Donating Our Money Is Irrational, So Why Do We Do It? Tim Kachuriak Explains Our Motivations

<p>Tim Kachuriak is the founder and Chief Innovation and Optimization Officer for NextAfter (<a href='https://www.nextafter.com/'>https://www.nextafter.com/)</a>, a fundraising research lab and consulting firm that works with businesses, nonprofits, and NGOs to help them grow their resource capacity. </p> <p>By his own admission, Tim is not a behavioral scientist, but what we love about Tim’s work is that he is using knowledge and research from the world of behavioral science and applying it to improve the efficiency of gift giving for nonprofit organizations. And not only does he use behavioral science techniques, he tests the theories in the nonprofit sector and generously publishes the findings on the NextAfter website (<a href='https://www.nextafter.com/research/'>https://www.nextafter.com/research/)</a>. </p> <p>In our conversation with Tim, he underscores the need for thinking about value proposition, a term widely used in the digital marketing world, but rarely thought of in terms of nonprofit organizations. He argues that potential donors are constantly weighing up the perceived value vs. the perceived cost of donating their money.</p> <p>Tim also brings up the idea of reducing friction for donors: how can the giving experience be improved to make donating money a more seamless transaction. And we couldn’t help but see the parallels with the infamous new behavioral science book NOISE coming out later this month (Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (<a href='https://amzn.to/3heyr5r'>https://amzn.to/3heyr5r) </a>by Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein, 2021).</p> <p>There are many reasons why we donate to nonprofits; emotional reward, belonging, anger, guilt (or as Tim positively reframes it - gratitude!). Understanding these motivations is a huge part of Tim’s work and why, as behavioral scientists, we are fascinated to understand the research he has conducted around donations. </p> Edit <p>Hey groovers, just wanted to let you know that somehow, at 29:28 mins of the podcast we ended up cutting Tim’s respon