, everyone in North America cared for natural reasons and the money poured in. Other more distant causes also have natural connections like providing clean water and food to those who don’t have it—everyone on earth understands the need for these things and can relate personally to the problem. If the connections aren’t quite as obvious people need to be made to care. The media is the biggest influence here. If the media picks up the story and sustains its emphasis people will begin to care and the money will follow. Before we got to work on the Burma piece there were intense discussions about whether the American primaries and other local news stories were going to steal the media spotlight away from the cyclone crisis. If that were indeed the case it didn’t make sense to spend the money to mail a fundraising piece because it wouldn’t bring in the cash. There are horrible situations happening all over the world but for the most part the media determines which ones people care about and therefore which ones get addressed.
The second point was that people need to feel like they can make a difference. In order to make this happen a big problem needs to be broken down into much smaller chunks. People want to know in the face of a huge and overwhelming need what their $50 is going to do. A successful appeal will break this down for them and explain it. It’s a big problem but you can make a difference.
While it would be naïve to suggest we are not dependent on the media and outside influences to drive a successful fundraising campaign we can also help people to care and show them what their money is doing through intensely personalized communications—we call it White Page Marketing ™. By analysing data and building each person’s piece uniquely from a white page we can take a huge, vague, distant problem and make it real and close. We can help people connect their lives to the disaster through their previous behaviour. We can encourage them to remember other times that they cared. We can also make explicit references to their gift and how it will make a difference. A strong rhetorical argument is much more powerful on a 1:1 basis than it is on a mass, generic basis.
‘I give because I care’ is a nice notion. The real question is, however, what makes you care? And as a marketer can I play a role in making that happen?

Life
I watched a GREAT ballgame last night.
I took time out of the drama to watch my 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter play their first ever T-ball game, yes they are on the same team. Did they win? I don’t know, nobody kept score.
Here are a few of my highlights:
* My son, after multiple attempts to connect with the ball (even hitting it off a tee is hard for the young ones) drilled one right up the middle, instead of running to first he threw down his bat and ran full out, after the ball that a pack of other kids were also chasing. At another point he ran off the field and abandoned his post at first base because he wanted me to tie his shoe.

*My daughter hit a good one and made it to first. At that point she figured that she’d run enough, the next few batters ran right past her and on to second because she wasn’t going anywhere.

It felt odd, in the midst of the storm and thinking about the horrible circumstances on the other side of the world, in Cambridge it was a clear sunny night and the only worries the kids at the ballpark had were connecting with that darn ball and figuring out which was first base.