Ask People to Donate Time or Money

Look at this image:

Some people focus on the person, while other people focus on the object.

Researchers call it person-thing orientation (PTO), and it determines whether you prefer donating time or money (Malika et al., 2023)

• Person-Focus: You donate time.
• Object-Focus: You donate money.

How to Apply

• Offer Both Ways to Donate. A single appeal would exclude donors who prefer the alternative.
• Send Appeals to the Right Donors. Survey donors to categorize them by PTO so that you can send appeals — time or money — to the right segments. Or use known segments (e.g., employees in higher positions of a business prefer donating money; Reed et al., 2007).

• Adapt Your Appeals to Economic Conditions. People prefer donating time during recessions: “Economic contraction may lead consumers to face important trade-offs in their prosocial behaviors…consumers may prefer to volunteer their time under such conditions and hence, charitable organizations should promote how consumers can safely volunteer their time" (Malika et al., 2023)

• Malika, M., Ghoshal, T., Mathur, P., & Maheswaran, D. (2023). Does scarcity increase or decrease donation behaviors? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 1-23.
• Reed, A., Aquino, K., & Levy, E. (2007). Moral identity and judgments of charitable behaviors. Journal of marketing, 71(1), 178-193.