Why You Should Use Nostalgia To Promote More Giving

Read the original article here.

I recently stumbled upon a neat paper titled Nostalgia: The Gift That Keeps Giving. Here’s a summary:

Overview

1. Nostalgia is a very personal, social emotion that involves momentous life events and social bonds.

2. Charitable giving is a very personal, social behavior.Tweet This

3. Nonprofits regard donation encouragement as their single most important challenge.

Question: Does nostalgia promote charitable giving and volunteerism?

The Answer: Yes!

Here’s what they determined:

1. Nostalgia increases concrete, tangible and general charitable intentions.Tweet This

2. The mediator of the effect of nostalgia on charitable intentions is empathy.

3. Therefore, nostalgia augments empathy-based charitable intentions and behavior.

The MarketSmart takeaway:

Think about ways you can entwine nostalgia in your engagement fundraising efforts. For instance, if you work for a college or university consider the following:

• Offer your prospects a free copy of the yearbook from their graduation year.
• Show them photos of the campus and the students from the days when they attended the school.
• Invite them to share a story from their college days.

Here’s a real-world example:

For our friends at Ocean Conservancy, we used a photo to remind planned giving prospects about the time they first fell in love with the ocean. It worked like a charm.

Greg Warner,
imarketsmart.com, 20 July, 2015