Benefactor- versus Recipient-Focused Charitable Appeals: How to Leverage In-Group Bias to Promote Donations for Out-Group Recipients

Abstract

Charities often feature their recipients as protagonists in fundraising appeals (i.e., recipient-focused appeals), and considerable research has examined the best way to portray recipients to generate more donations. However, recipient-focused appeals have been accused of being uninclusive and manipulative, stereotyping or even exploiting groups they seek to help. Strategies like using an identified victim and highlighting their neediness may not always be efficacious or desirable (e.g., when donors experience emotional fatigue or when victims wish to remain anonymous), and some techniques that work for in-group members are less effective for out-group recipients. To offset in-group donation biases and promote equity, the present work proposes that charities use benefactor-focused appeals featuring people who carry out the charity’s mission. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theories, we generate hypotheses about how an in-group benefactor-focused appeal enhances donations for out-group members and equalizes charitable giving across in-group and out-group recipients. Four studies and a supplemental study involving both donation likelihood and actual donations find that the effect of charity appeal protagonist (recipient versus benefactor) is moderated by recipients’ group membership and mediated by feelings of connectedness. Together, the results support an in-group favoritism account for both benefactor- and recipient-focused appeals on donation behavior.