Giving: A Habit of Happiness

“Every morning, before you brush your teeth, ask yourself, ‘Have I given to the annual fund today?’”

“Every morning, before you brush your teeth, ask yourself, ‘Have I given to the annual fund today’?”

I had the privilege of working for an incredibly accomplished university president who routinely called on alumni to give through the annual fund. She humorously suggested that giving should be on their minds at the start of every day, just like brushing their teeth. While daily giving from our supporters may not be our aim, getting donors to make giving to our organizations a habit is.

Merriam-Webster defines habit as, “a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance.” Much research has been done on habits, both how to form them and how to kick them. One model is the “habit loop” explained by Charles Duhigg in his 2012 book, The Power of Habit.

The habit loop has three components: cue, behavior, and reward. Cues move us to engage in behaviors and we receive rewards for doing them; with repetition, a behavior becomes routine or a habit. We often rely on the habit loop to encourage ongoing giving from our constituents.

Cue

Duhigg highlights the most common cues for activating the habit loop: location, time, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and other people. In direct marketing, the solicitation itself can serve as the cue. Consistency is key. The appeal should be very similar to the solicitation that inspired the previous gift—same channel (mail, email, text, or phone), same time of year, same look and feel, same message about the impact that the donor will have by making the gift. Changing any of these factors creates the risk that the appeal will not provide the cue to give.

Staff turnover is prevalent in our industry and often leads to changes in direct marketing as new staff bring new ideas and experiences. A leader of an athletics fund followed a person had been at its helm for about two decades. The new leader choose to send out a four-color self-mailer at calendar-year end in place of the usual letter in a standard number 10 envelope. The response was low; many of those solicited, including previous donors, did not give. The channel was the same. The case for support hadn’t changed. The timing hadn’t changed. But the look was completely different. The updated appeal format didn’t provide the cue previous donors expected. In annual giving, it pays to stick with appeals that have been successful and change those that have underperformed. And, even when we’re tired of making the same case over and over again, we still do it; repetition provides the recognition that cues the behavior.

Behavior

We want to encourage regular giving to our organizations. Study after study has shown that it is much more cost-effective to retain a donor than to recruit a new one. Your fundraising results also become more predictable, a boon to organizational budgeting and planning. If your institution is like most others, you have many loyal donors who give the same amount year after year after year. The size of their gifts has likely become part of the habit, making securing upgrades more challenging.

Reward

As humans, the reward that follows the behavior helps us to develop it as a habit. In 1990, James Andreoni gave us language to describe the joy and satisfaction donors experience after giving: “warm glow.” As fundraisers, we work to strengthen these positive feelings through donor relations or stewardship efforts. The donor may receive a gift acknowledgment, earn membership in a recognition society, be invited to attend events or serve as a volunteer, and/or receive reports on the impact they have made through their philanthropy. Research has shown that the shorter the timeframe between the reward and the behavior, the better it serves to create a habit loop. A timely gift acknowledgment isn’t just good manners; a thank-you note helps the donor feel good about their giving.

Giving Days often reward donors by increasing the impact they can have and the good they can do through challenges and matches. These financial incentives work for challengers and challenge respondents. Challengers leverage their gifts by incentivizing others to give, and challenge respondents enjoy magnifying the difference they make bringing matching funds to the organization in addition to their own gifts. One of the risks of deploying challenge or matching gifts is that they will become part of the required cue to contribute. Donors have told me that they were waiting to make another gift until there was a challenge incentive in place again.

Forming the Habit

The Habit Loop

There’s no agreement on how many repetitions or how much time must pass before a behavior becomes a habit. Answers include 21 days, 66 times, and 3 months; in one study of healthy habits, individual results varied from 4 days to 335 days. For giving, in the fourth quarter of 2024, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported that the retention rate for first-time donors was 19.4 percent while 69.2 percent of repeat donors renewed their support. I regularly see rates increase with the number of years of consecutive giving; for donors who had given in the previous four-plus years, renewal rates can be around 90 percent.

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project also found that retention rates increased with the number of gifts made in the previous year. Donors who made only one gift to the institution in 2023 renewed their support in 2024 at a rate of 32.1 percent; this figure grew to 53.0 percent for those who gave two gifts. Those who made three to six gifts renewed at a rate of 70.7 percent, and an impressive 86.8 percent of donors who made seven or more gifts in 2023 gave again in 2024. Recurring gifts may be impacting these statistics. Donors who set up quarterly or monthly payments to your organization will give 4 or 12 times in the year. This automated process requires no cue and ensures that the donor’s support continues (as long as the banking information remains the same).

Will giving become as automatic for our constituents as brushing their teeth? If we express our gratitude in a timely manner, tell donors the stories of the people who benefit from their generosity, and keep the cues consistent when asking them to renew, it just might. The warm glow that donors feel when they are generous and the incredible benefit our communities and our world receive from their gifts makes giving a habit well worth cultivating.