A Different Angle: Framing Charitable Giving As A Gift

As of 2020, there were 1.54 million registered non-profits in the U.S. alone. On average, the top 100 of these organizations spend $0.11 to raise $1.00 in support of their respective causes. But what if non-profits could increase the effectiveness of their fundraising appeals with a simple wording change?

Charities often use the terms “gift” and “donation” synonymously. Yet, there’s a subtle difference between the two. Donation framing can reinforce a sense of distance between donor and recipient, especially when those donors are anonymous. Gift framing, however, implies something personal. In a social context, giving a gift suggests a more intimate relationship than making a donation. Could this wording encourage donors to give more?

To test whether framing donations as gifts inspires donors to contribute greater amounts to their charities of choice, researchers carried out a series of studies.

Study 1

Study 1 was an online experiment with 456 European residents. Participants were informed of a campaign to send clothing to women in Sub-Saharan Africa. They were presented with an ad using donation-framing words, gift-framing words, or a mix of both and indicated their intention to contribute to the campaign.

Study 2

Study 2 was a field experiment with 161 undergraduate students from Hong Kong. Participants were given a small amount of money and an envelope labeled either “donation” or “gift.” They were allowed to leave as much of the money as they wanted in the envelope to support a charity helping children living in poverty.

Study 3

Study 3 also took place in person and involved 202 employees of a Chinese company. The researchers organized an event aimed at providing used books to poor village students. The employees were sent an internal email titled either “a gift to village students” or “a donation to village students.” The company then collected and delivered the books to a rural primary school.

Study 4

For the fourth study, 299 U.S. residents took part in an online experiment. Participants were shown ads for a charity campaign supporting patients with breast cancer. One ad featured donation-related wording, while the other used gift-related wording. Viewers of both ads received a $0.20 bonus (on top of the survey platform’s usual payment for participating) and indicated how much of the bonus they wanted to give away.

Study 5

Study 5, another online experiment, involved 606 U.S. residents. Participants reported which state they lived in before being shown an ad in support of patients with Alzheimer’s. The ad contained either donation-related or gift-related words. They were then told that the patients helped by the campaign lived either in the same state or somewhere else in the country. As in Study 4, participants indicated how much of their $0.20 bonus they wanted to give away.

Study 6

The sixth study was an online experiment with 601 U.S. residents. Participants were shown a campaign supporting Sub-Saharan Africans. The ad used either donation-related or gift-related wording. As in Studies 4 and 5, participants indicated how much of their $0.20 bonus they wanted to give away. They also rated their need for status on a seven-point scale.

Across all studies, framing a contribution as a gift yielded greater results. In Study 2, participants in the gift-framing condition gave 25% more than those in the donation-framing condition. In Studies 4 and 6, the difference was 23% and 24%, respectively. Interestingly, though, when the terms “donation” and “gift” were used together in the same appeal in Study 1, the positive effect of gift framing was weakened.

When non-monetary items were contributed, gift framing proved an even greater success. For Study 3, in which participants were asked to donate secondhand books to disadvantaged students, those in the gift-framing condition gave 94% more books than those in the donation-framing condition.

Gift framing was more effective for participants who were physically distant from the charity. In Study 5, those who lived further away contributed a greater amount (about 29% more) in the gift-framing condition than in the donation-framing condition. However, this difference disappeared when participants were closer in proximity to the charity.

The need for status also had an effect on whether the framing was effective. In Study 6, those with a low need for status contributed more in the gift-framing condition, while framing made little difference for those who expressed a high need for it.

Although the study included people from multiple cultures, it should be noted that social norms regarding gift giving can be much different in North America, Europe, and Asia. Thus, the researchers suggest that future work should take a closer look at gift giving in relation to cultural norms. They also recommend investigating where gift-framing terminology should be used. In this study, donation and gift wording appeared throughout the ads, whereas in the real world, these words can appear not only in fundraising appeals but also in descriptions of the charity’s work.

Another important limitation to consider is that the researchers only looked at one-time contributions from study participants. It’s unclear whether continuously framing donations as gifts could weaken the possibility of repeat contributions.

Because the researchers didn’t include animal advocacy organizations in the study, there’s no data proving that framing donations as gifts will increase contributions to animal charities specifically. However, as the findings revealed that gift framing proved highly successful across a variety of cause areas, it’s more than fair to assume that gift framing could benefit animal advocacy as well. Thus, if they haven’t already shifted their messaging, advocates have little to lose in taking a more gift-centric approach to their fundraising appeals.