How To Create A Successful Charity Fundraising Campaign With Behavioural Science

TL;DR? Key Components Of Fundraising Campaigns That Get Results Using Behavioural Science

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Whether you’re fundraising online, via direct mail or in person, psychology really matters. 

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• Focus on a single, identified person to highlight your cause

• Feature a photo of them in all your marketing materials

• Where possible, highlight how they bear little or no responsibility for their plight

• Be careful when talking about the number of people needing support 

• Include specific donation values in requests, but not your total goal

• Identify and address capability and opportunity barriers 

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Key Obstacles To Fundraising

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Raising money in the form of donations is far from easy.

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Competition: There are more than 170,000 charities in the UK, all making appeals for donations. At the same time, 5.6 million private sector businesses are constantly encouraging the same audiences to spend their money on goods and services

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The Cost-of-Living: “Charity begins at home” it’s often said. With everything from food to energy costing more, people have less disposable income available to them

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Low Consumer Confidence: People are persistently concerned about the state of the economy and the threat of job losses. This reduces discretionary spending (which includes charitable giving) and encourages precautionary saving

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Lack of Cause Connection: Not everyone will empathise with a given charitable cause, which means the true size of Inidividual Giving audiences is always going to be smaller than imagined

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Together, these affect people’s ability and willigness to donate. 

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Applying COM-B Thinking To Your Donation Campaigns

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There’s a model of behavioural change known as COM-B which tells us that in order to get people to change their behaviour - either by stopping something they already do, or starting something new - they must have the Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation to do do.

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When designing any kind of fundraising campaign, it’s important to identify and address any potential barriers to adopting the behaviour you want - which is to donate money.

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Start By Addressing People’s Motivation For Individual Giving When Designing Charity Fundraising Campaigns

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Giving people reason to want to help is the best place to start, because if you can establish this, it’s more likely that they’ll seek to overcome capability and opportunity barriers themselves, or at least be receptive to your attempts to lower or remove them.

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According to research, the key lies in something known as the ‘Identified Victim Effect’ or IVE.

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Put simply, potential donors are more likely to feel an emotional connection to a real person with a name and photograph, that is emblematic of the cause you’re fundraising for, than they are when presented with a cause framed around an unidentified individual or, worse still, a group consisting of many unidentified individuals.

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For instance an appeal with messaging such as “This is five year old Charlie. He has a brain tumour. Can you give £10 to help make him more comfortable as he endures treatment?” and that’s accompanied by photos of Charlie will be much more impactful than “Hopsitals are full of children like these receiving treatment for brain tumours. Can you give £10 to help make them more comfortable?” where the accompanying photos show either an unnamed child or a photo of several children in a hospital ward.

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Research also indicates that the emotional pull is stronger when the victim is viewed as having little or no personal responsibility for their plight. Where they do or might, it’s important to find a way of legitimately and authentically minimising this responsibility to focus on factors beyond the control of the individual.

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Even though highlighting the scale of the problem instinctively feels important, it’s best as a secondary message. IVE research tell us that the effect is strongest when your donation ‘ask’ is framed around a single identified ‘victim’, but fades when extended to two identified victims. Beyond two, it collapses altogether, as victims come to be seen less as people and more as statistics. For this reason, an appeal framed around messaging such as “420 children in the UK are diagnosed with a brain tumour every year in the UK. Can you give £10 to help make them more comfortable as they endure treatment?” is unlikely to resonate and persuade people to help.

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A meta analysis of IVE research studies also found that when potential donors are presented with an overall fundraising goal, they’re less likely to give. It’s not clear why, but it’s likely that when confronted by a large target, it may trigger the sense that any donation they can afford to make will be so trivial, and will make so little difference, that it’s just not worth donating. Instead, the research suggests potential donors respond more favourably when the individual donation value is featured. So, instead of “Help us raise £4,200 to make treatment more comfortable for all the children that will be diagnosed with brain tumours this year” a better approach would be “Can you give £10 to help Charlie as he goes through cancer treatment?” 

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By adopting approaches grounded in what’s known about the ‘Individual Victim Effect’, your charity can increase its chances of motivating people to give.

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Addressing Capability and Opportunity Barriers To Individual Giving

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If you’ve done enough to connect potential donors to your cause in order to motivate them to help, you need to ensure this willingness to donate translates into actually giving by making it as easy as possible.

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Potential Capability Barriers To Charitable Giving

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Lack of knowledge about how to give:

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‍Some people don’t know the mechanics: whether donations are one-off or recurring, how Gift Aid works, or if payroll giving is possible.

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Solution: Make instructions clear, simple, and visible at the point of ask. Use plain language, FAQs, and one-click donation options.

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Uncertainty about impact

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Donors may not feel capable of making a difference if they don’t understand what their contribution achieves.

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Solution: Break down impact into tangible examples (“£10 feeds a family for a day”) and share donor stories or transparent reporting.

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Digital/financial literacy gaps

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Not everyone is comfortable with online forms, QR codes, or contactless giving tech.

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Solution: Offer multiple donation methods (online, text, cash buckets, direct debit forms) and test them with different donor groups.

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Potential Opportunity Barriers To Charitable Giving

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Friction in the donation journey

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Long forms, hidden fees, or requiring account creation can cause donors to drop off.

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Solution: Optimise for speed - mobile-first, minimal fields, autofill, and trusted payment platforms like PayPal/Apple Pay.

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Lack of social cues/norms

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People are more likely to give when they see others doing so, but many appeals happen in isolation (e.g., private online donations).

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Solution: Use social proof: donor walls, live progress bars, or “X others donated this week.” Encourage peer-to-peer fundraising to build visible giving behaviour.

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Limited access to giving opportunities

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Not all donors encounter a giving moment at the right time or place.

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Solution: Take the ask to where donors already are - integrated into events, social media, email, and even retail partnerships.

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Lack of disposable income

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If someone simply doesn’t have the money, the external conditions block the behaviour, regardless of their motivation.

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Solution: Offer low-barrier giving options (e.g. £2/month microdonations, round-up-at-checkout, or “give time/skills instead of money”). Highlight collective impact (small gifts adding up, showing even modest donations matter). Provide non-financial support pathways (volunteering, sharing campaigns) so people stay engaged even if they can’t give cash.

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Assuming you’ve done enough to motivate giving, by lowering or removing capability and opportunity barriers, you vastly improve your chances of success.

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Key Takeaways: A Behavioural Science Approach To Charity Fundraising Campaigns

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• Driving Individual Giving among potential donor audiences isn’t always easy.

• Challenges include competition for discretionary spend, the escalating cost-of-living, low consumer confidence that deters giving, and a lack of connection to a given cause

• Your charity can boost its chances of success by incorporating behavioural science into its fundraising campaigns and activities 

• The COM-B model of behaviour change is a very useful tool with which to design your charity’s fundraising campaigns. Remember that a behaviour (that involves taking action of some sort) differs from an attitude (which is more about perception)

• Start by addressing motivation. Use what’s known about the so-called ‘Individual Victim Effect’ or IVE to communicate in a way that’s more likely to invoke an emotional response in potential donors by constructing each campaign around a single, named individual who personifies your cause, rather than tying your fundraisers to multiple individuals or large groups of affected individuals, and be sure to feature photos of them to bring them and their plight to life. Be wary of focusing on the scale of the problem your charity exists to fix, and avoid donation requests that centre on your overall fundraising target

• Even when you’ve done enough to motivate people so that they want to and are willing to donate, it’s important to make sure they can. That means identifying and either lowering or removing potential capability and opportunity barriers

• If you can successfully motivate people to give, and then make it easy for them to do so, you’ll significantly enhance your fundraising results

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