What Does This Box Promise?

Suppose a donor gives $250 with “Family reading workshops” ticked on the reply card. Six months later, they ask how many workshops the gift paid for. If the form never said what the tick did, there’s no good answer. The gift went into the general fund, the tick sits in a field nobody reports on, and the donor had reason to assume otherwise.

A priority box can do three different things. Each needs its own sentence on the form and its own person behind it.

The finding in its setting

Kessler, Milkman and Zhang (2019) randomly assigned 32,174 previous donors, alumni of a university, to receive the standard reply card or one that also invited them to mark which of four priorities mattered most. Gifts stayed unrestricted whatever they marked. Among those in the highest-income census tracts who gave, gifts were about 2.4 times as large with the choice card; the study found no statistically significant increase in the likelihood of giving. A census tract describes a neighborhood, so it’s only a rough guide to any one person’s wealth. The authors note that some alumni may have believed their choice directed their gift.

The experiment doesn’t establish what every donor understood. If you offer a choice, say plainly what it does.

Kestrel’s new reply card

Kestrel Reading Project runs three things: one-to-one tutoring for children in grades 1 to 4, books children take home to keep, and evening reading workshops for families. Gifts go to the general literacy fund, which pays for all three. Kestrel has never offered a restricted option on its standard forms.

Marisol, the development director, wants to add a priority question to the spring reply card and the online form. Before drafting, Marisol meets Ben, the program director, and Yusuf in finance with three questions: what will the answer do, who will do it, and what must the form not imply.

They agree that the answer will decide which program stories go to donors who have asked for updates, and that Ben will receive the totals each June. It won’t change where any gift goes. Ben commits to one short update per program area every six months, so each option has something behind it. Yusuf asks to see any note requesting a restriction before anything is recorded, because Kestrel’s gift acceptance policy requires finance approval for a restricted gift.

Five replies from the first week

The spring appeal goes out on March 2. Marisol picks five of the first week’s replies that show the decisions the team now has to make the same way every time.

Joan’s gift

On the call, Marisol explains that Kestrel gifts normally support all of its reading work, and asks what Joan would prefer. Joan wants the $500 used only for books children keep at home. Yusuf had confirmed on March 6 that Kestrel can accept a gift restricted to home books under its policy, so Marisol agrees, and sends the handoff below the same day.

What Kestrel left out

Marisol’s first draft of the card said “Choose where your gift makes the biggest difference.” Read on its own, that tells the donor the gift will go where they choose, which wasn’t true for any of the options. It came out.

The team also kept the interest field away from the appeal schedule. A donor who ticks Tutoring hasn’t asked for the tutoring appeal and no other, and hasn’t agreed to more email.

When the answer changes or doesn’t fit

If a donor ticks something different next year, the new answer is current. Keep the old one with its date; the donor may mention the change, and it helps to know.

If a program area pauses, tell the donors who chose it and asked for updates, and ask whether they’d like a different focus. If a donor asks how “their” program used the gift, answer truthfully: the gift went to the whole program, and here is what that program did.

If the donor doesn’t answer a restriction query by the agreed date, finance decides the next step under the gift acceptance policy. Keep the original instruction, assign a person and a next review date, and record any contact the donor’s preferences allow. Silence doesn’t turn the gift into an unrestricted one. Recording the money and settling its use are separate tasks; follow finance’s policy for both.

The development director owns the form and the six-month check. The program director owns update content and receives the totals. Finance owns every restriction decision. Whoever processes gifts owns the fields and the review flags.

Check after six months

Count the notes that asked for a restriction and how quickly each was resolved, and read every donor question about where a gift went. If several donors thought they had chosen where their money went, rewrite the sentence on the form.

A higher average gift after adding the question doesn’t show the question caused it. To find out, send the two cards to randomly assigned halves of the same mailing and compare everyone assigned, including people who didn’t give.