Humanize Beneficiaries

We empathize with people, not statistics.

In a classic study, people were more likely to donate $5 to an African girl named Rokia (vs. “millions of people”; Small et al., 2007).

How to Apply

• Give Personal Details. More details? More empathy. In one study, people donated money to a sick child in direct proportion to the amount of personal details they received (e.g., name, age, photo; Kogut & Ritov, 2005).

• Describe How Beneficiaries Have Been Successful. Should beneficiaries appear helpless? Wouldn’t donors feel more obligated to help? Ironically, no. People help beneficiaries that seem successful because these beneficiaries seem more agentic, as if they control their behavior. And this trait makes them appear more human (Formanowicz et al., 2023). Therefore, describe how beneficiaries have applied past donations. What did they accomplish? Humanize them, while demonstrating the efficacy of donating.

• Show Beneficiaries Helping Themselves. Likewise, people want to see images of beneficiaries engaged in physical labor: Show photos of beneficiaries physically acting to resolve an unfortunate situation to inspire and motivate donors (Perez et al., 2023)

• Formanowicz, M., Witkowska, M., Bettinsoli, M. L., & Jurek, P. (2023). Successful groups are seen as more agentic and therefore more human—Consequences for group perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 108, 104490.
• Kogut, T., & Ritov, I. (2005). The “identified victim” effect: An identified group, or just a single individual?. Journal of behavioral decision making, 18(3), 157-167.
• Perez, D., Munichor, N., & Buskila, G. (2023). Help yourself: Pictures of donation recipients engaged in physical self-help enhance donations on crowdfunding platforms. Journal of Business Research, 161, 113826.
• Small, D. A., Loewenstein, G., & Slovic, P. (2007). Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102(2), 143-153.