Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Amy X. | Delivered March 20, 2020

Donating to Causes: Motivators

Goals

To find out what motivates/convinces people to donate or get involved with a cause in order to ascertain how to get more people involved with fixing the child welfare system.

Early Findings

According to YouGov, a global public opinion and data company, people give to certain charities because they believe in the
 cause, but motivations vary.
When subjected to a survey, most respondents stated that they believed in the cause being discussed. The next most frequent response was the belief that one should give to charity. These responses are relevant to welfare and charities that cater to children and young people.
The next most frequent responses in terms of charity towards children and young people were "I don’t feel the state does enough to help those in need" and "I have had personal experience of the charity".
In addition to this, giving to charity activates parts of the brain related to reward and pleasure. They also give to strengthen their identity and to relieve their guilt.
Studies conducted by a behavioral economist of Duke University in North Carolina found that outward appearances may trump the financial incentives of giving.
This study based its results on an experiment where two groups of people were asked to type a combination of letters on a keyboard. They were told that if they typed the combination correctly, some money would be donated in their name to the Red Cross, although never more than a few dollars.
In the “private” group, members were exposed only to their own “giving” scores, whereas in the “public” group, each member was asked to publicly announce his or her donation to the others. 
In the end, members of the public group got the letter combination right twice as often as members of the private group.
Some researchers also state that donors donate when they expect to reap benefits from their contributions. Sometimes people donate when they’d rather not because at that point in time, it’s hard to refuse. 
People also donate because it is an easy way to boost their mood. People give to feel good.

In addition to this public search, we scanned our proprietary research database of over 1 million sources and were unable to find any specific research reports that address your goals.