5 Ways Animal Rescues Can Increase Charitable Donations

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Animal shelters have been overflowing in recent months, with more dogs being surrendered to animal shelters than those facilities can comfortably accommodate. The rise in unwanted dogs appears to reflect tightened household budgets, a shortage of affordable housing, and workforce returns to the office post-pandemic.

The crisis of abandoned and unwanted pets is straining rescue operations’ ability to keep pace with rising costs and space shortages. In these circumstances, fundraising becomes even more important, affecting the organizations' ability to operate and avoid large-scale euthanasia.

Is there anything that rescues can do to maximize fundraising success and persuade donors to dig deeper? Studies suggest the following tactics influence charitable giving.

1. Visuals

Simple visual cues can impact how successful advertising is in garnering donations. One factor that influences outcomes, for example, is the number of victims portrayed in solicitations. According to a recent study in the International Journal of Advertising, less is more. Showing the face of just one single victim who looks sad or distressed tops the list of most persuasive visuals for attracting donations. When shown grouped together, multiple sad victims tend to attract fewer dollars. Also generally ineffective at inspiring financial donations are photos of happy victims, either alone or in groups. However, showing a group of happy faces does yield one notable advantage: happy groups boost the public perception of the charity’s efficacy and credibility. So organizations that have some messaging with lots of happy faces may see a corresponding receptiveness to their solo-victim appeals.

2. Emotional cues

Negative emotional messages tend to reinforce giving, while positive messages may decrease giving. One recent study in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour found that negative appeals (showing images of victims experiencing negative emotions) literally provoke negative physiological reactions in donors. This, in turn, spurs greater giving. In this study, 63.3% of the participants who received the negative framing donated. By implication, this argues that donations literally help donors counteract negative messages, and shift them toward more positive feelings in a visceral way.

3. Stories

Narrative storytelling, in which the victim’s experience and history are detailed, can be tremendously persuasive, to the point that it often overcomes other weaknesses in advertising presentation. A powerful story amplifies an audience’s emotional reactions rendering some visuals more effective than they might have otherwise been. By sharing a single animal’s precarious situation and life story, animal rescues not only boost financial contributions, they also effectively encourage and attract adopters for that individual animal.

4. Agency

Donors vary a great deal in their charitable giving. Some give rarely, some give occasionally, some give exclusively during a particular time of the year (such as the new year or an annual charitable drive), and another slice of donors contributes regularly, over the long term. This last small subset of committed donors responds three times as positively to appeals when offered greater agency over their giving. In other words, they like having choices. This important group is less responsive to emotional appeals, but highly influenced by the amount of control they get over how their gifts are used.

5. Impact

Reassuring donors that their contribution truly matters is essential. Simply offering positive feedback for even the tiniest charitable donations will cumulatively lead to increased giving. This “even a penny helps” technique is known in research as “Legitimization of Paltry Favors.” When a giver believes that their individual action is pivotal, even if their contribution is modest, the chances of that individual participating can actually double.