Research

Secondary Research

From my preliminary & secondary research I’ve found similar trends. People have a want or desire to give back by donation, but majority don’t.. That’s the problem I’m here to fix.

I wanted to start by looking into what motivates people to donate

I found there are three main motivations to doante

• Emotions :  Such as empathy seeing yourself in somebody else's shoes, the sad animals on being abused on tv, 

  Sympathy: giving a dollar to a homeless person on the street 

  Fear: environmental causes, they fear climate change

  Anger: giving to one politician because you hate the other party so much

• Social: Social givers are motivated by social dynamics. The power to invite others to join or gamify can create a sense of togetherness. Sharing on social media can boost reputation, but also allow others to invite or create a sense of FOMO. Social givers are motivated to donate as a form of community. Humans tend to seek out groups with similar values and interests to create a sense of belonging.

• Personal Benefit: People in this category are motivated by a more personal gain. Tax benefits, boost their ego/reputation, maybe they need to volunteer to meet requirements for an academic program, or simply they just ‘feel good’ when they donate.

Most of my secondary reserach fit my hypothesis that the motivation to give is there but the behavior doesn’t match

A poll asking people why they don’t donate monetarily shows that

I looked into what was stopping people from donating on a regular basis:

1. Trust: people aren't comfortable donating if they don’t trust the organization, (this became a bigger issue through my research that I want to address when developing my project.)

2. Overwhelming: too many problems in the world, too many charities, google search for charity yields thousands of results 

3. Flexibility: don’t have enough time, volunteer schedules are too inflexible 

Don’t have enough information & most volunteer roles aren’t that interesting, jobs aren’t meaningful or have purpose people want purpose to feel good after volunteering

I sent out a survey of my own to anyone who would take it. I had 39 people participate in the 24 hours it was live.

I asked people about their work schedule as well as free time and how much they volunteer vs how motivated they are to volunteer. The results were fairly similar to my secondary research; the motivation is there, however the action is not.

73% Work or study 35+ hours a week 7 have 11-30 hours of free time

When I asked the question “Is there anything preventing you from volunteering?” The main response I got was time followed by lack of information and visibility

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Interviews

What interested me about this is that a good percentage said that they would donate time/goods/services in lieu of financial donations

I also asked if people would be motivated to volunteer with friends.. Majority of people said yes, they liked the idea of companionship, shared experiences, and comfort of not doing something alone. There were a couple outliers who were more motivated by the job at hand than the shared experience of doing something with friends.

From my screener survey I chose 5 individuals to interview. The participants all

• Work 35+ hours with 11+ hours of free time

• Motivated to volunteer but had less than 4 times in the past 6 months

• 3 who answered time was the roadblock and 2 who said lack of inormation

I interviewed participants about their current lifestyle, what  a typical week looks like, what their hobbies/interests are. 

How often they donate or volunteer and where they find those opportunities. 

I asked how motivated they were by a potential social aspect, if they would be more likely to volunteer with a group of friends and how often they post about fundraisers/volunteer events on social media. 

I also asked about some roadblocks, what makes an organization trustworthy and how important that is and how far they would go to find that out or research something for a donation. 

Thematic Analysis

Daily Lives

• Hanging out with friends is something already done in the free time people have

• Most or all said they would volunteer with a cause related to hobby (one said as long as it would be helpful)

Who/How

• A lot of volunteer opportunities are presented through work or family

• Many places they chose to volunteer or donate had to do with personal causes close to home, empathy related choices (i.e. animal shelters), or with/for a person they respected.

• People tend to donate to online charities based on the person who posted it, they trust/love/want to support that person.

Transparency major factor 

• Transparency is important. 

• How nonprofits utilize funds is important. 

• Find it difficult to find transparency, would not donate/be more hesitant if you couldn't find it. 

• Well known charities tend to hold more trust with people, reputation is big. 

Connection

• Everyone said volunteering makes them feel good, but some said they wish they could do more in terms of feeling like they have an actual impact on the issues they’re helping. 

• Drawn to the idea of volunteering with friends in lieu of current social activities like going out to bars/restaurants.. The idea of  “creating new experiences” with friends was attractive.

Search

• Everyone is guilty of throwing away items they could donate.. Usually based on not having time or knowledge of where to take it. 

• Results were mixed as far as how much research people would do to find a place to look to donate, but the majority hadn’t looked/wouldn’t look too hard. 

• Majority mentioned throwing a lot of items together and taking to the goodwill/salvation army out of convienece.