The Value of Depicting Diversity in Fundraising Appeals

Organizations often send fundraising appeals to solicit financial contributions. Increasingly, centers and institutes in higher education are relying on their own revenue sources from fundraising to maintain their operations and close expected budget shortfalls. At the same time, there is a push to be more diverse and inclusive in academia and beyond. Does highlighting organizational efforts to be more inclusive and/or diverse alter fundraising success? This study seeks to test--using an unobtrusive, randomized field experiment with potential donors--whether slightly different variations of fundraising appeals affect financial donation patterns, especially among recipients who are themselves members of diverse or historically under-represented communities.