"...If a donor donates regularly – even small amounts –they gather evidence from their own behavior that “I am a generous person.” Once someone embraces a donor identity, they naturally want to act consistently with it..."

I am reading from Neurogiving. The Science of Donor Decision-Making by Cherian Koshy, published in 2025.

Reflection questions:

• When you are talking with long-term donors, are you entering into conversations of curiosity to find out why they give?
• Are you aligning your capital campaign ask with the donor’s stated identity and motivation for giving?

Reflection on quote:

We are continuing exploring how generosity is deeply embedded into what it means to be human and how that impacts capital campaigns, using insights from a book recently released by my friend and colleague Cherian Koshy. This week, we are looking at donor identity as it relates to capital campaigns.

As we prepare for a capital campaign, one of the necessary reports that we pull from our donor database is a list of long-term givers and some of these long-term donors are donors who are able to give more significantly during the quiet phase of the campaign. As we schedule times to meet with these donors, it’s important to understand how the donor’s self-identification as a generous person to this cause affects their motivation to potentially give to the campaign. In small towns, we can assume we know why they are giving to our cause, but until we have entered into conversations of curiosity, we won’t know. Once we have a better idea of how their identity is driving them to give, we can frame the capital campaign ask as being in alignment with their generous identity.

Here's how to purchase Neurogiving from Wiley or Amazon.

Quote used by permission.

What do you think? Send me a text.

To explore small town capital campaign coaching deeper and to schedule an free explore coaching call, visit ServingNonprofits.com.

Music credit: Woeisuhmebop