Understanding Contextual Determinants of Likely Online Advocacy by Millennial Donors

  • Understanding Contextual Determinants of Likely Online Advocacy by Millennial Donors

Introduction

Hands holding a give sign

Competition between nonprofit organisations (NPOs) for people’s donation has been more challenging due to lower “giving behaviour” and the increasingly “noisy” online environment. Donors can advocate for NPOs online through positive eWOM, information-sharing acts, and recommendations to family and friends on social media, which highly engages powerful imagery, content, and virtual expressions (emojis and emoticons) to reach and influence others. Content shared by donors on social media can be either user-generated or firm-generated, then shared by advocates. However, online advocacy is relatively low with fewer than 40% of social media users reported as willing to share donation activities online. Still, social media is an important interactive tool for NPOs’ advocacy building efforts. Advocacy – the act of publicly representing someone or something to persuade others to view them favourably or agree with them – can be used to generate public support, spread information, and encourage prosocial behaviours that are intended to help others.

Social media’s power to spread information and engage with existing and potential donors is the most evident among millennials, who are important donors and volunteers for NPOs. By self-disclosing support for NPOs on social media, they can portray donations as a normative behaviour within their networked groups and increase awareness for the cause. The impact on donation decisions is greater when the information is exposed to known people like friends and family. Self-disclosure refers to the process of voluntarily sharing personal information to help others or encourage others to make choices that are intended to help others.

As there is little understanding of how NPOs can encourage existing donors to engage more in online advocacy, this research aims to address this gap by exploring:

  1. How social norms, including descriptive norms (what people actually do) and prescriptive norms (what people “ought to” do) and psychological involvement (individual perception of the level of importance of and interest in a particular product or brand) affect donors’ online advocacy;
  2. Whether the type of content strategy used by NPOs (highlighting the individual contribution or milestone vs. highlighting the donation impact vs. including a call-to-action) influences donors’ decision to share it online, and
  3. How different donation types (blood, money, time) influence donors’ online advocacy and their sharing of NPOs-generated content differently.

Method and sample

Cross-sectional online surveys were completed by 329 millennials (18-40 years old) in Australia who had donated blood, time, or money in the last 12 months and used Facebook. Three types of donations were examined and collaborative partnerships with NPOs were used for recruitment where possible. On average, the sample had a higher proportion of female respondents across all donor groups (70-80%). 90% were repeat donors and 72.4% donated in various ways including blood, time, and/or money. Just over 50% has successfully influenced someone to donate via recommendations, which occurs more common among donors of blood and money.

The surveys’ technical setup that prevents participants from skipping questions were to eliminate nonresponse errors. Descriptive norms, prescriptive norms, psychological involvement, online advocacy likelihood, and intentions to share firm-generated content were all measured using different methods, including 7-point Likert scales. The below figure represents mock virtual badges using different types of content strategy to assist the measurement of intentions to share firm-generated content.

Key findings

  1. Willingness to engage in online advocacy among millennial Australian donors was relatively high and socially acceptable (prescriptive norms), but not widely common among their networked groups (descriptive norms).
  2. Volunteers (time donors) reported significantly more positive descriptive norms than blood donors and the prevalence of sharing volunteer activity online is also higher. Both sharing volunteer and blood donating activities were considered almost twice as more socially acceptable than money donations. This is reinforced by the much lower online advocacy among money donors.
  3. Online advocacy is motivated by a strong connection to the NPO. High psychological involvement increases the likelihood of online advocacy. However, donors may not want to publicly advocate for all NPOs they donated to, and psychological involvement helps categorise which ones donors would and would not publicly advocate for.
  4. Psychological involvement most strongly correlates with intentions to share impact-focused firm-generated content.
  5. Content that emphasises the donation impact and includes a call-to-action from the NPO generates higher intentions to share compared to content focused on individual contributions.

Recommendations

  1. NPOs should focus more on generating online advocacy by donors because it is a more persuasive communication method and is a more valuable outcome compared to the primarily focused passive public advocacy such as liking a Facebook page.
  2. NPOs could normalise donors’ online advocacy by enlisting the services of social media influencers and create a positive social norm via their authentic donation experiences and impacts.
  3. NPOs should foster strong connections with donors to build harmony and communicate the need for continued support, which will lead to online advocacy as the connections strengthen.
  4. Initial efforts to encourage online advocacy should target more experienced donors because they are more likely to engage and continue donating due to a sense of accountability after being publicly recognised.
  5. NPOs should include in the content a clear call-to-action asking donors to share content and highlight the potential benefits of advocacy. This has been proved as a powerful motivator for online advocacy decisions across all three donation types.
  6. NPOs should provide content that donors will want to share with their social networks e.g., content that emphasises donation impact over individual contributions, especially for money donations.

Lead Researcher

More information

The research article is also available on eprints