When the people a nonprofit serves tell their own story to donors, does it make a difference? A fascinating experiment put that question to the test. Jess Crombie and David Girling, researchers from the University of the Arts London and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, worked with staff and volunteers at Amref Health Africa — a nonprofit that aims to boost access to health care across the African continent — to run a head-to-head experiment that mailed two different fundraising appeals to past donors in the United Kingdom in July 2021.
The result? The appeal created by community health volunteers raised more money than one created by fundraisers, though the money came from fewer donors. Recipients of the community health volunteers’ appeal made higher average gifts than those who received the fundraiser-created appeal — contributing an average of roughly $99.40 and $72.36, respectively. Of the 898 previous donors who received the volunteers’ appeal, 88 made contributions, while 110 of the 896 previous donors who received the fundraiser-created appeal gave.
The difference in the amount they contributed stood out to Crombie. Based on her experience as a nonprofit fundraiser, communicator, and researcher, she says she’s long suspected appeals that build direct ties between a nonprofit’s clients and its donors could be game changing. “That would potentially mean deeper engagement and therefore more generous giving,” she hypothesizes.
Communicators and fundraisers at nonprofits understand that traditional messages too often portray clients only as needy and unable to support themselves, Crombie says.
“What they kept saying to me over and over again was, ‘The big rub is between the need to raise money and the desire to do responsible storytelling, and we just can’t find that sweet spot,’” she recalls.
Crombie and Girling thought there was a way to raise money with appeals that emphasized clients’ humanity, not just their need. But they had trouble recruiting organizations to test their theory. “No one was prepared to put their fundraising dollar actually on the line,” Crombie says.
Local Photographers
That changed in 2019, when Girling sat down for a coffee with Rachel Erskine, communications manager at Amref’s U.K. office. Girling outlined how he hoped to further his research through a head-to-head experiment, and Erskine brought the idea to her boss, global communications director Lizz Ntonjira.
Prior to this research, Girling had reviewed international-aid organizations’ fundraising messages with focus groups of people living in communities aided by such nonprofits. Crombie had previously explored how subjects of Save the Children’s appeals felt about their representation. Both researchers independently found that people represented or aided by international nonprofits wanted to shape how their story was told.
Meanwhile, Amref had been tweaking its approach to fundraising appeals. Increasingly, its communications started spotlighting first-person testimonials and emphasizing how community members were leading Amref-funded public-health efforts. The charity also sought out local photographers to document its programmatic work, instead of flying in a photographer who was unfamiliar with the region.
“It doesn’t sound like very much, but I think it’s not necessarily typical of INGO fundraising appeals,” Erskine says, using a shorthand for international nongovernmental organizations. She says Girling’s pitch to advance his research felt like the next step in a journey the charity had already begun.
Still, participating in the experiment was a risk. There was a chance the test appeal would flop and donors wouldn’t give. Crombie and Girling also explained that their report on the experiment might include critiques of how Amref works. Nevertheless, the charity agreed to participate — as long as the experiment took place in the summer, rather than at the end of the year, when most donors are primed to give.
Unexpected Subject
While Amref fundraisers hammered out their summer appeal as usual, media and external-relations officer Maureen Cherongis led the creation of the test appeal from the charity’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Her team brainstormed how best to present an authentic picture of the community it serves. “The first thing that clicked in our mind was the community health worker,” she says.
These are volunteers from the communities where Amref runs health clinics. In visits to community members at home, health volunteers take blood pressure readings, check temperatures, and provide other basic health assessments. They also help people in need get to the local clinic. Four of the volunteers agreed to take part in the experiment.
Cherongis organized training for the health volunteers in photography, storytelling, and design. Each health volunteer received a camera to take on his or her rounds and created an appeal — in just a week. The volunteers then voted on which appeal would go head-to-head with the one designed by Amref’s fundraisers, which focused on improving access to Covid-19 vaccines.
The health volunteers surprised researchers and Amref staff by picking an appeal that focused not on Covid-19 but on the plight of elderly people in Kibera, a sprawling, impoverished community on the outskirts of Nairobi.
“When was the last time you paid a visit to an elderly person in your community?” health volunteer Patrick Malachi asks donors in his direct, conversational appeal. “As community members we have a role to play as humans in helping these people live a dignified life.”
The appeal includes photographs Malachi took of elderly Kibera residents whom he supports and explains the difficulty they face in accessing health care and navigating their neighborhoods. It concludes by asking donors to contribute to Amref’s efforts to ease those burdens. “I know this can be achieved with the support of the communities, health facilities and well wishers who want to see change,” Malachi writes.
Of the 88 people who donated in response to Malachi’s letter, just seven completed a questionnaire Amref included in its thank-you note for their gift. Although the survey is far from representative, it does shed some light on why the appeal motivated them to donate. Seventy-one percent of respondents noted that Malachi’s appeal was unique from others they’d received, and 83 percent said they connected with it emotionally.
Erskine says donors’ response to this head-to-head experiment proves that nonprofits can motivate donors to give with new narratives that show their clients as full human beings. “If Amref supporters in the U.K. are able to respond like this to this type of storytelling, then I think it shows that people are ready for a change — not just the NGOs, but our supporters, too,” Erskine says. “We just need to kind of give them the opportunity to respond to something that’s different.”
‘The Real Story’
In interviews after the experiment concluded, community health volunteers emphasized how meaningful it was to tell donors about their work in their own words and through images they themselves took.
“They talked about the fact that they live in Kibera, which is sort of an overly photographed and filmed place,” Crombie says. “NGOs will send celebrity trips there because it’s easy to access and dramatic to look at.”
It was frustrating, the health volunteers said, to have their photographs taken so often without their consent. Creating fundraising appeals for this experiment was a chance for them to reclaim control over how their hometown was presented to outsiders. “Everyone articulated in their own different ways how important it was for them to be able to tell what they all called ‘the real story,’ in their own words,” Crombie says.
Cherongis calls the experiment an exercise in “decolonizing storytelling,” or letting the subjects of the appeal direct its narrative and focus. It’s a real shift from how fundraising appeals are typically crafted, but Cherongis says the experiment underscored the value of collaborative storytelling.
Erskine says the experiment offers broad lessons for charities. “We’re not saying that you should replicate this exact model because it’s quite a big undertaking,” she says. “It’s more about thinking, ‘What are the small changes that you can make to center people and recognize their rights and their dignity and their agency?’”
What’s more, she says, the experiment proved that Amref’s work to more ethically represent the people it serves is valuable and urgent. Later this year, the charity will roll out inserts in magazines and newspapers to attract new donors to its mission. The campaign will draw on the lessons learned from the experiment, Erskine says, by explaining Amref’s mission from the perspective of the people it serves.
