Welcome everyone to Creative Partnerships Australia’s Knowledge Series webinar, Transforming Your Fundraising Through Decision Science. I am James Boyd, the West Australian State Manager for Creative Partnerships. This is the sixth in a series of eight professional development webinars for development managers working in the arts and cultural sector. I welcome you all here this morning. May I first make an acknowledgement of Country. Creative Partnerships Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the lands on which we live, work and learn. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and to our shared future together. 

Today, we have guest speakers from the UK and the National Arts Fundraising School, Bernard Ross and Dana Seagull. Let me introduce today’s presenters. Bernard Ross is the director of the UK’s National Fundraising School. He has advised major arts institutions in the UK, including the Tate Gallery and the Science Museum. He has written six award-winning books on strategy, fundraising, and social change, including Change for Good: Using Behavioural Economics for a Better World. He has just had a new book come out, Making the Ask: The Artful Science of High Value Fundraising. I’ll give you a bit more detail on that later. Dana is the deputy director of the National Arts Fundraising School. She is a leading expert in the cultural and creative industries in the UK and has helped a wide range of cultural institutions with sustainability, including the South Bank Centre and the Charles Dickens Museum. 

They are a terrific team and we’re delighted to have them live from the UK this morning, where it’s terribly early. I’ll hand over to Bernard and Dana for their presentation. 

It’s so nice to be here. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m going to run the first part of the session. Dana, do you want to give people an idea of the shape of the session? 

We’re going to do the session in three parts. First, we’ll talk you through the science of decision science. What do we mean when we use this term? What are things you might have heard before, like behavioural economics or terms like heuristics? We’ll talk you through those and demystify some of the language. 

In the second part of the webinar, I’m going to present some of our fundraising experiments. We conducted these with 11 arts and cultural organisations here in the UK. It is the largest cultural fundraising experiment in the world to date. In the third section, we’re going to see what you’ve learned. 

We’re going to present you with some ideas and give you the opportunity to say, if I was using decision science techniques here, what would I do? It will be a chance for you to apply that knowledge and practise straight away. It should be an interesting and hopefully interactive session. 

I also want to say a special hello. I think Melinda is here from Linden New Art. We’ve done an interesting experiment with her, so I hope if you’re with us, you’ll let us know in the chat. We’re going to share some examples of things we know work in Australia. 

I’m interested to see in the chat how many of you have heard of behavioural economics, decision science, or behavioural science. How many people were just looking for something to do this afternoon, and there was nothing on TV, so you thought you’d tune into a webinar? 

I can see from a few of you that this is brand new. For others, I acknowledge that you probably know quite a bit of this already. Stay with us as we try to give everyone some insights. 

Let me tell you how I got into decision science, behavioural science, and behavioural economics. The story begins 12 years ago in New York. I was working with a group of what are called face-to-face fundraisers. I think you probably call them the same in Australia. They are mostly young people who stop you in the street and say, would you mind handing over your credit card? 

I have always found that an amazing thing that people do. Normally, I don’t hand over my credit card and speak to anyone who doesn’t have a gun or a knife, at the very least. But there are people who do that. It is a powerful and effective way for many mainstream charities to raise money, just by stopping people in the street and asking them to do that. 

I have some expertise in the psychology of fundraising. I was teaching people in the street how to do this in New York. This is a photo of me 12 years ago, looking younger, but still good. As part of a week-long course I was running, I was working with quite a big team of people who were raising money for Save the Children. 

I thought, I have to do this myself. I can’t just teach people this. I have to go and do it myself, although I may not be the right person to do it. So I was doing it and teaching it. Then I noticed that while the teams I was teaching were doing rather well, one team seemed to be doing very well, despite the fact I hadn’t taught them to do anything. 

That team was based at 23rd Street. I thought, I’ll go down and watch 23rd Street and see what they are doing that is so clever and seems to be working without me, because that is quite embarrassing as a consultant. I went down and watched them, and then I did some of the work myself. 

The picture on the right is of me standing and raising money for Save the Children at 23rd Street. What I discovered was that the most important thing people were doing was standing beside the 23rd Street station sign. 

What I discovered by doing it myself is that if I mentioned 23rd Street, if I mentioned the name of where we were, and said to people, thank you so much for stopping, we’re at 23rd Street station, this must be a philanthropic place, the average gift changed. At that time, people were normally giving between US$15 and US$17 as a monthly gift to Save the Children. People then started giving US$18, US$19, or US$20. 

There was about a US$3 movement simply by standing next to a sign that said the number 23. I thought that was strange. I didn’t understand why it worked, but it seemed to work, so I put it into my body of things that work. 

Then I read a fantastic book. I’ve written quite a good book called Change for Good, but this is an even better book called Thinking, Fast and Slow, which some of you might have read, by Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He explained to me why that worked. It is a technique some of you might know about. Natalie, it is unconscious bias, or more technically, anchoring. 

About 18 months ago, I went back to New York and did a big experiment with about 40 people across the city, including myself. There is no point telling people about these things if you don’t do them yourself. There I am, standing in the pouring rain outside one of the big railway stations. It was very wet. This time we had moved on from clipboards. I had an iPad and was raising money for Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, as it is called in the United States. 

What I discovered was that the average had gone up over the 10 or 12 years to US$32 a month. By standing next to a sign saying 43rd Street, I was able to drive the average amount from US$37 to US$40. I now understood that we were using a technique called anchoring. 

We’re going to talk about that a bit later. Very simply, anchoring means that if you introduce a number, and it can be almost a random number, to someone’s subconscious, they will be influenced by that number. People were making bigger gifts simply because there was a number in the background. 

One implication for fundraising is that Dana and I do a lot of work in the UK with charities that say, give what you can, donate what you can, or pay what you can for the ticket. One of the things we know from science is that by doing that, by not giving people a cue about the amount of money that might be helpful, or even a random amount or number, they will tend to give much less. 

What we’re trying to do is talk about science. It is important to stress the scientific basis of what we’re doing here. One of the things we see holding fundraising back, certainly in the UK, Ireland, the US, and Singapore, where we’ve done a lot of this work, is a whole lot of anecdote about what works. We’re not interested in anecdote. We’re interested in science. Is that true, Dana? More or less. I think that’s true. 

Let’s talk a bit more about the science and some key ideas underpinning decision science. First, let’s check if you’re normal, because you might be an exceptional group of people. Let’s see if you’ve ever done any of these things. 

Have any of you ever paid up front for a gym membership and not gone? The rest of you are lying. Apart from you. Have you ever gone to the doctor or the chemist, got some medication, and then not followed the instructions as prescribed? That is a very common thing to do. 

Have any of you ever received your credit card bill, had money in the bank to pay it, and then forgotten to pay it, so you end up paying interest? Have any of you ever been at a party, if you remember parties, and drunk too much alcohol when you know you shouldn’t, or been on a diet and eaten the wrong kind of food because you were in a social situation? 

Annie, yes to all of the above. The only honest woman in the room, I think. Have any of you ever bought an electronic product? I have an iPhone 8. I can basically text on it, look things up, and occasionally send an email, but it will do things that, as far as I know, I don’t understand. My 12-year-old niece can show me things, and she is always embarrassed with me. 

These are not all bad things. Have any of you ever done something completely irrational, such as donated blood to someone you don’t know, or made a donation to a charity with no personal connection? Maybe you made a gift to Yemen, or to a disease you don’t know personally. That is not rational. 

Or maybe you helped someone in the street, helped somebody carry their bags up the stairs in a railway station, or gave someone a gift. I’m glad to see that, because Dana and I believe the fundamental basis of good fundraising is to be philanthropic yourself. The best way to learn about getting money is by giving it away. 

These things are all predictably irrational, and people are predictably irrational. That is the title of a brilliant book by Dan Ariely. He talks about how, when we make choices, and Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman are two of the great thinkers in this field, they reckon we make between 27,000 and 40,000 choices a day. 

Some of those are big choices, such as should I stay in this job, should I leave my relationship, should I buy a house, or should I rent a house? Some are small, such as should I wear blue socks or red socks, or do I dare to eat a peach? There are big ones and small ones, and we don’t have time to think about them all rationally. 

There is Dan Ariely’s book, if you’re looking for something to read, called Predictably Irrational. That word is important. We are irrational, not random. Random would mean we couldn’t predict what would happen. Irrational means that we can predict how people will behave, but it is not rational in the same way. 

We can now predict that if you stand next to a sign and give people a number cue, they will behave in a specific way. We know a number of things now that Dana and I have been able to apply to fundraising. 

So, are you rational or not? We sent you a little questionnaire and, in a way, we lied about it. We said it was about health and wellbeing. It was not about health and wellbeing. It was about how rational you are. 

One of the questions we asked was this. You booked a ticket for the cinema and lost your online ticket, so you would have to buy another ticket. In one circumstance, you lost the ticket. In another, you lost $20 on the way to the cinema. In both cases, the ticket cost $20. 

We asked, if you had lost your ticket, would you buy another ticket for $20? Seventy per cent of you said yes, but 30 per cent said no. Then we asked the same group, if you lost money on the way to the cinema, would you buy another ticket? In that case, 92 per cent of you said yes. 

That is not rational, because in both cases you have lost $20. But in one case, because you think you have lost the ticket, you respond differently. It is an example of irrationality. The two things are exactly the same, but you responded differently because of the different sense of loss. 

Let’s look at another example. Here are two packets of cereal. They happen to be Italian cereal, but that does not really matter. Which of these do you think sounds like the more attractive deal, one or two? Everyone is choosing two. 

This is exactly the same deal. Anyone who can do basic maths can work out that 33 per cent off and 50 per cent more free are the same proposition. Yet people prefer more. There is a lot of psychology going on here. In a commercial sense, there was a 73 per cent increase in sales by putting that different proposition up. I see many arts organisations saying they are discounting tickets, yet we know that saying more free can work better, even when it is the same offer. 

Now read this sign. Most of you probably read the top right line. Some of you may have noticed that the letters in two of the words are reversed. What most of you did automatically was reverse those words. One interesting thing about these automatic responses is that we do not necessarily read or study things very carefully. We look for patterns, and the patterns allow us to say, I can fix that. 

The interesting thing about our rationality is not simply that we are not paying attention. The big thing is that we fix things automatically, and that has important implications for patterns and communication. 

Let me give you some more key ideas and tell you a little bit about some of the thinkers behind this. One is Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize about 20 years ago. Interestingly, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for economics, yet he is a psychologist, not an economist. Think how annoyed the world’s economists were that a psychologist won the prize. Think how annoyed you would be if a non-artist won a big arts prize. 

The other thinker is Richard Thaler. He wrote a book called Nudge, which you may have heard of. Three or four years ago, he also won the Nobel Prize, again showing that behavioural economics, or this kind of psychology, is important. The most recent person is Esther Duflo, the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. She is a French economist and won it two years ago. These three big thinkers are talking about the science of decision-making. 

They are talking about three things that matter. One is evolutionary psychology. This is the idea that as we all walked out of Africa 200,000 years ago, some of us ended up in Australia and some of us ended up in Scotland. Why you would go to Scotland from beautiful sub-Saharan Africa, I don’t know, but some people did. We have hardwired some things into ourselves. I’ll give you examples of those in a minute. 

We are also talking about neuroscience, where we can now look inside the brain and see some of the chemical and magnetic responses. If you make a decision to do something, we can track where in the brain that is happening. 

We also have behavioural economics, which is what the whole field is more generally called. This is really about the difference between what Dana and I call do data and say data. Do data is what people do. Say data is what people say they do. This is one of the reasons why we are not very much in favour of market research or focus groups, where people tend to say what they think is the right answer. I think we’re going to prove to you that this happens. 

Let me give you a couple of experiments to see if I can prove some of that. I want you to look very quickly at these two pictures and decide which of the two images you prefer. Which of the two faces do you like more, A or B? Nearly all of you are choosing A. Of course, New Zealanders are always a little different, but nearly all of you chose A. 

Why do people choose A? The answer is to do with evolutionary psychology. A and B are actually made up of two different faces. In the first case, A is made up of a picture of Tiger Woods, about 35 per cent, and a stock model, about 65 per cent. B is made up of two stock models that you don’t necessarily recognise. 

Dana and I have done that experiment in Zimbabwe and Cuba. I have done it in Egypt, Argentina, Brazil, and India. Everywhere in the world, the answer is the same. The answer is that people subconsciously saw Tiger Woods’ face. You recognise something about it. 

One of the evolutionary psychology things is that as we walk out of sub-Saharan Africa, we look for people we recognise. If we see people we recognise, we think, that is quite safe. I know Catherine. I am safe with her. She is not likely to attack me or kill me. 

That is important because we find that many arts organisations say they are bored with their old brand and want to look different and change things up. We want to caution you. If you do that, you may be losing the value of subconscious recognition of the brand, which is an important piece of evolutionary psychology. 

Let’s move on. When we look at neuroscience, we now know that the part of our brain stimulated when we are given a gift is the same part stimulated when we make a response. Dana is going to give some examples of where a museum says to people, here is a free guide to the museum, and places that free guide beside the donation box. That can increase the gift level because of a technique called reciprocity. It stimulates the same part of the brain. 

Giving people a gift before asking them for a gift is an important part of this work. There is also a third part about what I call do data and say data. 

For example, one of the things we asked you in the questionnaire was whether you think you are more competent than your peers in the charity sector. Goodness, this is not a shy and modest group. I think about 68 per cent of you said, yes, I am more competent than my peers in the charity sector. 

I’m sure James and Catherine have brought together the brightest and best for this webinar. But if that answer was accurate, it should be 50–50. You can only be averagely competent compared with your peers. 

This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. People tend to overestimate their ability in many fields. I have to say this may be partly gender driven, but I’m seeing that most people here are women and we still see that bias. 

You may say, we are a little smugger than we should be. The Brits invented being smug, I guess you could say. But what is interesting is that if you ask people how generous they are in fundraising, 75 per cent of people think they give more than average to charities. 

Again, one reason not to say to people, give what you can, is that people may think that by giving $5, $10, $15, or $20, they are being more generous, when in fact they may not be. You need to cue people about what the averages are, so they can align their behaviour. If the average person gives $20, and I think I am more generous, I should give a bit more. 

That is important. People think they are better than they are. That is the difference between what we call do data and say data. 

Dana, I think I’m going to hand over to you in a few minutes. We’re up against the first half hour, if that’s okay. I’ll skip to the end of the set of slides. 

What is Daniel Kahneman’s big idea? He is the original Nobel Prize winner. Daniel Kahneman says that we have two decision systems in our head. 

The first is called system one. System one helps us make those 27,000 to 40,000 decisions really quickly, implicitly, intuitively, emotionally, and, importantly, unconsciously or subconsciously. We could not think through every choice rationally, such as what colour socks should I wear today? 

We use our automatic process to do that. I’m speaking to you in English now. It is Scottish English, so it sounds a little weird. I’m not thinking about the words. But I love going to Spain and I love speaking Spanish, even though my Spanish is awful. 

Whenever I go to Spain, I like it because the word bar is the same in Spanish as it is in English. I think, I’m in the right place to have a drink. But I go into a bar and, as I approach the bar person, I think, I want a beer. I know that the verb to want in Spanish is querer, and I know that I need the first person singular of the verb, which I believe is quiero. 

The Spanish bar person is tapping his fingers, thinking, just ask me for what you want. Then I get confused because I know that in Spanish they have masculine and feminine nouns. I cannot remember whether cerveza is masculine or feminine. Is it un cerveza or una cerveza? Then I end up struggling through it. 

What is happening there is that instead of using system one, I am having to use system two. System two is explicit, slow, analytical, learned, and conscious. It is the same if you learned to drive in a manual car. You probably learned to drive using system two. Now you can drive home without thinking about every gear change. You can think about what you’re having for dinner, because you are using system one. 

We use system one, and we need to encourage donors and supporters to use system one as much as we can. It is the difference between how we think and how we think we think. 

Let me give you an example of system one and system two. This is my last little thing, Dana, before I hand over to you. I’m going to show you a tube train. I’m sure many of you have been to London. Here is a tube train. I want you to quickly decide if the tube train is leaving the station or entering the station. 

Most people are saying entering or leaving. People are slightly confused. Now I want you to do something slightly different. Whatever you think it was, I want you to tell the train to go the other way. You can now see it leaving the station. You can now see it entering the station. I am not changing the image at all. Leaving and entering. By saying the word leaving, you can see it leaving. By saying the word entering, you can see it entering. 

I am in control of your minds. What is happening is that your system one is saying, I can tell what is going on here. Unfortunately, your system two then comes in and says, but you do not have any data for that. System two often comes in and tries to get you to say something more sensible. 

It is the difference between Captain Kirk and Mr Spock. To be clear, the irrational one is not in charge here. One of them is the captain and one of them is just the mister. For your donors and supporters, it is Captain Kirk who is in charge, and that is who you need to talk to. 

Dana, I’m going to hand over to you to talk about some of the experiments we’ve done in fundraising, including the world’s largest fundraising experiment. I’ll change the slides for you if that’s okay. 

That’s perfect. There are some key concepts that have been presented that I want you to keep in mind as I present this. 

The first thing is that we make thousands of decisions a day. That causes what we call cognitive overload. It is that feeling of brain hurt you get when you are thinking too hard about something and have to use that part of your brain. 

The reason for that is because your brain makes up about 2 per cent of your body weight but uses about 20 per cent of your energy. There is an evolutionary need for us to conserve that energy, to protect ourselves, and to be able to do what we really need to do, such as run from predators or run after prey. 

Because our brain is trying to conserve that energy, we use heuristics, which are mental shortcuts. They help us bypass thinking instead of using logic all the time. 

We did the world’s largest fundraising experiment, and this is a couple of examples of some of the heuristics we might talk about. I will provide you with a framework of all the overview heuristics. There are about 149 heuristics and cognitive biases, but only about eight to 10 of them are really useful in fundraising. One of those is anchoring. 

For the world’s largest fundraising experiment, we worked with Arts Council England to identify 11 different arts and cultural organisations in the UK. These ranged from free-to-enter museums, to small touring companies, through to probably our largest cultural institution, the Royal Opera House, which has a significant number of patrons, supporters, and donors. 

We wanted to devise experiments using decision science at their core. We wanted to get data about how this works in cultural fundraising and use the experiments to inspire other people to take a more scientific approach to their fundraising. In and of itself, the experiment was a social norming exercise. I’ll talk about that term in a moment. 

Each organisation devised a different experiment. I am going to talk you through three of those experiments, the results, and how they went. 

It is important that we did some training with all the organisations. We used a framework called MINDSPACE. MINDSPACE is a framework that brings those 149 heuristics and cognitive biases into a simple nine-part formula. It presents the key concepts you need to consider when using decision science principles in your practice. 

The M in MINDSPACE stands for messenger. What we know from the science is that, as receivers of communication, we are heavily influenced by whoever communicates a piece of information. 

Think of classic dental adverts. You might see a beautiful-looking woman with big teeth, a white lab coat, and a clipboard. She says, this toothpaste is fantastic, I recommend it. Our mind says, that is a recommendation from a scientist or a dentist. That is the messenger effect at play. 

It is this idea that we are heavily influenced by who communicates a piece of information. From a fundraising perspective, we need to think about who is communicating the information. What is their authority or legitimacy? Are they likeable? 

A big part of why we all slightly liked face A is because there was a recognisable character in that face, someone we already knew. Thinking about these different aspects can affect your fundraising. I’ll show you an example of one organisation that experimented with the messenger effect to ask, who is the most effective messenger for our fundraising? 

The I in MINDSPACE stands for incentives. Our responses to incentives are shaped by the mental shortcuts we experience. For example, when we have donation options on a page, most of us tend to choose the thing in the middle. That is called the Goldilocks effect, as in not too hot, not too cold. 

This has interesting implications for how you highlight particular information. Having a pre-ticked box or a pre-prescribed amount can affect the way people recognise and behave on an online donation form. 

The N stands for norms. Norming tells us that we are strongly influenced by what other people do. I mentioned social norming a few moments ago, and this is exactly what I meant. 

Essentially, this is partly from evolutionary psychology. When we were coming out of sub-Saharan Africa, we followed the pack. We followed our tribe. The reason for that was because we did not want to be ostracised and left on our own. This still affects us today. 

It means that when we see other people doing things, especially people we recognise as like us, we are more inclined to do them as well. That is social norming at play. I think this is one of those fundraising lessons we already know. We just may not have known the scientific term behind it. 

The D in MINDSPACE stands for default. This is about the fact that we tend to go with the flow of preset options. I mentioned things like a tick box effect or having a pre-prescribed amount on a page. These are shortcuts that make it easier for us to make decisions. 

A suggested donation amount is a useful default because it helps us understand what amount is being asked for. We do not then have to shift into our system two brain to ask, how much exactly do they want? How much am I willing to give away? What difference will that make? That takes us out of system one and into system two. 

By adding defaults into our process, we ease the process and reduce the cognitive load for people, so they can go with the flow of preset options. 

The S in MINDSPACE stands for salience. Salience is an interesting phenomenon about how our attention is generally drawn to things that seem novel or relevant to who we are. This is why many appeals during the coronavirus period had strong traction. Many of us could identify with what it means to be isolated, to be away from friends and loved ones, and to feel unable to access arts and cultural opportunities. 

The salience of that experience enabled people to understand and appreciate the value of what we do in an even stronger way. Salience can be everything from that deep and meaningful interpretation through to the fact that sometimes a more recognisable name, or something coming across in news or social media that is completely disconnected from our cause, can still have a knock-on impact on our cause. 

An example is when Beyoncé released her album Lemonade in 2016. We saw exponential increases in sales of lemonade globally, just because more people were thinking about it and had a positive association with a great album. That is salience at play. There are interesting implications for fundraising as well. 

The P stands for priming. Priming tells us that our actions are affected by subconscious cues. You all know this by now because we played those games with you in the surveys. The anchoring technique that Bernard talked about is an example. The subconscious cue of being near 23rd Street meant that when people were considering what their monthly donation might be, that number influenced their decision, in that case in a positive way. 

The A stands for affect. Affect tells us that it is heart over head. Our emotions shape our actions. Keeping people in an emotive space is much more likely to drive the behaviour you want than bombarding them with lots of information, which requires them to move back into system two. 

Keeping people in system one means keeping them emotionally engaged with the messaging, the communication, and the action you are trying to encourage. 

Sorry, Dana. While you were talking about priming, shall we show people the apple experiment? 

Very quickly, when you were sent the questionnaire, you were asked one of two questions. Catherine divided you into two groups randomly. In one example, you were asked, how many calories do you think an apple has? I think you were cued with, do you think it is 51? In the other example, you were given a cue of 151. 

Half of you were given a cue of 51. Half of you were given a cue of 151. The average difference was between about 70 and 110. By cueing people with that number, you get a higher result. That can be applied to fundraising. If you are listening to this and thinking, I would not fall for that, I’m afraid you did. You do. 

Exactly that. The C in MINDSPACE stands for commitment. Commitment tells us that, as human beings, we like to be consistent in our commitments to who we are, how we express ourselves, our identity, our values, and our beliefs. The reason is that the world is a complex place. The simpler our understanding of ourselves is, and the more consistent we are with who we are, the easier that is on our brains. 

This is interesting when it comes to fundraising retention. Keeping donors on board means recognising that, at some point, when they donated to you, they expressed a commitment to something. That might be supporting young people to access the arts, a commitment to ballet, or however they decided to commit by supporting you with a donation. 

Reminding them of that commitment can be powerful. You might say, you supported us last year because this is what you are passionate about. That reminder helps them be consistent with that commitment. So commitment and consistency can be very powerful when we talk about supporter retention in fundraising. 

Similarly, this is where reciprocity comes in. Bernard showed you that image where the same part of our brain is activated when we give a gift and when we receive a gift. The power of reciprocity, and being able to enable and empower people to commit to giving something back because they have been activated in that way, is important when it comes to the general promotion of philanthropy and giving. 

Finally, the E stands for ego. This is something I think is commonly understood in the arts sector. In fundraising, we know people like to act in ways that make them feel good, or better, about themselves. What are the ways you can communicate that to people so they stay in that space where they feel fulfilled, understand the agency they have over a donation, and understand the impact they have? 

We talked to all the experimenters about these different principles. Some decided to focus on one principle. Others decided to use a range of heuristics and interventions to achieve their fundraising aims. 

The first experiment I’m going to talk about is by a company called the Handlebards. They are a very small touring theatre company based in the UK. They take Shakespeare’s shows and tour them in outdoor settings, and they do so on their bikes, hence the name Handlebards. 

The Handlebards are a team of two, with a freelance team of actors and performers. This was the first time they asked their audiences for a donation. They had no fundraising experience before this. 

The experiment that the Handlebards did focused on the messenger. Unlike other companies, they said, we are going to take one of these principles and really focus our experiment on that. The key questions with the messenger are, who is doing the ask? Do they have the authority, credibility, or validity to do that ask? How likeable are they? 

The hypothesis the Handlebards decided to test was this. Will the identity of the messenger have an impact on the level of gifts? That meant both the average gift and the number of gifts given. They decided to test four different messengers. 

They asked, who within our pool of people has some legitimacy or authority, or is likeable? The first messenger was a celebrity, patron, or ambassador figure. They happened to have Adrian Scarborough as an audience member. He is a famous actor in the UK, and they decided to test whether his public profile and presence as a recognisable character would influence their fundraising efforts. 

The second person they decided to use was one of the performers in the show, obviously the most recognisable face to the audiences. The third person was a young participant, somebody who had taken part in their educational programs. The fourth messenger was an existing audience member who was already a small-scale supporter of the Handlebards. 

It is important to know that Adrian Scarborough was in Killing Eve at the time, so he had a strong immediate presence as well. 

They filmed four fundraising videos. The messages were exactly the same, but the messenger was different. Adrian said, as a famous actor, this is why I think the Handlebards are fantastic. Tom, the actor, said, as one of the performers in the show, this is why I think the Handlebards are great and why you should support them. Sophie, the young participant, said, as someone who has taken part in the programs, this is why I think you should support them. Lindsay, the supporter and audience member, said, as a supporter and audience member, this is why I think you should support the program. 

Quick guesses in the chat box. Which of these do you think had the most impact? Who had the highest average donation, and who had the most donations? Was it Adrian Scarborough, Tom, lovely Sophie the child, or Lindsay, a fellow supporter? Maybe that draws on social norming. What do you think? 

There is a bit of a mix. You had very different reactions. At Team MC, we were convinced it was going to be Sophie. We thought she was so endearing in the video that we had a feeling it would be Sophie. I’ll show you a little bit about what everybody received, and then we’ll talk about the result. 

This is essentially the email that everybody got. They split their mailing list into different A/B tests, with four separate segments. Each segment received a different video and a different ask from a different person. This is typically what that email looked like. It was headed Giving the Gift of Shakespeare, and everybody got access to a two-minute video from Sophie, Tom, Lindsay, or Adrian, saying why they support the Handlebards and why they think you should support them too. 

Now for the results. The results showed that Adrian Scarborough got the highest amount of click-throughs. Most people opened the email. He also got the largest number of donations and the highest average donation. The results were very similar across the rest of the people, averaging around £28 to £30. 

This connects directly to the example Bernard shared about Tiger Woods. There is something about a recognisable, memorable face that persuades us to do something, especially when we have a very positive association with that person. People did at the time because he was a great actor in a show that was very much within the target audience of people who also go to see the Handlebards. 

There were interesting findings there, and I think they went a little against what we predicted. This is why it is so interesting to experiment and test these things. It is great for them because they have gone on to do a lot of work on their fundraising with some of this knowledge in place. 

They are doing really well in terms of their appeals. This is a tiny company with about 5,000 supporters, getting £7,000 to £10,000 from a mailing. The important thing here is the importance of experimenting and recognising that what you like, or what might work for you, is not necessarily what works for the market. 

One of the things we need to talk about is the need to experiment. I’ll ask you very quickly to do something on the screen. I’m going to ask you to say a little Buddhist chant that will help you with your fundraising, which is, I am not the target market. I am not the target market. A second time, I am not the target market. And a third time, I am not the target market. 

Every time you look at something and say, that would work for me, recognise that you, your board, your marketing manager, or your very clever 12-year-old designer are not the target market. You need to test. 

At the other end of the scale, from the tiny to the huge, this is a case study by the Royal Opera House. We worked with Marina Jones, who is the head of memberships and campaigns at the Royal Opera House. She was working on her legacy proposition, encouraging existing supporters, people who are giving regularly to the Royal Opera House, to consider leaving a gift in their will as well. 

She does an annual direct mail campaign and wanted to use decision science principles to improve the results. The starting point was very much affect. What powerful emotions could they draw on in the first instance? 

Sleeping Beauty is the ballet that the company reopened the Royal Opera House with in 1946. Many patrons were coming in those early days. It is a show performed year on year. Everybody has their favourite performer who played Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. 

This was a clever way for Marina to get to the emotions of people who care deeply about this work and to start identifying clusters of people who are in a particular tribe. Your Aurora might be Margot Fonteyn. It might be someone else. This helps understand where people are coming from, what their positive associations are, and who they most emotionally identify with. 

She did this cleverly on the envelope. This was the front of the envelope. It was a reverse envelope and a powerful way of using what we call adjacency pairs, which are a greeting and a greeting, or a question and an answer. In this case, the question was, who is your Aurora? That immediately gets people into an emotional affect space where they are thinking about that amazing experience of Sleeping Beauty that they love. 

She tested two separate letters. In the follow-on reading, we will give you a more detailed breakdown of all these things. In version one, she used terms like the messenger effect. She used a letter from an existing legacy pledger to do that social norming part, people like you and me do this. 

In the second version, she added and tested loss aversion. Loss aversion is the notion that people are twice as likely to be motivated by what they stand to lose than by what they stand to gain. 

Often in the arts, we frame things as, wouldn’t it be wonderful because more children can have better access to arts and cultural opportunities? That is a nice thing, but it is not as motivating as saying, if you do not support today, all these children are going to lose out on the chance to engage with culture. Framing things as a loss, either a loss for a group of people we care about or my loss, the opportunity I lose to support something brilliant, is more motivating. 

That is what she tested in the second letter to see if it had a stronger effect. 

She also did interesting work in the leaflet that accompanied the letter overview. On the cover, you will notice something that uses the gaze. Where are the eyes of Francesca Hayward in this particular image? Where is she looking? She is looking down at the call to action. 

This is a useful nudging technique. Often, we are told to use images where someone is looking at the camera. That can be powerful. But if the person in the image is looking where you want the audience’s attention to be directed, the audience will often follow their gaze. 

That is called using the gaze to affect and nudge people towards the information you want them to look at. That was a nice technique Marina used on the front cover. 

On the next page, there is some of the defaulting I talked about. There is a pre-ticked box that says the Royal Opera House is an important part of my life, and I want to support it in the future by including a gift in my will. That makes a slight suggestion. 

You will also notice that the quote uses reciprocity. Someone says, I have had lots of pleasure from this and I felt it was time to give something back. That uses social norming and the idea of being reciprocal by giving a gift back to the Royal Opera House. 

She also used some helpful techniques to explain the process of making a gift in a will. Legacy fundraising is different because we are not asking someone to act immediately on a call to action. We are not saying, we need you to support this thing right now, click this button. 

What we have to say is, you care about us. This is part of your identity. When the time is right, or when you are next at the lawyers, or when you are next thinking about updating your will, please remember us. There are many stages and aspects involved in that. 

To make that easier for people, she used chunking, which means dividing information into easier, more digestible pieces. In this case, she created a four-step process for what it means to leave a gift in your will to the Royal Opera House. 

She used signals showing the time it takes to take one of the options, or the amount of money associated with one of those options. Again, that makes it easier and quicker for people to make decisions. It keeps them out of a system two space and keeps them in a system one space. 

On the final part of the leaflet, there are again a few decision science techniques. The back page uses strong social norming, with a couple of statistics saying that 75 per cent of the people who leave a gift in their will are people who already support, just like you. There is also a little ego push in terms of what the money will do, what they like to see, and how they are going to support it. 

There is also another reminder of reciprocity, with a quote saying, it is time to give back. Please think about what I could be contributing to the future. You can see how small interventions overall can create a more successful and more effective campaign. 

That is exactly what happened. She had a better response rate. What was really interesting was that she invited people to say, now is not the right time for this conversation, but please talk to me in 12 months. For the first time, she got as many people in the pipeline for that as she did people making immediate pledges to leave a gift in their will. 

The third experiment I’m going to talk about very quickly is very different. This is the Bluecoat in Liverpool. It is a free-to-enter museum and gallery space. They wanted to encourage and incentivise on-site donations through donation boxes and donation points. 

It is worth saying that they started from a very low baseline. There were not many donations going through the three or four different donation points they had throughout the building. There is more detail in the attachment, but I’ll give you some examples of the interventions we made. 

On this particular donation box, there were decision science-informed improvements that we made. The first thing we did was elevate the payment device at the bottom. We put the leaflet, which Bernard mentioned before, a map guide, at the top to create a signal of reciprocity. 

The other thing we did was add a suggested donation amount at the top, which was £3. It said, tap to give £3 and get an instant warm feeling inside. That also massaged the ego element. 

The second thing we did was improve another donation box. In the image on the far left, the donation box was almost hidden. It was a very small grey box in the corner with a loose call to action. It looked as though they were trying not to receive donations. 

The first thing we did was move that box from a not very proactive area into a proactive area, with more information and a sign to encourage reciprocity. We created some anchoring by saying, give £3 for the next 300 years. That was the thing we did in week one. 

In week two, we took a little cardboard cut-out. This was one of the schoolboys. The Bluecoat used to be a school before it was converted into a gallery, and it was a school in the Victorian era. We used this little Victorian boy with his flute to nudge people towards the call to action. 

Before these interventions, that box was getting zero pounds and pence a month. By the time these interventions were in place, the box was getting about £100 a month. By moving it, adding the cardboard cut-out, nudging it, and making a couple of small changes, it went from making no money to making £100 a month in a short time. 

The third example involved making minor improvements to some of the other existing donation boxes. One used the endowed progress effect. The endowed progress effect is the fact that we like to complete things. We like to see the completion of things. In the same way that you like to complete a picture or do puzzles, we have that same tendency. 

We put a new wrap around that bucket to say, it’s your Bluecoat, but we need you. That invited people to fill in the blanks. We also made some minor improvements to the text on the outside donation box. 

With this experiment, what was most interesting was that these changes did not have that much impact. But we did notice that many people come to the Bluecoat to use the loo because it is a free public, accessible space. For some people, it is a local place to come and have a wee. 

So we put a sign on the back of the loo door to remind people and say, please keep art at the heart of Liverpool. Please consider donating today. That took those boxes from getting about £2 to £3 right up to £60 per box, just by having a priming message about the need to support on the back of the loo door. 

You might be surprised where your fundraising spaces are and what can drive behaviour in people. Those are the three UK experiments. I’m going to hand over to Bernard now to talk very briefly about the experiment we did in Australia with some of you, with Linden. 

Thanks to the great generosity of James, and with support from Catherine, we were able to do a couple of experiments. One we have done and are continuing with, and one I think Dana is going to bring back to everyone with the question, what would you do? 

I can see that the very clever Melinda Martin is there on the screen. Hello Melinda. Thank you so much for joining us. You did quite a clever thing by having a dinner. You were having a dinner and decided that although people were not expecting to be asked, you might ask them for money at the dinner. 

Here is a picture of you looking very clever in the middle there. I do not want to embarrass you by bringing you in, although you were looking fabulous there. I think there were about 40 people at the dinner. Is that right? 

We had 40 people at a dinner with three artists. 

That is quite a high artist-to-audience ratio. You had not really asked people for money before at dinners, but you did some great work. We helped with a little pledge card that you distributed towards the end of the dinner. Is that right? 

We put the pledge cards on the table with a handwritten note from me. 

That was great. You can see the pledge card doing many of the things Dana has talked about. There were three choices, giving people a sense of agency about what their money would do and helping them see how they could make a difference. There was also a thank you for your support and a thank you for coming. I think you also gave people a really nice little artist card as part of reciprocity. They received one of four little cards. Is that right? 

When they arrived, they got a little pack of postcards to thank them for joining us for the dinner. They received something they were not expecting. 

As well as a very nice dinner and a great talk from you and some artists. There were only 40 people there. I think they were in about 15 family groupings, so it was not 40 individuals. Some of them were wealthy, but they were not all individually wealthy. You did not do fantastic business, but tell people how you did. 

We raised $1,650 from the dinner. We had never asked for that money before at a dinner. They had already parted with $250 a couple to come to dinner, so they had already made an investment in the organisation. For us, it was a really interesting experiment. We learned a lot. 

Even listening now, I am reminded, as we are finalising our new case for support, of all those things we need to incorporate. One of the great things that came out of it is that it encouraged our board to match that money. The board will match that. Essentially, we have made nearly $3,000 from a dinner where we had no intention of using it as a fundraising event. 

It means that we will continue to use that approach. We now have these useful tools for the future. When you come to dinner, there will be an expectation that we will ask you for something more. 

Goodness, Melinda, when you are on a mission, you are on a mission, aren’t you? 

I am. 

You were so great to work with. You got two $500 donations in that, which are not bad donations at all. The point is that you need to start somewhere. You need to experiment a little. You are not a huge organisation and you do not have lots of very wealthy supporters. 

Marina at the Royal Opera House got a $50,000 gift from sending out the legacy letter. They are talking about very wealthy individuals. We consciously chose some big examples and some small examples to say, start somewhere. If you are a big organisation, you can work with big numbers. If you are a smaller organisation, start somewhere and try some of these techniques. 

It was such a pleasure to work with you, Melinda. I hope we are going to help you with either your case for support or your next annual appeal. As a great chief executive, you get it. Having all this fancy science is useful, but having a chief executive who gets it is the single most important thing. Thank you for that. 

Thank you so much. It was great to be part of the adventure. 

Dana, we are all right for time now. I think we are coming up to the next section. James, we are going to hand over and give people some questions. Dana, I think you have a little exercise for people now. We tried something with the Linden team, and I think you have a little experiment you want to share with the Melbourne team now. 

We are in the process now of working with Melbourne Fringe on another experiment. The hypothesis, or question, for that experiment is, how can we encourage audiences, people who pay for tickets to Fringe shows, to support us philanthropically? How can we use our newsletter as a vehicle to do that? 

How can we communicate to people who are buying tickets and say, aside from that specific event, what we want you to consider is supporting this whole initiative, this whole idea? That is the question in mind. Now that you have seen what you have seen, we have some key questions. I would love to hear from you in the chat with some ideas. 

As I ask you some prompt questions, add any ideas that come to mind in the chat. They might be from the examples we have shown you today, or things sparked by the questions. Using the MINDSPACE framework, what would you do in this situation? You have a newsletter. You have a way to communicate to a particular audience. What tools or techniques might you use in that newsletter? 

How can you encourage audiences to support you philanthropically using that newsletter? Put yourself in the shoes of Melbourne Fringe. How can you encourage your audiences to support you philanthropically using that newsletter? Here are a few prompt questions for each of the MINDSPACE principles. Add ideas in the chat as they come to you. 

We talked about messenger. Whoever delivers a message makes a significant impact. Who do you think might be the most impactful person, or people, to present an idea or an action? Is it somebody relatable? Is it someone who conveys authority? Is it someone likeable? 

Simon Abrahams, CEO, makes a lot of sense. He is an authority figure and CEO of Melbourne Fringe. Any other ideas? Maybe a couple of high-profile performers. That is a great idea. Is there somebody who got their break in that Adrian Scarborough role who can say, this is the value of Fringe? Fringe is the start of our careers. You need to support this if you want to see us on the telly or in films. Maybe a board member is also a good idea. 

Now think about incentives. We know we are more likely to be motivated by what we stand to lose than by what we stand to gain. How could you frame giving as a potential loss for the individual? What is the urgency around it? Is there anything you could do there? Is there any reciprocity you might be able to offer these people? Add any ideas in the chat. 

This one is quite interesting. How can we make it feel like people might miss out? Speaking about the loss through COVID could be one option. For me as an audience member, I lost out on my Fringe last year. How can I make sure I do not lose out on that again? Maybe it is by supporting the core organisation. 

Imagine my life without the Fringe. That is a nice way of framing some loss aversion. Lovely ideas here. 

Norming. We like to do and behave as others do. How can we demonstrate to people that others like them are giving? Any ideas on the social norming side? 

It is worth saying that, from many different experiments, the stronger and closer you can bring that pool of others like you, the more persuasive that narrative is. How can we use that effectively? For example, you could say, 60 other people like you today have already given. That is an interesting way to bring it closer and say, this is why we need you to take action today. 

One of the interesting things Dana is saying is that we know Marina has done this at the Royal Opera House. There is a sense of tribalism. Rather than talking about the whole audience, Marina consciously got people to be tribal about who their favourite performer was. 

You also see that with Wikipedia. If Wikipedia has ever asked you for money, they often say that most people do not give. They consciously say, most people do not give. We are looking for a small number of people like you who really care about this stuff. So make people feel they are special. 

Norming does not mean everyone does it. Norming can mean you are special because you do it. That is particularly interesting if you are running or managing patron schemes or supporter circles, where the point is exclusivity. Reminding people that this is a group of very dedicated people who are different to the norm, but normal among their peers, can be an important tool. 

I can see the tribalism of Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth coming out here. The Scottish invented tribalism, but Australians have certainly acquired it. You just changed the names of the tribes. 

Next set of considerations. Let’s get some more ideas flowing. Think about salience. How can we make the behaviour or the option we are promoting seem like an interesting choice? Is there anything that feels prominent, salient, or easier to understand? 

For example, is it match your ticket with the price of another ticket, rather than give us $20? Again, send through any ideas about making it a little more salient, easier to grasp, and more relevant. 

Similarly, defaults. Does anybody have ideas about how we can offer choice, but not too much choice? What kind of choice should we be suggesting? Should we recommend an amount? Is it about a scale? Should it be a little landing page with a few options? What are some of those ideas? 

I know these are not specific examples, but we are interested to see how you are interpreting this thinking. Melinda, the example you used, saying that the board will match people’s money, is both salient and gives people a sense of agency. 

Denise, I think we definitely have some perspectives on gold, silver, and bronze. Who likes to be in the bronze club? No one really. It is an interesting idea to have different levels, but it is useful to think about the naming of those levels and the tribal aspect of what those levels each are. 

Fan and superfan. That is a good example. Sarah, your point is useful too, about giving us a sense of what the money will go to. Rather than saying, give us $20, you might say, support a child to see a show, or frame it by the value of the thing rather than the particular amount. That way, we associate it with value instead. 

The final three parts of MINDSPACE are affect, commitment, and ego. Think about the specific emotions we want people to have. Do we want them to be angry? Do we want them to be sad? Do we want them to be joyful? How do we do that? 

Can we remind them of a commitment? What kind of commitment might audiences have to the Fringe that they do not realise, which we can remind them of and use to our effect? 

In terms of ego, Catherine’s suggestion is useful. The glass of wine in your hand type of thing is a nice way of framing it as something those people know, recognise, and may associate with the Fringe. It is the feeling they get, or the feeling that makes them feel good, and maybe a feeling many of us have missed. 

Georgie, that is a useful point about stewardship. I could not have performed this without your support. That is a strong suggestion and a nice ego stroke. 

Now we will take all those ideas. I am kidding. We do have some ideas about what we are going to do. I think there is some social norming we are going to focus on. We will look at the defaults we use and make sure we are using affect, salience, and a bit of priming in the messaging and communications as well. Stay tuned for some of those. 

Great. I think, James, we have done what we said we would do and wanted to give people some space to ask direct questions, either in the chat or however you want to manage that. 

Just to say, I think we agreed that we will give you a 70-page download about all of this. I could see some of you writing notes, but there is lots of material. If you want more, you can get in touch with us or we have a couple of websites that can help. 

James, do you want to try and handle some questions if people have questions? 

Definitely, Bernard. While we are waiting for questions to come in, is the document you are going to send us going to flesh out that MINDSPACE acronym? It is terrific. 

Absolutely. It takes you through both the theory underpinning the framework, which is a simple way to encompass evolutionary science, behavioural economics, and the other areas we have discussed. It also gives many examples directly from the 11 big experiments that we did. We talked about three of them today, but we have done other interesting experiments, not just in the UK, but internationally. 

The question is whether there is such a thing as too much of the MINDSPACE elements. That is an interesting question. I would say that all of this begins from a core point. These tools and techniques will never persuade people to do things they were not already inclined or willing to do. 

We are starting from the baseline that, if someone comes to your donation page, you have a choice. You can use some of these techniques and principles to make it as easy as possible for them to give, to maximise that giving, and to encourage them to give at a higher level than they might have originally expected. However, you are not convincing someone to give if they never wanted to give. 

When we are fundraising, we are hopefully doing so once we have established that these are people who are willing, happy, and ready to receive that messaging. The MINDSPACE elements are about making that process easier and more motivating for them. They use some of the science behind what we already use as intuitive or instinctive techniques that make up good fundraising practice. 

Is there too much of the MINDSPACE elements? It is always on a case-by-case basis. You are not always going to use all of the MINDSPACE elements in what you are doing. However, there are often interventions where you can start with one element, incorporate others, test some others, and see what works. 

It is also important to know that people can become fatigued by some techniques and tools. At that point, it is important to mix things up and change the approach. 

There is also an important thing called cognitive overload. Do not try to be too clever and do not give people too much choice. My worst kind of cognitive overload is when membership schemes are all laid out with too many options. There is too much choice. 

If we have too much choice, our brains freeze. Should I go bronze, silver, solo, or something else? This is the worst thing you can do because it brings in system two. It makes people stop thinking about being altruistic in system one and instead ask, what is the best deal for me? That is a different thing. We are talking about philanthropy, not whether this makes business sense. Please avoid cognitive overload. 

Dana and Bernard, there is a question here from Sarah about ways we are communicating. We heard from Jimmy Buck, a local chap, about how communication is changing and how we can use tools. Even in the last 18 months, social media and digital communication tools have become perhaps the norm, or even more powerful than they were. Any comments on that? 

I’ll say something about digital. Dana, you are slightly younger than me. That is true. Things are changing, although I think the whole digital thing gets oversold. Digital giving has increased by 100 per cent in the last year, but that means it has gone from 7 per cent to 14 per cent of giving. That is true in the UK, it is true in the US, and I’m sure it is true in Australia as well. 

There is a difference between me receiving an individual solicitation or direct mail pack, and then fulfilling my gift online. Many digital companies include me paying by credit card as online giving, but that is not the same thing. 

We also need to recognise that people talk a lot about young donors. Young people, millennials, and Gen Z are just as generous as people over 40 or over 50. They just do not have the money. I’m sorry. I have the money. I’m a boomer. I’m holding on to it until I die, but I have the money. 

There is a great question from Australian fundraiser Sean Triner. What is the best way to persuade the under-40s to donate to charity? The answer is, wait until they are over 40. Older people have the money to give. Engaging younger donors through newer techniques is a good way to get them on board, but the money still sits more with older donors. 

It is also useful to think about the largest single transfer of wealth in the history of the world, which I know causes Dana personal pain. 

A lot of the wealth that has been accumulated, particularly by the baby boomer generation, is about to transfer. We are about to see the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of humankind when those people die. They also happen to be among the most generous and philanthropic people. 

There is something called a bequest marketing gap. These are people who are generous and may be thinking about leaving a gift in their will, but are not necessarily doing it, or even aware that they can do it. There is a gap to fill over the next 20 to 30 years. Legacy giving globally is one of the few fundraising markets that will grow significantly over that period. 

That is why bequests are so important, and why legacy giving is so important. Organisations need to put the tools and techniques in place now so they can make the most of that opportunity. 

Dana and Bernard, Philip asks a question about how powerful it is to use donors to meet other donors, or perhaps for the organisation to introduce donors to each other. Have you done any experiments in that area? 

There is no question that having other donors who are like me, in the sense of my tribe, can have an effect. I told you about the mistake I made with the streets in New York example. Another thing I discovered was about putting up a big board saying thank you to the Jane Smith Foundation and the Arts Council of England, and so on. 

I had said to one small arts centre, put your donation box in front of that board, so that when people come in, they think, all these important people are giving money, so my money will help too. What happened was that donations went down. People thought, if all these big people are giving money, my £5 or £10 does not really make a difference. 

People were denied agency. That is such a key word. You need to give people agency. A beautiful thing Melinda and her team did was to say, here is what $350 will do. It will pay for a talk in a non-English language for a group of people who want to visit, or pay for an artist to have a studio space for a day. That gives people agency about what their money will do. 

Without the structure behind it, donors meeting other donors will have some social norming effect. However, the principles are that people need to see that either it is a mass or majority of some kind, or that it is an exclusive minority. The closer they feel they align with those people, in terms of values, background, and identity, the stronger the social norming will be. 

I am just reading this question from Natalie Bell. Natalie, are you online? Do you want to ask this? I remember that, right at the beginning of this webinar, you were the one who had read the unconscious bias book. Are you online? Do you want to ask this question in person? 

Sure. I am interested to know, how do you challenge people who are quite embedded with the say data and the messaging that you get, such as, it has always worked like this before, so why is it not working now? How do you challenge those ideas or bring them over to the do data? 

That is a great question. The internal work is as much about using these techniques as using them with your supporters and donors. A big part of why we produced this data was to enable cultural organisations to say, these people are using these techniques, so we need to be using these techniques too. 

That means encouraging people through social proof and social pressure. You can say, other organisations are doing this, and we need to be doing it as well. Appealing to the ego of particular people you are dealing with can also help. 

I would also suggest framing the use of this technique as a loss. For example, if we do not do this, we are going to be behind other organisations. We are going to lose the opportunity to maximise donations in this instance, or to gain new donors in that instance. It depends on the particular application. Can you use loss aversion to persuade or convince them otherwise? 

It is always a tricky challenge. Part of the reason we encourage the experimental approach is that sometimes it is very hard to get buy-in for something people may not immediately subscribe to. Getting them to commit to an experiment in the first instance is a useful way to say, can we at least have an opportunity to test that idea, prove it wrong, or try something new? 

You can then use their commitment to that experiment as a reminder when it comes to implementing the approach across the organisation. There are very specific tools you can use from MINDSPACE to do some of that internal influence. 

Another thing to think about is the difference between heuristics, unconscious bias, and noise. Heuristics are quick rules we use that tell us we do not need to think about something too much. We might fix the grammar in a sentence automatically, or choose to be with someone we like. That is a heuristic we can use. 

Unconscious bias has many negative consequences in terms of unfairness and social injustice, and we should address it and tackle it wherever we can. There are good examples in decision science, especially in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow, of how to try to tackle that, whether it is about sentencing policy, unfairness, or hiring. 

I almost want to say that unconscious bias is a bad version of heuristics. There is something else called noise, which Daniel Kahneman’s new book is about. Noise is where people are not really paying attention. They are not really listening to what we are saying because life is messy and full of noise. We need to try to reduce the noise in order to make our message simple and clear. 

A nice example, which is in one of the other experiments we will mention in the book, is from the Shakespeare Schools Foundation. As people went into a theatre for a children’s theatre experience, they were asked if they wanted to take a sticker that said, I love Shakespeare. 

They went into the auditorium and could choose to take a sticker saying, I love Shakespeare. You are at a Shakespeare festival, so it is a bit of a no-brainer. As people left the theatre, there were people with collecting boxes and T-shirts with the same logo, saying, I love Shakespeare too. 

Donations then went up because people had taken a sticker through reciprocity and saw a message that fitted with their ego. We have done that many times. By getting people to choose a sticker, they are not really aware that they are unconsciously saying, I sign up to the Shakespeare tribe. That tribal thing is important. 

The other thing I would say about Daniel Kahneman’s book is that it is a book that many people buy and hardly anyone reads because it is very academic. I would probably recommend Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational as a quicker and easier book. 

Agreed. It is not necessarily a better book, but it is an easier read. 

Natalie Bell has read Thinking, Fast and Slow. Perhaps we will dive into that book for a webinar next year. That will scare us. 

That has been tremendous. We are out of time. Thank you both very much. That was a terrific session. 

I think this webinar showed that our jobs are not as straightforward as we might think. You have demonstrated that there is a science behind what we are doing, and that we need to go deeper into how we think about the role we have, how we communicate, how we develop our asking, and perhaps how we work more closely with our marketing teams as well. 

That is what came to my mind. It is about ideas, doing things more effectively, and having a better understanding of how people respond to the prompts we give them. But test those ideas as well. 

It has been terrific. I also want to remind people of Bernard’s latest book, Making the Ask: The Artful Science of High Value Fundraising. It is available on Kindle now. It only came out a couple of weeks ago. 

It is not actually out yet. It comes out on the 15th, but if you buy it now on Kindle, it is only 99 cents. A bargain of a book. Buy it now before it is officially released and you will get a bargain. 

Thank you to those at Linden New Art and Fringe for your involvement in this webinar. The next Knowledge Series webinar, which some of you may already be booked into, will take place on Thursday 3 June on everybody’s favourite topic, tax. Tax and tips for arts fundraisers. Please join us for that. 

We do hope you are enjoying the Knowledge Series. If you would like to suggest future topics for these webinars, please email your state manager and we will take your suggestions on board. 

Thank you for participating today. Thank you again to Bernard and Dana. You can go and grab yourselves a coffee and recover from your early morning. I wish everybody a terrific rest of the week. Bye-bye.