Days after the 2016 election, the website for the American Civil Liberties Union crashed under the weight of donations it was receiving. About 120,000 contributions, worth more than $7.2 million, came pouring in that week, compared with only 354 donations for a total of $27,800 after Barack Obama won re-election in 2012.
Around the same time, the ragedonate.com website appeared. Taking advantage of the mood among the left-leaning, it provided quotes from Donald Trump with a donation button to a related charity. For example, a Trump quote about how immigrants are “killers and rapists” had a donation button to the nonprofit Border Angels, and a quote about limiting free-speech protections of the press was accompanied by a donation button for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Clearly, Trump’s election was a boon to some causes on the left, but was this a one-time phenomenon, considering how unexpected his win and how deeply it alarmed his opponents?
Or did the results of presidential elections routinely supercharge donations to nonprofits aligned with causes on the losing side?
To answer those questions, we conducted the first analysis of how contributions to nonprofits, especially those associated with a candidate’s causes, are affected over time by presidential election outcomes.
We examined donations to 37 nonprofits that were selected based on size, our ability to clearly classify them as either liberal or conservative, and a fiscal year that runs from January to December. We used their 990 informational tax forms for the past four presidential election years (2016, 2012, 2008, and 2004) and the years that preceded them (2015, 2011, 2007, and 2003) to see how contributions changed during an election year from the year before.
We found that nonprofits that were politically aligned with the losing presidential candidate received a drastic spike in giving compared with those aligned with the winner. When Donald Trump won in 2016, contributions to liberal nonprofits increased 155 percent, while contributions to conservative nonprofits decreased by nearly 9 percent.
When Obama won in 2012 and 2008, the opposite occurred. Liberal nonprofits saw an increase of only 4 percent in 2012 and a decrease of 11 percent in 2008, while conservative nonprofits saw increases of 12 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
And when George W. Bush won election in 2004, liberal nonprofits were back on top with 40.5 percent growth, compared with conservative nonprofits at only 4.3 percent.
Throughout the years examined, nonprofits associated with the opposite ideology of the presidential winner saw an average 57.55 percent bump in contributions while those with the same ideology of the presidential winner saw a 2.9 percent drop.
Negative Emotions Are Powerful Motivators
It’s important to clarify that while nonprofits whose ideology is consistent with that of the losing candidate historically see a spike in giving, nonprofits aligned with the winner do not necessarily see a decrease in giving. In the past four presidential elections, nonprofits aligned with the winning candidate saw increases to charitable giving half the time.
The more unexpected the outcome, the greater the gap between liberal and conservative contribution levels.
When the election outcome is expected, as in 2012, the disparity between liberal and conservative nonprofit contribution changes were minor (8 percent). When there was some uncertainty going into the election, as in 2008 and 2004, the disparity grew (34.5 percent and 36 percent, respectively).
What’s more, the disparity is most pronounced when the election outcome is the opposite of the predicted result, as in 2016 (163 percent).
While we did not predict this trend, it is consistent with research that has found negative emotions to be a powerful motivator to donate.
Negative emotions such as guilt, fear, anger, and sadness are powerful motivators, often acutely felt by those on the losing side of a presidential election, especially if the outcome was unexpected. Donors may feel guilty for not doing more to help their candidate win or for neglecting to vote.
These feelings are likely exacerbated by campaign rhetoric. In the 2016 campaign, for instance, commentators claimed that a Trump presidency would “set markets tumbling” and “cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine.”
Conversely, commentators on the other side warned that voting for Trump “may be our last shot … [to] save Western civilization.” And the candidates were no more reserved with their rhetoric. Trump said a Hillary Clinton presidency would lead “to the almost total destruction of our country as we know it.” Clinton said she was “the last thing standing between [us] and the apocalypse.”
Rage Donors
The sentence “This is the most important election of our lifetime” has probably been used to describe every presidential election in the past 120 years (and even some midterm elections).
Nonprofits that want to capitalize on negative emotions such as guilt must walk the fine line between persuasion, which is effective, and attempts at manipulation, which can turn would-be donors away.
Research shows that donors expect charity appeals to use guilt, and therefore they will tolerate highly emotional appeals before they consider them manipulative, especially from well-known or familiar organizations. The lesson for lesser-known nonprofits, then, is to establish credibility before appealing to guilt.
The flip side to politicians’ and pundits’ dire pre-election warnings are their exaggerated promises. Trump claimed he would restore “safety” on his first day in office. Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Lyndon Johnson promised to eradicate poverty. These exaggerations help explain the anemic giving to groups on the winning side of a presidential election: Supporters are lulled into a sense of security and contentment when their side wins, making the case for donations seem less urgent.
Before the research presented here, anyone interested in how election results affect nonprofit contributions had to rely on anecdotes in popular media. The phenomenon of “rage donating” got a lot of press after the 2016 election, usually attributed to the campaign’s extreme rhetoric and Trump’s unexpected victory. Both of these explanations are now supported by the empirical evidence in this research.
In addition to the flood of contributions to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood received nearly 80,000 donations within three days after the election, many “in honor of” Mike Pence. The availability of immediate online giving and the augmentation of traditional media with social-media coverage have likely contributed to the effects of rage donating.
Many of those rage donors were giving for the first time. The Anti-Defamation League was excited about the 50-fold giving increase after the election but perhaps even more excited that nearly 70 percent of the donations were from first-timers. After the 2016 election, the ACLU added 300,000 new members. An even higher number, however — 320,000 — made one-time, rather than recurring, donations. “Getting those donors to stick with you is really tough,” an ACLU official told the Chronicle of Philanthropy at the time.
Of course, it was not just first-time, grassroots donors who were motivated by the 2016 election result. The ACLU reports that it was persuading its wealthy contributors to give more and to fulfill their pledges sooner. Its success with these large donors was likely a function of not only the donors’ increased motivation to give but also the fundraisers being emboldened to ask for more.
Studies on negotiations have established that the more you ask for, the more you get.
It is clearly too early to make predictions about the 2020 presidential election, but the outcome will likely significantly affect the fundraising efforts of politically aligned nonprofits.
As in the last four presidential elections, a Democratic victory will likely spur an increase in donations to conservative nonprofits. Conversely, if Trump wins re-election, donations to liberal nonprofits will likely rise.
But as this research further demonstrates, an election’s effect on nonprofit giving also depends on whether the result is widely expected. Therefore, politically aligned nonprofits should make their plans taking into consideration not only the outcome of the 2020 election but also the polls leading up to it.
If Trump wins re-election in 2020, however, liberal nonprofits may not enjoy as extreme a spike in giving as they did after the 2016 election, as their donors’ feelings of guilt and fear melt into helplessness. This could help explain why donations to conservative nonprofits increased 23 percent in 2008, when Obama was elected to his first term but increased by only 12 percent when he won reelection in 2012.
None of these findings will prompt liberal nonprofits to root for Trump in 2020. After all, there is more at stake in an election than just fundraising consequences. However, nonprofits should factor what we learned into their budget plans for 2020 and beyond.
Michael Conklin is a professor of business law at Angelo State University in Texas, where Renee Foshee is an assistant professor of accounting.
