Four Key Takeaways from Interviews with Arts Donors

ABA conducted more than 20 hour-long, in-depth interviews with donors affiliated with our member organizations throughout November and December 2020. This was complemented by speaking with dozens of fundraising and development officers at arts organizations around the world, as well as drawing from the experiences of out-of-industry experts. These interviews are the beginning of our next large-scale research initiative, Redefining the Donor Value Proposition.

During these interviews, we sought to uncover donor motivations, to unpack how donors plan their giving approach, and to distinguish between nice-to-have and must-have elements of the donor experience. In anticipation of our upcoming donor survey and many more conversations still to come, here are four emerging themes we’ve heard from donors to culture and arts organizations so far. 

The amount donors give to any one organization is almost entirely shaped during their early days of donating by a combination of (1) the amounts required to join each giving circle or tier and (2) what donors deem is ‘enough’ to do their part

While a donor will change their donation based on a perception of the organization’s need, most often donors tend to anchor their decisions on the options that are presented to them. It’s a form of what we call anchor bias: once you see the menu, once you become familiar with the giving levels and the increments that separate them, you only see those amounts as your possible giving levels. For example, if the lowest recognized giving level is $5,000, and the next recognized giving level is $10,000, a lower-level donor is unlikely to choose to give a $7,582.00 annual donation, even if they technically have the resources to do so. In this scenario, a number like $7,582.00 has no immediately apparent meaning. 

Once they are made aware of their options, donors then decide how much they ‘should’ give (or how much is ‘enough’), which is a combination of what they can afford to give and what they believe is their duty to give, based on factors like marital status, whether they have children, and how much they get out of the arts. When prompted to discuss whether he would consider increasing his giving to arts organizations, for example, one interviewee said that increasing “would probably be appropriate for a couple or a family. Just being single, $1,000 is already a high tier.” 

What constitutes doing one’s part to support the organization, or the art form? Once donors latch onto a number that they feel answers this question for them — whether it be $1,000, $5,000, or $60,000 — they are most likely to continue giving at roughly the same level if they feel they’ve formed a personal relationship with the organization. 

Donors generally concentrate their giving in their top 2-5 organizations, and giving to these organizations relies more on maintaining the same giving habits than on research and consideration. Donors also have a ‘long tail’ of giving in smaller amounts to a range of different organizations; some of these are one-off, while others are habitual.

Almost all of the donors we spoke to mentioned that they preferred to spread their wealth across a variety of organizations; they are wary of putting all of their eggs into one or two baskets. At the same time, they don’t want to spread their wealth around too much because they feel that a smaller number of larger donations will have a larger impact. Most had picked a ‘magic number’ of organizations that were of the highest priority to them, typically between two and five organizations; those with more to give devoted substantial resources to 7 or more organizations. 

While maintaining their donations to this smaller subset of organizations across the years, most donors tend also to give smaller amounts to other organizations as the need or ask arises, even though they may know that their impact will be diluted. When interviewed, they shared lists of 20 or more organizations to which they gave much smaller amounts on a regular basis, in response to mailers or other forms of contact. A couple we interviewed noted that they “don’t really have a plan. We have settled on the top three [organizations] we give the most to, knowing that at least 20-30 other things will come up during the year.” 

Once donors start to give, they ‘fall into’ donating to certain institutions, and they continue to do it out of habit — whether or not those institutions are of high priority to them. Because of this, their total giving across causes remains static over time, excepting extraordinary changes in personal circumstances. 

While donors often join specifically to get benefits or perks, they say they would not reduce their giving if those perks were reduced or even eliminated

Donors give for a variety of reasons, and they overwhelmingly choose to do so after first having a personal connection with the organization or learning about the organization’s mission through direct contact, such as being invited to attend a performance. A handful of donors we spoke to pointed to benefits like free parking and access to donor lounges as reasons for their giving — but across the board, donors indicated that they would not change their giving habits if those perks were significantly reduced or removed entirely (as has been the case for many during the COVID-19 pandemic). 

Mid-sized and large donors share a common understanding that tickets do not cover an organization’s expenses, and that the generosity of donors is essential to keeping an arts organization alive. Many donors expressed a desire to help their communities, including by attracting business and building a vibrant local economy, through a demonstrated commitment to the arts. They stated their views clearly: the arts are not a luxury. They belong — they are needed — as part of the social fabric of every community. In the words of one interviewee, “I think about what it must cost to keep that place going. I can do my small part to keep it going through my frequent attendance and donations.”

When prompted to discuss what keeps them giving, donors emphasize community: they stick around for the people, whether that be other donors, staff, board members, artists, or students

Once a donor begins to give, what makes them stay? Even in the case of donors who appear to have a transactional relationship with the organization at first glance (think: donors who give just enough to get a subscription and lounge access), the opportunity to meet and to know other people is what brings them back each year. Interviews revealed they have an acute awareness of what would be lost without those relationships. 

Importantly, donors emphasized the difference between arts organizations’ (often costly) initiatives to foster community-building and the community itself. One interviewee summed this up succinctly when she told us that “perks like donor parties and receptions create community, and that is one of the satisfactions people get from donating. It is something people get besides the altruism of giving to the arts. But there are a lot of ways to create community without parties.” 

We spoke to some donors who had met lifelong friends through the opera or symphony; we spoke to other donors who jumped at every opportunity to speak with artistic directors and performers and curators. They weren’t planning on discontinuing those relationships anytime soon. To do so would be to leave the community that had brought them those friends in the first place. 

As 2021 approaches, we are eager to continue speaking directly with you and your donors to deliver solutions to some of the most pressing challenges faced by arts organizations today. Did these preliminary findings surprise you? Did they reaffirm what you have experienced on the ground, during the pandemic or otherwise? Contact your member advisor or email info@advisoryarts.com to schedule a research interview.