Maximising the impact of online fundraising

Over the past three years researchers at University of Bristol, University of Warwick and McMaster University have developed a productive research collaboration with Justgiving. The main area of work has been the administration of a large scale survey to more than one million of Justgiving's users (primarily fundraisers and sponsors). The researchers have also explored the research potential of a small sample of Justgiving's transactional data, using it to analyse peer effects in giving. The survey provided a wealth of information on individuals' characteristics and motivations, but has limited information on fundraisers' and sponsors' actual behaviour. The transactional data, by contrast, has detailed information on fundraising and donations, but little information on the individuals themselves.

The aim of this project is to match transactional data provided by Justgiving to the survey respondents in order to create a uniquely rich dataset that combines information on individual characteristics and motivations AND actual fundraising and donations. This will allow us to develop a richer understanding of online fundraising behaviour and to test hypotheses about how individual characteristics and motivations shape giving. The project will involve preparing and cleaning the data and undertaking some descriptive analysis that will shed light on how people engage in different ways with giving on Justgiving and what determines fundraising success/ levels of sponsorship.

The immediate research questions that can be addressed using these data have been developed with Justgiving to help give them greater insights into their business. As the descriptive work progresses, we will run a one-day workshop with Justgiving to discuss emerging research findings, to allow them to provide insights from their experience and from complementary, qualitative focus-group research and to develop ideas about potential mechanisms that could further enhance online fundraising that could easily be tested via online experiments.

At the end of the project we will organise a seminar jointly with Justgiving in order to disseminate the key findings more widely. We ran a similar event in February 2012 that attracted academics, people from within charities and policy-makers both as speakers and participants. This was very well-received and following the seminar, Justgiving were keen to invite a larger number of their client charities to a similar event.

Who will benefit from this project - and how will they benefit?

In the short-term and the longer-term, Justgiving - and their charity clients - will gain a greater understanding of the behaviour of fundraisers and sponsors which will help to maximise the impact of online fundraising for their charity clients and for individual fundraisers. This will help them to improve their online fundraising business.

Through disseminating the findings more widely (to the sector), the project will benefit other charities and sector bodies who will gain insights into donor behaviour. Feedback from the last workshop indicated that charities typically did not have access to these kind of models and analysis of donor behaviour and appreciated academic research that was made accessible to users. These kind of insights from research can be useful in shaping fundraising strategies.

In the longer term, the project and particularly the findings from any experiments that lead on from the research will benefit policy-makers who are keen to raise the level of giving and will be able to draw lessons on what might work.

In the longer term the project will also benefit the academic community by adding to the evidence base on what motivates donors and what influences their behaviour.