In Great Britain, a whopping 85% of the public ‘believe the world is getting worse, all things considered.’ This has increased 5% since a year ago, in October 2023. For the public, the future looks dim.
What, if any effect does this gloomy outlook have on the way the public react to charity appeals? What about their attitudes toward those organisations working to reduce global poverty, or toward their government’s overseas aid budget? We know from previous DEL research that people with a sunnier outlook tend to both have more hope for efforts overseas and are more likely to engage, for example by donating: If someone who believes they can’t make any difference whatsoever is convinced that they can make a great deal of difference, the likelihood that they will donate jumps from 17% to 44%.
It stands to reason, then, that improving the public’s outlook will increase engagement with global issues. Much criticism has already been thrown at the aid sector for its historical reliance on pity-based techniques to generate donations which, over the long term, may have contributed to a general depression of hope (even if the sector can’t be entirely to blame for the widespread malaise currently gripping much of the world). Still, as DEL has written before, if fundraising tactics have had even a small role in this pessimism – both about the state of the world and an individual’s ability to affect global poverty – one could expect the sector to be curious about practices that might reverse the trend.
Possibly, what the public feel ‘never changes’ isn’t lack, but loss.
In a survey experiment in October 2024, DEL sought to test the public’s response to frames demonstrating that ‘need is temporary, not innate.’ This concept has appeared in a number of DEL’s NGO partners’ guidelines for decolonizing their communications, namely to end the habitual tendency to remove agency from aid-recipient communities in the Global South in order to inspire pity. But when communications efforts do the opposite – demonstrate that progress is not only possible, but proven, that there is a precedent for success and evidence of resilience in these communities – do the public respond differently?
DEL gave a nationally representative sample of more than 8,000 adults in Great Britain three frames:
First, there was no statistically significant difference in the sample group’s response to the first two frames, which were designed to test the public’s response to the depiction of what existed before, demonstrating that prosperity and independence are possible. This tests the notion that the public feel ‘nothing ever changes,’ or that the situation has always been hopeless. That these frames showed little difference in public response perhaps reveals some nuance to this understanding of public attitudes. Possibly, what the public feel ‘never changes’ isn’t lack, but loss. Put another way, perhaps they feel that the stories conveyed to them via news and social media, charity appeals and campaigns is that yet again, disaster has struck and it’s ‘up to us’ to fix it. More testing is needed, but it’s clear there is more to the public’s gloomy outlook than meets the eye.
In the third frame, DEL added an element of progress. Obviously, this takes the frame out of the realm of an emergency appeal and into something more retrospective, perhaps a segment meant to demonstrate past progress as part of an emergency appeal, or even a follow-up campaign – like those used by the Disasters Emergency Committee.
Regardless, there was a clear, statistically significant difference between the frame that demonstrated progress and the one that did not. The progress frame yielded a 4% increase in the viewer’s likelihood to donate in the next 12 months, and an 11% increase in the belief that progress is being made against global poverty. Given that 14% of the British public donated in the last 12 months (as of October 2024), this would represent a 29% increase in donations. As for those who believe progress is being made against global poverty – which currently stands at 3% of the British public – this would mean an astounding 366% increase.
For aid organisations and policymakers, these numbers should be more than enough incentive to shift decades’ worth of deficit-based tactics.
What remains to be seen is an exploration of context: Will stories that transform that deficit model into one that’s asset-based improve outcomes when used as sidebars to active appeals, as in ‘This is what we’ve done before, time to do it again’? Or are they more successful as standalone, follow-up or ‘secondary’ campaigns, whereby an organisation returns to past and potential donors months or even years after a primary appeal, with or without a financial ask? And how closely should stories of progress mimic stories of need in active appeals? Can more subtle stories of progress be embedded in stories of need with equally positive outcomes? These are all questions worth exploring.
