Premiums inspire the wrong emotions in your donors →

Roger Craver points to a new study suggesting that premiums may not lift donations:

In a paper appearing in the Journal of Economic Psychology, “The counterintuitive effects of thank-you gifts on charitable giving”, two Yale University behavioral scientists describe a series of experiments showing that, contrary to expectations, rewarding contributors cuts donations in most circumstances.

The Yale researchers who conducted the study, George Newman and Jeremy Shen, found that the most likely reason for the negative effect on contributions was “crowding out”. In essence, the prospect of receiving a gift activated a feeling of selfishness which, in turn, reduced altruism and consequently cut the average donation.

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