What to Ask For: The Best First Gift Amount to Convert Non-Donors

Introduction

Today, I’m writing to give you a robust look at one of the most impactful experiments (and one of my most favorite) that I ran in the past 5 years.

The learning from this experiment materially changed the way that I ran programs for clients from that point forward.

I want to share what I learned with you so that you can inspire more of your audience to be as generous as they can be with your mission.

This experiment is about soliciting first time gifts from non-donors (or just regular old email subscribers) for a first-time gift.

My client had a large email file with nearly a million petition signers on their email list overall, the vast majority of which had never given a donation to the organization before.

​​While this experiment was conducted with a file of petition signers, the insights apply broadly to any non-donor acquisition file: email subscribers, advocacy lists, newsletter readers, event attendees, or any audience that has opted-in but not yet given.

Their team had a special project that was time-sensitive and they needed to raise $40,000 quickly to capitalize on the opportunity.

The client and I discussed various ways we could ask these donors to contribute — and ultimately, we landed on running this experiment to learn what would drive the most gifts and raise the most money overall.

Our goals were (in order):

1. Raise $40,000 for the special project.
2. Learn how to ask non-donors to give their first gift.
3. Learn what amount we asked for would drive the largest response rates from non-donors.
4. Learn whether or not it was a good idea to ask non-donors for $100 for their first gift amount.

Experiment Design

We decided to carve the email file into 5 equally sized groups and ask them in different ways and for different amounts.

The donation page copy and the rest of the email was identical between all 5 segments, but what really mattered was how we asked the donor to give at a pivotal point of the email.

The control email read like this:

We’ve budgeted $40,000 to warn people about a _____ tax with radio ads in [city 1], [city 2] and [city 3]. But we can’t run the ads unless we raise the money to pay for the ads. Would you please donate now at this link? [link]

We decided to add two changes to the ask paragraph of the email.

First, we decided to make the “general ask” in the control paragraph a specific one — one that cut the goal into the number of donors at a specific donation amount it would take to raise the $40,000.

Second, we decided to test 4 different ask amounts in that “math formula.” Those amounts were:

• 4,000 donors at $10/each.
• 1,600 donors at $25/each.
• 800 donors at $50/each.
• 400 donors at $100/each.

Psychological Concept At Work

There’s a psychological concept at work here that is worth noting.

This is called “anxiety.”

Anxiety is defined as the “psychological resistance” (to take action at all) when asked in the context of fundraising.

First, we’re testing this type of fundraising messaging with non-donors (people who are active email subscribers, who have not yet given a gift of any amount to the organization). So, there’s already a bias towards not giving in play.

Second, I’ve always been sensitive to small dollar donors receiving large asks that don’t align with their giving history or capacity.

Think about it: If all you are capable of giving today is $20, and one of your favorite charities tells you that they need to raise $40,000 by the end of the week, you’re left feeling like your limited capacity is not going to help.

Multiply that feeling for someone who has never given to your organization before by 1,000.

That’s the kind of anxiety (or resistance to take action) we’re talking about being in place with this audience segment.

To inspire a donor who is only able to give $20 to feel like they did something meaningful and great, most organizations try to add in a line to their copy that reads something like: “A gift of any amount is appreciated and matters.”

That always feels cheap to me.

So, breaking down the $40,000 goal into smaller gifts (but showing how many people need to make those gifts to equal the fundraising goal overall) is a neat psychological trick to actually show them that their small gift capacity actually does make the difference.

With that in mind, we wrote the treatments, which looked something like this instead:

We’ve budgeted $40,000 to warn people about a _____ tax with radio ads in [city 1], [city 2] and [city 3]. But we need 4,000 supporters to donate $10 each to put these ads on the air. Could you be one of these 400 supporters we need today?

If so, would you please donate now at this link? [link]

It’s a small, but significantly different way of asking non-donors to give their first gift.

The beauty of this experiment is that it tested only one variable (the ask amount) while keeping all other creative elements static. Isolating one factor allowed us to draw a clear, actionable conclusion.

So, how did things turn out and … most importantly … what did we learn?

Experiment Results

Overall, the results were quite amazing.

We saw an aggregate lift in all treatments of +126.7% in donor conversion rate (with a 100% level of confidence) when asking this way versus the way that the control email asked them to give.

Here was the overall data from the experiment by each ask segment: