The Theory
A fancy donor solicitation can make a nonprofit look good, but it’s possible to look too good: Donors may be turned off if they think a mailing cost a lot to produce.
Nonprofits obsess over which words to use to get their message across. But too often, the design of their marketing materials is just an afterthought, according to Claudia Townsend, a marketing professor at the University of Miami.
“Donors look for cues to evaluate a nonprofit,” she says. “Bad design suggests an organization is unprofessional, that they don’t know what they’re doing. Donors are going to hold that against you.”
The key, according to Ms. Townsend, is to make letters and invitations to prospective donors look sharp while avoiding expensive touches, like gold-embossed type and heavy card stock.
The Test
Ms. Townsend sent out a series of gala invitations to a donor list provided by Communities in Schools, a nonprofit that helps at-risk students perform better academically. Some invitations had a low-quality look. A second variation featured elegant designs, stylish typefaces, and consistent visual features but did not use costly production materials. The invitations in a third set were well-designed and had a deluxe, expensive feel.
Results
Donors snubbed the fanciest invitations. They did, however, respond well to mailings that mimicked a high-end look without costly add-ons. The average contribution in response to those invites was $88, more than four times the size of gifts given in response to the more lavish solicitations.
Digging Deeper
In a laboratory follow-up to her field test, Ms. Townsend found that potential donors were very savvy when it came to sussing out which invitations cost a lot to make. While donors trusted well-designed solicitations, they viewed expensive invitations as wasteful.
Charities, she said, should take extra care in the graphic design and construction of their mailings. “You can make it look good without spending money, and donors will respond,” she says.— Alex Daniels
Find It
“The Price of Beauty: Differential Effects of Design Elements With and Without Cost Implications in Nonprofit Donor Solicitations,” by Claudia Townsend, is slated for the December 2017 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.
