Donor Motivation Quotes

As I see it, most major philanthropists have been bullied into giving. They feel social pressure to give. It has become a cost of doing business.

Traditional charity is still fairly focused on how it makes donors feel as opposed to outcomes for people that need help.

Intervention giving is emotional and the results are measurable.

It's very easy to do a fundraiser and spend a lot of money on food and venue and not raise any money. You really do need to twist people's arms into giving, even if they support you.

I don't know how many people there are with a million dollars who are inclined to give it to a writers' retreat.

I’ve looked at your website and see all the contributors to your campaigns. I don’t suppose that you ask every one of them how they made the money that they donated.

I do not think it is selfish to want to donate a kidney "only" to family members.

When we started out, I kept wondering, what are the rules of philanthropy? And it turns out that there are rules for it. And nobody could talk about that. There is no set formula for this because anything with a human being cannot have a formula.

Effective fund-raising is based on relationships.

In order to raise money from somebody, you have to understand who is this person, not to deceive them but to understand them. What would be their motives for contributing money? Why do these people contribute money to some places, but not to others? That's attunement - treating everybody well, but not treating everybody the same.

So many rich people, when they get into philanthropy, they have one thing they like, or several things they focus on. They pick a disease or a college or some kind of non-profit. They produce good results through that cause, but also they get recognized; there's some sort of monument to what they did.

Do you know the Democrats can't raise a dime? The Democrats' fundraising is practically nonexistent. And on the other side of that, Republican fundraising is through the roof! It's through the roof to the point that people can't believe it, even on the Republican side. Now, they're not gonna give Trump credit for it. I don't know who else is getting credit, but it should be Trump. But Republican fundraising is going through the roof. And I guarantee you the people giving the Republicans money are doing it because of Trump.

Donors do not reward good intentions.

Do you know they've already seen a drop of 37% in donations [for Clinton Global Initiative]? Now, if it's a charity, why a 37% drop? There's a 37% drop because the donors figured out the Clintons can't do anything for 'em anymore. That's not pretty.

Many Americans say they want to be organ donors, but they just don't get around to acting on their intentions. Helping these potential good Samaritans overcome their inertia could prolong thousands of lives a year.

You look at Donald Trump and Ben Carson and you can see the people supporting them are small donors, the people I always call the ones who make the country work. Certainly not rich corporate CEO types, and these are not people that expect some sort of issue oriented payback. They're donating because of enthusiasm, ideas. The corporate donors are donating 'cause they want policy in return.