by David P. King, Ph.D., Karen Lake Buttrey Director

We live in the information age, but research now proves that we are increasingly less persuaded by data. Perhaps with so much information at our fingertips, we have simply become less sensitive to all the information we encounter. We can find the facts for whatever position we seek to support. Perhaps with claims of newspapers as fake news, Russian trolls manipulating social media, and click-bait headlines at the top of every webpage, we have simply become immune to information. Or perhaps we have become exhausted and overwhelmed.

While I confess to worrying about an increasing disinterest in facts in our current culture, the silver lining may be that today’s contexts point out a potential weakness in prioritizing information. It can ignore or devalue the core of what makes us human: our motives, our fears, our hopes, our desires, our traditions.

This past week I attended the Jewish Funders Network International Conference and heard from Israeli neuroscientist Tali Sharot, the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London. 

In reflecting on Dr. Sharot’s message, the application to faith-based fundraising seemed equally clear. Facts do matter, but it is most often our desires that shape our beliefs; our need for agency, our craving to be right, a longing to feel part of a group. Advertisers inherently understand this approach when they ask us how driving this car makes us feel or the freedom holding this particular smartphone brings. If you have ever run into Lake Institute or the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy before, however, you have probably heard us make the point that fundraising is not sales. And I want to underscore that again here, but many fundraisers also inherently understand the power of emotions. Think of the emotional-laden appeals you might have received – do your part to end child slavery or else this young person staring back at you will not survive. These appeals often elicit a response and secure a gift but stop there. There is no ongoing relationship, agency, or community.

Placing pairs of individuals under MRI scanners, Sharot found that when individuals agreed on a decision, it was encoded into their brains more clearly than when they disagreed. Unfortunately, this is how Sharot explains what we often see online: “people respond to others that agree with them, dismiss those who do not (sometimes viciously), and the result is escalation.” If we stopped here, I believe Sharot’s findings would remain disconcerting, but she also points out the positive: influence is achieved by finding real connections and common ground. We crave connection and seek to make use of our own agency versus simply supporting an institution that we may or may not trust. For fundraisers, particularly faith-based fundraisers, the deeply felt desire of individuals to engage beliefs, traditions, desires, agency, and like-minded community should be a welcome message and an invitation to focus on these assets that we bring to this work.

So to point out the irony again, research proves that people are less motivated by facts. As a scholar, these findings may not make me feel great, but I have already felt them in my gut for some time. I would caution us not to interpret these findings as an incentive to turn toward short-term, overly emotional fundraising practices and away from clear mission statements and measures of impact and evaluation. Yet, donors are motivated by emotion. These emotions are also embedded in deep-seated beliefs and values as well as rooted in tradition. Individuals may crave being right, but I see that as a sign that they crave something meaningful. They are defined by their own agency, but I see that as an invitation into engagement. We often are seeking out like-minded groups, and while that could lead to unhelpful echo chambers, it could also demonstrate a need for community.

We live in a time simultaneously filled with skepticism and a deeply-felt need to work for change and build connections. These individual motivations can be harnessed for negative or positive results, but it is clear that our fundraising must engage these motivations whether within ourselves or in others. How can we find ways to bring donors along to work for the change we hope to see in the world. At the end of the day, that is one of the greatest strengths of faith communities and faith-based fundraisers.

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