Tapping the Well of Donor Generosity
Testing a nonprofit’s videos to measure their impact on brand favorability and charitable giving
Worldwide, 703 million people live without access to clean water—nearly twice the population of the United States or 1 in 10 people globally. This lack of clean water has a series of devastating consequences that primarily affect women and children, ranging from disease and death to limiting access to education and stifling economic growth. Nonprofit organizations like Charity: Water have made it their mission to bring clean, safe water to people in need and provide education, income, dignity, and most of all, health.
At the heart of this mission are philanthropic donations, so educating individuals on the problems and available solutions while convincing them to donate is crucial to nonprofits. Yet, is their messaging leading their audience to be supporters and to give the donations they need to solve such an impactful, global problem? Is there a specific type of ad doing a better job of driving support and donations than the rest?
We wanted to understand whether a narrative-based ad centering around individuals outperforms an ad telling a data-driven, health-related story at improving Charity: Water brand favorability, clean water mission alignment, and donation intent for Charity: Water. In other words, do stories about individuals or stories based on data and statistics help Charity: Water achieve its goals?
We focused on three main questions: agreement that clean water is necessary to improve lives in developing nations, brand favorability for the organization, and how much someone would donate to a clean water charity if they had $100 to donate.
Key Takeaways on the two videos and how they affected brand favorability, agreement on the cause, and intention to donate.
How We Tested
We tested two ads: “Waterborne Illnesses,” which focuses on the negative health ramifications of drinking dirty, polluted water, and “An Endless Cycle Broken,” which focuses on how women and children bear the brunt of water gathering and how access to clean local water improves not just their quality of life but opens them up to better opportunities like education and small businesses.
The ads were tested using the Grow Progress Rapid Message Test tool, which uses randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—the premier standard in message testing modeled on medical trials.
First, an audience of over 1,200 US adults were recruited. Then they were randomly split into one of three groups. Each group viewed one ad (Waterborne Illnesses, An Endless Cycle Broken, or a placebo message) and answered the same three questions. In less than 24 hours we had the following results.
The Toplines
The baseline brand favorability for Charity: Water, meaning how people in the placebo group who saw neither of their ads viewed the charity, started at a relatively high 71%. While it can be difficult to make statistically significant increases to something that already has a high baseline, both ads managed to increase brand favorability for Charity: Water by 12 percentage points.
However, the crucial aspects here are convincing people that their mission is important and driving donations. Looking at the toplines through this lens, “Waterborne Illnesses” is the more effective video for the two other measures: Mission alignment and donation intent.
Topline key takeaways for the two videos.
First, “Waterborne Illnesses” increased the percentage of people who agreed with the statement about clean and safe drinking water by 5 percentage points, while “An Endless Cycle Broken” increased agreement by only a non-significant 1 percentage point.
Second, “Waterborne Illnesses” increased the percentage of people who said they’d give “$75” or “all $100” of their theoretical donation dollars to clean water charities by 6 percentage points. In comparison, “An Endless Cycle Broken” increased it by only a non-significant 2 percentage points.
Subgroup results
Charitable giving
In this test, respondents were asked an additional question before they saw a video: “Have you donated money, time, products, or other resources to any charitable organization in the past 12 months?” This allowed us to look at the effects of each video for people who said “yes” to this question, separately from those who said “no.”
In general, the opinions of people who said no, they hadn’t given to a charitable organization in the last year, were easier to move in a statistically significant way. This may be because they know less about charitable giving and think about it less, which can make their opinions and beliefs more movable, as seen by the 18 and 14-point increases.
Among those who said yes, they had donated to a charitable organization in the past 12 months, “Waterborne Illnesses” was the more effective ad at increasing favorability for Charity: Water. It moved favorability from 78% positive to 89% positive, an 11-point increase, while “An Endless Cycle Broken” improved favorability by just 6 points.
That said, for those who donated, neither ad increased agreement with the statement about the impact of providing clean drinking water. This is likely because even in the placebo group — people who saw an ad unrelated to Charity: Water’s work — 92% of people already agreed with the statement. There’s not a lot of room to grow from there.
However, for those who said they had not donated, “Waterborne Illnesses” was slightly more effective, raising agreement by 8 points compared to the 7 points from “An Endless Cycle Broken”.
Looking at how respondents would divide $100 across different types of charities, neither ad changed the intentions of people who have given to a charitable organization in the past year.
Once again, “Waterborne Illnesses” was more effective for those who had not donated, raising the likelihood of donating $75 or more of the theoretical $100 by 10 points. This may be because people who donate less often also think about it less, which can make their opinions and beliefs more movable.
Household Income
We also wondered: Was there any disparity amongst households making different annual incomes? We found that both ads increased favorability for Charity: Water across all income groups we tested.
For the question about the effectiveness of providing clean drinking water, in general, neither ad caused statistically significant increases in agreement with the statement. This is likely due to the fact that both the baseline and households making $50k or more a year already had very high levels of agreement.
However, “Waterborne Illnesses” did increase agreement for people in households with income below $50k, where the baseline agreement levels were lower, and thus had more room to be persuaded with a strong argument.
In regards to how people would divide $100 across charities, “Waterborne Illnesses” caused statistically significant shifts toward giving dollars to clean water charities among people in households with less than $50k income and those in households with $50k to $99k. However, there wasn’t a statistically significant effect among those in households with income over $100k.
“An Endless Cycle Broken” surprisingly decreased dollars to clean water charities for people in high-earning households. While it may have increased clean water dollars among low-earning households, it further had no statistically significant effects among middle earners.
Conclusion
Both ads did a wonderful job of highlighting the need for clean water in developing countries, which resonated with a wide variety of audiences. But if we were to pick a clear winner, “Waterborne Illnesses” saw the highest lift across all three success questions, and the different subgroups, helping Charity: Water achieve the ultimate goal of raising awareness and influencing donation dollars.
An interesting area to explore further would be to better understand why An Endless Cycle Broken backlashed in households making over $100k a year, and why “Waterborne Illnesses” had no measurable effect. What values and emotional hooks would appeal to them, and why?
This underscores the need to be able to use Grow Progress to create highly specific data segments and understand what these niche audiences’ values, motivations, and concerns are.
Ready to find the messaging that resonates with your audiences? Learn more about Grow Progress’ Rapid Message Testing, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter and never miss a beat.
