SPEAKER_04 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast with Roger Davis.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rodri Davis, and we are back after a short break over the festive season. A happy new year to all of you, or bloythin now with thar, as they say in my homeland of Wales. Hope everybody managed to have a break of some sort and is refreshed and renewed for the year ahead, which I think it's fair to say promises to throw up plenty of challenges as well as hopefully some opportunities. Here on the podcast, we've got lots of uh great guests lined up and interesting topics to tackle, some of which I've planned out, and no doubt there'll be many more that present themselves throughout the course of the year. Um and we're going to kick things off in 2025 with the eighth in our series in partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy, or ERNOP, where I talk to academics whose work has been featured in the latest uh release of ERNOP Research Notes, where the kind of practitioner-focused summaries of academic uh research that's out there. Um and I always get a chance to talk to people about work that's been featured and find out what's going on in the world of uh academia in Europe around philanthropy, which is always really fascinating. Uh, and this month is no different. Um, so in this episode, we are joined by a number of academics. So, first up, we've got uh Dr. Marlene Valk from the University of Freiburg in Germany, and also uh Jamie Levine Daniel, who is an associate professor uh at New York University at the Robert F. Wagner uh Graduate School of Public Service. And they're talking about their paper Message Incongruence, Tweeting While Competing for Donations, which they wrote also with Kali Curley. Then next up we've got Michael Meyeron, uh, who's a PhD candidate at Radbud University in the Netherlands. Uh, and Michael is talking about his paper, Assessing the Why in Volunteering for Refugees, Exploring Volunteer Motivations, uh, which he wrote with Marcel Lubers and Pierre Scherpers. And then finally, uh, we've got Noelia Salido Andres, who is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Corunia. Uh, and she is talking about a paper called When the Winner Takes It All: Online Campaign Factors Influencing the Success of Donation-Based Crowdfunding for Charitable Causes, which she co-authored with Marta Rey Garcia, uh, Luis Ignacio Alvarez Gonzalez, and Rodolfo Vasquez Cassieres. So without further ado, let's get into those conversations. I'll give a brief introduction to each of the segments and then go into the interviews, and then I'll be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping and tidying up. So, first we're going to hear from Marlena Valk from the University of Freiburg and Jamie Levine Daniel talking about their paper Message Incongruence Tweeting While Competing for Donations. So here's Marlena and Jamie. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Jamie Levine Daniel and Marlena Valk. Hello to both of you. Hello. Hi, good to be here. Yeah, great to have you on the podcast. Um, and yeah, so this is one of our Earnop uh special episodes where we talk to people working in the field of academic studies around nonprofits and philanthropy. Um and the paper that we're here to talk about is a paper that you were both involved in co-authoring with the title Message Incongruence Tweeting While Competing for Donations, um which is a really interesting look at what actually goes on when nonprofits use social media and particularly uh Twitter, now known as X, um, in uh trying to solicit donations from the general public. So without me sort of uh saying any more, perhaps you could say a little bit about what the paper is, what the kind of key findings were in it.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Sure, I'll take it. What we were looking at were nonprofits in a definitively competitive environment. So these were nonprofits that were placed head-to-head in a competition. Think like a FIFA bracket, like a World Cup bracket. Um, and so we wanted to see if messaging mattered and how connecting on social media and pleas for donations affected the donations that the um that these organizations actually received. And what we were specifically interested in this case is this idea of competition, the impact of competition in a head-to-head where you are literally competing for donations. Does your messaging around that matter? There's been a lot of research about framing how to request donations generally. We were curious about whether this element of competition and direct competition had an impact when it came to what organizations said and how they tried to rally their donors.

SPEAKER_05 5:12

Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know if there's anything you want to add, Marlena, in terms of you know what the actual design was of the of the study and how you went about getting the findings.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Sure. So we worked with a nonprofit organization that um was located in Indianapolis. Back then, we the all the co-authors were in Indianapolis and they were running this competition. And so we were given a lot of information that they collected from the competing organizations, such as um, you know, their size, their number of volunteers, their, you know, everything we would need to kind of like um have it as part of the model. And they also um instructed the organizations who competed in the tournament to use certain kind of hashtags on Twitter. And so we were able to pull those hashtags and those tweets from um Twitter to then analyze them. So we coded um the tweets with the hashtags from those organizations, um, and um three different dimensions emerged. So there is um kind of like a general um plea for donations, and then there was a more uh competitive uh plea for donations that emerged. And then the third one.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

The third one was more of the gamesmanship. So it wasn't the competition, but it was the the BR MVP, be our most valuable player, help get off the bench and help us. So it was this collaboration theme as opposed to help us beat the other team. Um and the way we were able to kind of see the connection to the donations um was the the main organization that was administering the tournament um had a donation timeline. So we could match um within a frame, we can match when a tweet was sent to the donation activity, you know, within say 10 minutes or so, um, I think was our window.

SPEAKER_05 6:57

Yeah. And and I thought one of the things that was really interesting uh about the research was, you know, in terms of your hypotheses, I think given that the context was, as you say, explicitly competitive, you might think that appeals to competition or using the language of sports would work. And actually, I think you found that it was negatively correlated with people being willing to give.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Yes. This has been a theme. So I do want to acknowledge our third author on this paper, Dr. Callie Carly from the University of Miami. We have a couple of other papers that came out of this study, um, including one that uh identified or furthered this idea of dissonance where nonprofits and donors and stakeholders kind of don't want to admit to competition. It seems to be like a dirty word, if you will, um, where even in this direct competition where you were literally head to head, again, World Cup bracket, head-to-head competition, you would get this wishy-washy, like, oh, we don't really compete, we collaborate, we're all trying to solve problems, we're, and this is a function of a lot of things, some of which we've studied and some of it was sort of out of our scope, but this sort of when you're competing for funds, but then you also have to sit across the table and try to address the same problems in your community. How do you balance those things? Um, and there seems to be this idea, this this wholesome idea of philanthropy and altruism and doing good. We don't want to sort of muddy those waters with this negative connotation of competition. Um so, and we're not the first ones to find this. Ziva Sharp, I believe, um, in 2018 identified the dissonance, but it really was really evident in this paper and some of our others that we just don't acknowledge competition in the nonprofit space.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

And and we did find this in several ways. So when we um we collected some other data with um people who participated and have some qualitative information too, where people basically said, no, that's not what we do, even though they signed up to play in this competition. It was very interesting and, as you mentioned, counterintuitive to us.

SPEAKER_05 8:55

Aaron Powell And is do you think that I was trying to get my head around this? Do you think it's partly that people don't mind the competitive framing when that is sort of externally imposed on nonprofits, but when the nonprofits themselves seem as though they're showing the same spirit and starting to compete, that that then people don't like that. And there's a kind of cognitive dissonance for them there.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

I think they don't like it whether it's externally imposed or whether the nonprofits themselves send them, because again, even in a non-competitive setting, you you see, I mean, nonprofits compete all the time. I think it's a fact that gets largely ignored. And maybe this speaks to some of the practical implications. But when we ignore the competition element of an environment, I mean, nonprofits are competing for donors, for government funds, for clients and and you know, program beneficiaries. Um, and so it does a disservice and kind of paints an inadequate picture of the environment in which nonprofits are competing and and what its impact on resource acquisition and and service delivery. Um, but at the same time, there seems to be a distinct discomfort with this idea of you know altruism and doing good on the one hand and the sort of negative um elements of competition and and what that actually no, no, we're doing good. We don't compete. We don't, we're all, you know, we're all one big happy family when when that's not at underneath it's not actually the case. And even in an explicit, again, explicit competition. This is several years on from doing some of this work, and we've had, you know, I think three papers come out of this, and we still sometimes are like, but uh but you're competing. Like it's a direct competition. We're not even hypothetically or trying to get you to think competing for donors is competitive, right? This is literally a head-to-head.

SPEAKER_05 10:38

Yeah, and I think that that that the fact it's so explicit makes it really, really interesting. And the fact that people still then feel this sense that they don't want to admit that that's the reality for organizations competing for resources. I guess you mentioned there about the um question of sort of practical and policy implications, given that in most contexts nonprofits, you know, are competing, but but not as explicitly as as in the framework of a sort of head-to-head competition. What do you think are the key sort of insights that they can take from this work in terms of how they present the work that they do on social media most effectively?

SPEAKER_03 11:13

Well, I think messaging matters. Um, I've got some other work uh with Adam Ecker that shows, you know, donors specifically coming to GuideStar are looking or respond to certain messaging that may be different from, for example, social media. Social media, who's your audience and how long do you have their attention for? Um, which is a really interesting question, especially given, you know, we wrote this paper about Twitter before Twitter changed its name. And then by the time it came out, we were like, Twitter's not really the thing anymore. It's not especially what we study, but now, especially with the growth of Blue Sky, some of these other um platforms, that idea and the chronological. There's no algorithm, for example, on Blue Sky. So even though that's growing exponentially, how are you going to get their attention? And you have to do it in the moment. So who's your audience? How long do you have their attention for what message is going to resonate? And is it a different message on social media with a general blast than, for example, GuideStar or like a more specific donor-oriented or government funding-oriented application?

SPEAKER_02 12:16

And I'd like to add one thing because what we found in this paper and as well as in another um related project is basically that organizational characteristics almost don't matter as much in terms of the performance online on social media. So even smaller organizations and those or those who do not have as many, you know, um monetary assets or not as many uh staff members, they can perform as well in terms of donations than others, which we think is actually a good thing. So it's more reach, how connected are they on social media? So it almost equalizes the playing field a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Yeah, it democratizes the ask. Um putting some money, time, effort into the social media management, for example, being intentional in your strategy, if you have limited time and resources on the organizational side, limited time, resources, capacity, um, this is a worthwhile investment, um, maybe even especially for smaller organizations, because it does expand that reach.

SPEAKER_05 13:18

Yeah, I thought I'd noticed that in the paper, and I thought it was really interesting because it reminded me that 10 years or so ago when I was using Twitter in the slightly more utopian days, that's the thing that always struck me was smaller organizations could amplify their voices in a way that seemed almost impossible through traditional media. And maybe over time, as it became more heavily determined by the algorithm, that was less the case. So it'll be very interesting to see as we shift onto new platforms whether we return to to some of that. Um I wanted to ask more broadly, because obviously you mentioned there, you know, this the research for this paper came about through a partnership that you had with uh, you know, an organization working in the nonprofit space. And one of the sort of running themes through this podcast series is about what those links are like between academia and practice. And obviously, it in one of the directions it travels is academics working with nonprofits in order to get uh data and insights for their research, but also what then happens in the other direction? How easy is it to disseminate findings? What's your sense at the moment of, or what's your experience of those two different kinds of uh interactions between practice and academia at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 14:26

So for this particular project, there came out of an ask to our um co-author Callie Curly, um, who was teaching program evaluation, and the organization actually approached her to um help them figure out parts of you know their the effectiveness and efficiency of their programs. And and we then teamed up with her and um helped kind of like along the way for multiple years to help them with their survey design, like what they'd asked organizations before they enrolled in the tournament and stuff like that. And that was really, I think, for us also beneficial, right? So because it was a new, you know, like uh a new uh type of organization, you know, having this competition which is was very innovative. So for us being able to work with this organization um was helpful, obviously, because we got um research out there, but I think they also benefited from working with us because we could really help them modify some of the the tools and bring some of the you know academic thinking into their practices. So so I I'm I don't know, Jamie, do you want to add?

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Yeah, I think it's really important not to think of it as a one-way taking relationship. Um so in addition to helping them with their surveys and them coming to us with the original ask, we did things like um YouTube tutorials uh for how to like fill out the application and how to participate and possibly tips for success. Um there's still one up, I believe, um, at least like of me, like talking about how to use the process and the and the platform. Um, and so really just making sure like how can, like obviously we're gonna benefit, but how can we be of assistance to you? Right. Is it writing up reports? Is it speaking to your participants? Is it running? Um, we also did like a uh an online sort of game lessonly type thing, which was like little online classes or webinars, if you will, that they used um to help teach their their um participants sort of how to maximize participation in the tournament. So we used what we learned from previous years to kind of uh pay it forward and and provide knowledge and tangible um products for them that were of benefit to the organization and their participants.

SPEAKER_05 16:36

That's yeah, really interesting. Because one of the things I've heard through talking to people in this series is a concern that sometimes it it's easy for the relationship to become quite extractive if you just see the nonprofits as sort of sources of data for your own research and vice versa. Um so I think that sounds really productive.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

It's also a check, right? It's a it's a gut check. It's a hey, here's what we're seeing. Are you seeing this? Does this make sense to you? What do you think might be explaining? You know, we can look to the literature, like with this cognitive dissonance, we can look to the literature all we want, but you know, does that actually make sense? Does that play out? Does that resonate? Um, so I think that's also a really important element.

SPEAKER_05 17:13

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I guess that the other thing I always noticed with these is, you know, the the the work I'm talking to people about, um, the papers themselves, and certainly the research has often happened quite a while before I get around to talking to people. So you've probably moved on to other things. Um just be really interested to hear from both of you what you're working on now that either follows on from this or kind of other what your kind of main areas of of interest are at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Yeah, so as a matter of fact, Jamie and I still collaborate together. So we um we have a bigger project that we just uh two weeks ago presented at a conference together on um justice philanthropy, where we study how community foundations move toward towards racial justice and also how they weather the you know, the this the storm uh of the political environment. And um, so that's been very interesting. So we uh we kind of like extended our collaborations from back when we met at our old university and are still collaborators, but very much still engaged with organizations. So for this project I just mentioned, we did interviews and um did an observational study with some community foundations that were uh part of a network, and so very much still the same kind of like approach, working and learning with organizations and from organizations.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

In addition to that project, I will just say I'm continuing my work on a cross-border philanthropy project looking at donations from US INGOs to Israeli nonprofits, which was featured in another ERNAP research note write-up, I believe, last year and continues to be super timely uh in these moments. I think the the through line for the research that Marlena and I do is this relevance and and timeliness, even though it does take a long time. Like I said, Twitter like stopped existing uh and it's in the form that we studied it in by the time the paper came out. But looking at those super relevant issues and working with organizations and the people that are actually doing the work is a through line through most of our projects.

SPEAKER_05 19:11

Great. Yeah, I mean that comes across really clearly. That's yeah, really interesting to hear. Um, listen, just remain safe. Thanks ever so much to both of you for finding some time to come on the podcast. Great to hear about this piece of research and certainly we'll keep uh an eye out for you know further bits of research in the future.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Thank you for the opportunity to highlight this project. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 19:37

And next we're gonna hear from Michael Mehran uh from Radbud University in the Netherlands talking about his research into volunteering for refugees and what it is that motivates people doing that. So let's hear from Michael. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Michael Mehran. Hi there, Michael.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Hi, Rodri. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 19:57

Oh no, thanks very much for finding time to come on the podcast. So, yeah, we're here to talk about a paper that you've got featured in the most recent Earnot Research Notes series. And the paper is called Assessing the Why in Volunteering for Refugees, Exploring Volunteer Motivations. So maybe you could tell us a bit um, you know, what the research is all about and what the key findings in the paper are.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yes, yes. So the paper is about volunteering for refugees and really among starting groups of volunteers. So this was a paper originally not planned, but due to some big events in the world, um, yeah, it it it kind of became a chance for us to ask these volunteers why they volunteer for refugees. Um it is good to know that uh in the area of Nijmegen, so close to the German border, there was a refugee camp opened uh for Afghan uh refugees. And well, that really led to a so-called volunteer energy in the uh city of Nijmegen and its surroundings. Um we had to do something with that, with all those volunteers that wanted to reach out to the refugees who were sitting in the camp. Um, it was COVID that time, that was a challenge. Uh, but we managed to um yeah, have some focus groups, most of them uh in person, some of them online, um, with the volunteers, and basically asking them a very simple format basically asking them, okay, why are you volunteering for refugees? And we kind of mirrored it to the volunteer function inventory, the the VFI, which is a yeah quite important motivational framework on why people volunteer, and we specified this for refugees. And we also applied triangulation through interviews with uh the volunteer coordinators to see if they also could identify some motivations that the volunteers themselves did not want to mention for any kind of reasons. So that's the background. Um define. Is well the findings are what we found was that the the understanding function of the VFI was very important, and this means that um volunteers volunteer also because they can learn something of the experience, try to learn from other cultures or really the the hands-on work, yeah, that that gives them yeah, many tools that they can use in uh other aspects of their life. So the understanding function was very important, and also not surprisingly the values function, so that they are compassionate for uh of that they show compassion to uh the refugees, so that they really want to care for people in need. And the other thing that we also found were unpopular motivations. I for the story I think it is best to focus on the VFI here because that was our main uh yeah theoretical ID for the paper, um, is that the social function wasn't popular at all. So, meaning I volunteer because my friends do, was uh totally unimportant uh for all the volunteers, and also the career perspective, uh so for resume building, for instance, uh wasn't popular at all, but that was also based on the sample. So we had a quite older sample, older volunteers, yeah, and then the career perspective isn't relevant anymore. The few youngsters that we had, however, they said that it was relevant for them. So we see some kind of age duality going on there. Going to the last part of the findings, uh, we also found some important motivations that were not covered by the VFI but popped up in the focus groups and in the interviews, and that is volunteering to seek for a meaningful role in life, so the meaningfulness of the work. Um, also, we call it the pragmatism of the work so that you quite, well, almost immediately I would say see the results of your work. So it is very visible, it's very visible work, and that also uh gives a satisfying experience to the volunteers. Um, also the media exposure that really triggers volunteers. So um, this was, of course, what I sometimes use is that the global literally became local. So we had a very global event going on, uh, and that was that the Taliban seized the power in Afghanistan, and several governments had to evacuate people from Afghanistan. These people were sheltered only a few kilometers away from the campus of the university in a forest. So suddenly for this for those people here in Nijmegen and uh and and area, it became very local. A very global event became very local in their own um yeah, in their own lives, in their own um uh areas where they live. And we saw that this this media exposure that it generated, yeah, that really triggered some people to discover okay, what's going on there? Uh, and I want to help because I feel the need because the media also gives so much attention to it. So that is the the third one, and the last one is the emotional dimension, that's what we call it, and that is that the the the volunteers have yeah, maybe similar stories of fleeing, uh, or know people who had to flee um to other countries. So, yeah, that this personal experiences. That is basically in a nutshell the the findings. Uh, last thing to add, maybe there is that volunteer coordinators also added the uh importance of the protective function of the VFI, and that means that volunteers also try to use this volunteering to deal with their own problems, such as loneliness, or what we also saw that they use this type of volunteering to take a step back into society after burnout, illness, or dismissal. So, yeah, so they also use it to get us to take a step back into society, so to say.

SPEAKER_05 26:09

Yeah. Really, really interesting. And just picking up on a couple of those things. The first one I wanted to ask about was you talked there about um the responses to media coverage being being part of the story. And I wondered, because often migration is a story that's covered quite critically or negatively in some parts of the media, and also political narratives can often be quite negative. The way in which media influenced the volunteers you were speaking to, was it that they were positively influenced just by awareness that this was happening near to them? Or did you get any sense that some of them had heard negative narratives and almost wanted to challenge those through their own volunteering?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Very good question. And exactly this duality is what we found. So, on the one hand, the media coverage also stresses the need of the urgency of the situation. So people were also triggered by that, that they found okay, this is a very urgent situation, we need to help right now. And let's say that the the the geographical space also makes responsible, so meaning that the people from Nijmegen they felt that it was their responsibility because it's close to they were living close to the camp. So people from Amsterdam, they're not going to help. That's too far away. So they felt the response in a geographical way, triggered by the media. But exactly the other thing is also true. So, very shortly before the camp opened, there were some protests in another uh yeah, small town in the Netherlands of an asylum seeker center that was opened, and the local uh population, well, some of them, they protested. And there were uh volunteers in the focus groups who say, I decided to volunteer for refugees out of a counter-reaction to these protests. So, as a statement, as you know, as kind of a a signal that there, yeah, that there are also good people in the Netherlands. And and yeah, so exactly what you say, like this this this counter response.

SPEAKER_05 28:08

Interesting. Um and and I wanted to ask um sort of slightly more on the methodological point, and you touched on this a bit, that one of the challenges always where you're trying to get at people's motivations for volunteering or for giving is that one of you know, people are not necessarily good at identifying their own motivations or what they think motivates them might be different from what actually does, and there's all the sort of social desirability bias. You mentioned that you you spoke to the volunteer coordinators as well as a means of trying to sort of unearth some of those hidden motivations. Did you feel as though that was a challenge as you were going on that people what people said was motivating them, you had to be slightly, you know, if not skeptical, to be kind of careful and view that critically.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So, what we also tried in the focus groups is try to sample for six to eight persons so that there is a variety of perspectives on the one hand, and on the other hand, the group becomes not too big. I found that sometimes volunteers found it difficult to really describe their motivation. So sometimes if uh the the first volunteer told his or her motivation, and then the other ones came, and then uh, well, the everybody responded, and then the first volunteer said, Oh, I want to go back to my motivation because the the person uh over there was saying it more yeah more precisely. So that's how I should define it as well. So I I noticed that. Coming back to your question, yeah, like signs of loneliness. Yeah, volunteers are not really not really happy to say that in a focus group setting, I would say. So that is really a finding coming from triangulation. Uh the illness, burnout, and stuff, that was already in the focus groups. Uh so yeah, that was found in both settings of study, but definitely the loneliness uh aspect, yeah, was only raised by the coordinators.

SPEAKER_05 29:58

Yeah, really interesting. And and the final thing I just wanted to ask you about about this before asking some sort of broader questions is you've you know what you were doing in the research, obviously, was kind of trying to use the framework of the the VFI to look at the motivations with the volunteers that you were talking to. Did you get a sense at the end of it that there is anything distinctive or unique about volunteering with refugees as a form of volunteering in terms of what motivates people, or is it sort of a subset of the wider motivations for volunteering?

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Well, what we noticed also in this research, maybe also in other studies, is that the group of volunteers for refugees usually is a quite unique group, I would say, because they volunteer usually for out groups in society. So for the more the minorities, this can also be a result of the way that we collected the data. So we did it in Dutch. I mostly had Dutch volunteers in my focus groups on or other data collections, so maybe there is a bias going on over there. It could be because of the way that we collected the data. But yeah, so for these groups that I had in my data collection, you can really say that they volunteer for out groups for minorities in society. So that is really a unique feature, I would say, of this group. And I think what what coming back to your question, I think that this interest in other cultures, this try to see how they deal with their problems. That's a quote that I used now from one of the volunteers, that really marks this special group of volunteers that they really want to see how other cultures respond to problems in their life, I would say.

SPEAKER_05 31:31

Yeah, yeah, really interesting. And I guess um, following on from that, what's what is your view of kind of what this research can offer in terms of insights, maybe for practitioners or people who are looking to apply what you've found?

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Uh well what what we also found that this was a refugee camp that's quite a specific situation because it's a very temporary situation. Most of the volunteers really do this for a very temporary time. So they know this is an urgent situation. I'm um going all the way for two to three months, and then I start, I pick up my own life again, almost saying it like this. So most of the volunteers do not have the intention to do this on a regular basis or to yeah, to to be recruited by organizations that there is some sustainability in it. So the challenge that we saw for the involved organizations was try to keep them, try to retain them. That was very difficult because most of the volunteers were not interested in that. They responded to the urgency of the situation, and well, after a while, the urgency yeah, kind of disappeared because we were for several months further, and then yeah, they quit it and moved on with their life.

SPEAKER_05 32:49

Yeah, that's really interesting. And and sort of more broadly, obviously, in terms of doing this research, you were engaging with practitioners and with and with volunteers. What is your experience and your sense of how well the links function between practice and academia around philanthropy? But both in terms of you finding information and data for your research and in terms of you disseminating your findings, do you do you find that it's easy to do that?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Uh well that there's not really my experience, that it is very easy. So, also for the for the volunteers, for instance, most of them didn't even know what the others were doing, so there was not a sense of unity. Um, and the the focus groups, um, many volunteers indicated was the first way that volunteers could interact with each other on this topic. So it was a very ad hoc situation. Um, also for the involved organizations, was really ad hoc. Um, of course, there is some policy, but the the urgency of the situation was that critical that there wasn't almost time to overthink everything really well. Yeah, I hope that answers your question a bit, but it was very ad hoc. So there wasn't really a structure that I could dive into.

SPEAKER_05 34:07

Yeah, absolutely. And and I guess in terms of what's always useful to ask people, I think, what it is that they're working on now, because I'm aware often that the research that they've done has happened a reasonable uh while in the past. So are you doing work that kind of builds on this research or have you uh started looking at other areas? And if so, what what are those?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Uh no, I'm still building on this research. Um, so actually the research we're discussing here um marked a um uh cooperation with the largest Dutch refugee aid organization in the yeah in the Netherlands. Um so we did some more studies. This focused on start-and volunteering. We also dealt with the question, okay, how do you retain your volunteers? And uh at the moment that is the closing step, but also the closing step of the cycle is why people quit. Um so that's all in the same organization, not necessarily in the same setting. So it's not about temporary refugee camps anymore, but now more uh at isolum seeker centers, for instance, or other things. But still the sustainability question and this continuity, discontinuity in volunteering for refugees.

SPEAKER_05 35:12

Yeah, really interesting. And I say I'm huge practical relevance for organizations that are trying to understand how to retain and to stop people burning out or leaving. So, yeah, really interesting to hear, and we're you know interested to see the findings of of those when they're available. Uh Michael just remains to say thanks ever so much for finding time to come on the podcast. Really interesting to hear about your work and wish you all the best of the future.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

And then last but not least, in the final segment, we're going to hear from Noelia Salido Andres uh about her research into the factors that influence the success of donation-based crowdfunding for charitable causes. So let's hear from Noelia. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Noelia Salido Andres. Hello there.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Hi, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_05 36:03

Great, thank you. I'm very uh glad that you could join me. Um, we're here to talk about a paper that you've got uh featured in the the latest uh release of Earnot Research Notes. Um the paper in question is titled When the Winner Takes It All, uh Online Campaign Factors Influencing the Success of Donation-Based Crowdfunding for Charitable Causes. So the name obviously tells people, I think, quite a lot, but maybe you could tell us a bit uh about what the research is about and what some of the key findings in it were.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Okay. Uh okay, first of all, thank you for this uh opportunity. Uh yeah, this uh this paper is uh you know in the context of new alternative uh uh funding tools used uh for nonprofits. You know, uh it's um I mean it's the third outcome of my dissertation, in which basically we uh I mean we I analyzed um yeah how uh you know nonprofits and charitable organizations are using or yeah, are optimizing social marketing with the use of new uh of new um uh tools and mechanisms to you know uh um struggling with a period of economic strains, you know. So in this paper, we specifically uh try to um um yeah, try to uh analyze the explanatory capacity of uh campaign factors specifically. In the first paper, um uh in I mean in the first study of this dissertation, we uh contrast the the the the or we check the explanatory capacity of line factors that historically and traditionally were affecting the success of crowdfunding. But in this album, we want to know if uh there are if if factors specifically of the campaigns, uh campaigns online, you know, in the online sphere, are affecting the success or not. So um we ask, I mean, we made uh um literature view, we reflute, we refluted these uh the factors that that uh the academic uh tension you know was was uh remarking. And uh we um basically we wonder about the standard capacity of the disclosure of the campaign, uh basically the use of narrative, even the length of the narrative used, okay, uh, and also the imagery of the campaign. So um are the you um those campaigns users using photos or using videos in the in the campaign data sheets in a platform are more keen to be successful successful or not. And uh we also wonder on the um you know on the um accountability behave, accountable, accountable behave, sorry. Um basically uh how the uh how the information about the advances of the campaign, you know, how the how um yeah, how this um transparency and symmetry in the information can influence the success. And um and then uh lastly, we uh we wonder about the social media um dissemination, okay, or spreading of the campaign. Uh one very uh one uh important thing is to uh you know to contextualize this um this uh I mean the data collection and also the publication. We we're talking about uh uh a paper that uh um and a dissertation that uh use data from a national uh electronic um digital platform of pro funding in Spain uh during a five-year period from 2012 to 2017. So now we are living in another world. I mean, because it was pre-pandemic, but not also because of the pre-pandemic, also because also because uh you know the the the the accelerated uh revolution in digital tools and and so on. And um uh we basically find that uh the results indicate that uh narrative is not important and uh neither the use of pictures or videos are important. So this was um in contradiction with uh you know the the insights recruited by previous literature, and uh we uh we um conclude that basically in a world, again uh in a in a in a you know pre-pandemic world, the multimedia inputs or or or yeah, or uh yeah, this kind of you know um visual and graphical inputs were not so important for people because basically we are you know subjected uh uh to plenty of still us of digital, uh narrative, graphic uh character every single day, every single hour. So this is not the kind of um the kind of uh dimension in which uh basically potential donors put the focus on. Okay, and um of course the spreading of the campaigns in social uh in so through social social media was uh you know an insight that was completely um confirmed. We um we can conclude that Facebook, okay, so we were talking about you know the place to zena. Facebook was basically the platform in which you know uh successful campaigns were more spread. And um the most um, I mean, maybe not but not the most important, but uh yeah, the most um I mean attractive for at least for my for my in my opinion, finding here was uh the importance of you know um the importance of the organizational behavior. I mean, if potential donors are rewarded or in base of the of our results, uh they uh reward those organizations that provide information, not asked before, you know, uh voluntarily provide information, not just in the pre-event, in the pre-campaign, but also in the meantime the campaign is uh running, and very importantly, at the end of the campaign. And this kind of information we study with, we we we collect data from near 400 campaigns of this national intermediary platform, and uh you know the the the the the amount of or the level of the campaigns uh providing post-campaign information was absolutely residual. So during this you know, um a period of 2012-2017, non-profits, most of them small and medium size, I need to say, they were not used to do that. I mean, they they they they they were used to you know create a storytelling about uh the campaign, the cost, if it was a social exclusion, you know, or childhood or environmental uh cause, whatever. Even also about the anti beneficiaries, because also, you know, to put the face or to describe a personal. History and so on can uh move people to action, but uh to provide information during the campaigns and once the campaign finished is something that they were not used to doing. And people, at least at that time, um uh when uh we collect the data uh are rewarding this more and more. So uh I mean this has a lot of implications for nonprofits, basically because um yeah, the play the playground is completely different now. So uh they need to for sure, uh not just to create uh one-day event, because the content, the campaigns, the results, the behavior of nonprofits during all the campaigns they uh they host in the media or in the platforms are live during a long time. So people just can, you know, they actually scrutiny. We personally scrutinize how a specific uh non-profit behaved in the past with some campaigns. So this is something they need to for sure uh warranty and and and and and and they also have to, you know, to create new narratives and and and control for sure the discussion and the conversations in the in the in the inline. But for sure to be prepared, to be ready, to to to voluntarily, to be proactive in in the provision of information.

SPEAKER_05 45:43

Really, really interesting. And you you mentioned there obviously that the the context around social media has you know changed very rapidly and and since this data was initially collected. Do you have any sense of whether uh non-profit organizations or those using crowdfunding platforms have learned some of these lessons for themselves? Do you think they have got better at reporting to donors and seeing that as the as the thing that will drive engagement? Or do you think actually the context maybe has shifted and the emphasis on on what is uh valuable or what has an impact is maybe different now than it was then?

SPEAKER_01 46:22

I think uh it depends on the size. And also depends, you know, on the on the on the scenario, I mean, the legal scenario and also the institutional scenario of charitable sector in every country. I mean, for instance, in Spain, the uh the uh the the field of uh nonprofits are uh crowded of small and medium-sized nonprofits. If I um if I you you you ask me about, for instance, uh the big ones, I mean, I'm talking about uh Red Cross or Spanish Red Cross or Caritas and so on, they for sure are very, you know, are assuming all these changes, even in a proactive way, because they are huge, they have an amazing resources, they have the opportunity to collaborate, to establish partnerships with other actors and um even co-create, you know, these big ones can even co-create uh value and co-create products and services with the end beneficiaries or even with potential donors. So they can be very, they can be they are disrupting uh you know the way they are uh the way they are uh behaving and and and um living in this new world. But if we're thinking all these all the nonprofits that are small and need uh uh support and resources from others, they they are in a very you know disadvantageous situation. So maybe one solution for these small and medium size uh nonprofits uh are, for instance, establishing establishing partnerships. This can you know be a kind of uh solution to integrate new ways of doing and also to learn uh and to and to yeah, and to and to attract new talent uh in terms of digital capabilities or you know uh even uh community management strategies and so on. Yeah, but for sure, I mean, talking about today, I mean in uh in the current days, they'll uh they are they are a very asymmetric position between different nonprofits. I'm thinking, for instance, uh, you know, the recent uh floods in Spain with the Danas, I don't know if you if you heard about it, uh there were a huge uh flood water in October in Valencia, in Valencia. So there were, I mean, uh near 300 deaths and uh plenty of disasters. And the and and and and administration and governments and public institutions were like uh you know, not shocked, but very uh, I mean, they were not active, they were not proactive. So again, as happened in uh pandemic and other, you know, I mean, pandemic was the most important, actually it was huge, but um the the the the first to move on to action were basically people. So they find people, neighbors, uh uh other uh you know citizens have the capacity to have the capacity to be involved, to organize themselves, and to start to do things, to start to you know to to prepare, you know, uh food and other kind of um in kind uh products and so on, collect them. Uh and you know, and so again, I mean, 12, 10 years after this paper, again the pandemic, again this, I mean, this national, uh, this environmental disaster here in Spain shows again that people uh has a more uh quick reaction, you know, in a very random way. I mean, and they are you know the first ones to start to you know mobilize to decrease or to reduce the the consequence. And then and then came institutions and they and them came you know nonprofits. And for instance, in in this disaster of October in Spain, there are a lot of conversations in media and the and people were asking for, you know, asking for helping media in Twitter, X, or whatever the whatever it calls now. And um and basically there were also people that was um you know denouncing how nonprofits, big ones, non-profits, were using the money, using the resources. So basically, you are not here, Army is not here, institutions are not here, politicians are not here, and you uh, I mean, uh big one uh non-profit organizations, you you are needed here because your staff are you know are uh accommodated in the best hotels in the city, and you are not you know in the street uh you know helping to remove all the disaster and so on. So this, you know, this can for sure increase the reputational risks for nonprofits. And also today we have plenty of new risks because we have, for instance, generative uh artificial intelligence, which basically, if you are not controlling all these new, all these new um, yeah, all these new tools and devices, anyone can you know reproduce, modulate, create from nothing a new voice, a new narrative, and uh you know put you in trouble. So actually, I mean in resume, today I think nonprofits are making uh largely the same mistakes as before. And just in the case they are absolutely huge with you know with a lot of capabilities and resources in access, they can improve. But people, technology, and the conversations in in social media in online are flow are flowing faster than the the the reaction capability of nonprofit.

SPEAKER_05 52:51

Yeah, really, really interesting. I think I mean it has just changed dramatically, but I think if anything, the question of how people use these forms of crowdfunding and platform-based giving are more important than than ever because so much giving is going in that direction. Um I just wanted to ask, actually, because obviously this piece of work, the research and then the the publication, you know, as ever with these things, there is a time lag. So it's a few years ago that the paper came out. What are you working on yourself at the moment? Are you still focusing on similar research or things that build on this, or have you are you looking at other areas at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 53:25

Okay, at the moment I'm working also on the utilization and digitization. This is not the same. Uh processes are something that uh I mean, I I'm very curious on, you know. And in the, you know, some years ago, I was very, you know, very astonished uh about the positive things, but now maybe it's the maybe it's the age, you know, it's the age factor. I'm more focused on basically the negative effects or the negative uses and the risks and challenges that this uh that this provoke to organizations, but also to people. Nowadays I'm I'm working on the uh technological dimension of transformative services of nonprofits. I mean, how third sector organizations uh have the capacity to you know provide transformative services that can transformate the video that they can transform the way of end beneficiaries, but not also the families and also even the internal stakeholders as workers and so on. How even these nonprofits can co-create these transformative services and products with uh and beneficiaries or families and so on. So this has to be basically with uh technological capability, but also with a new way of doing things in in internally, I mean, in the organization and externally. So, in here in this study that um I mean is is a national one again, and um and we consider it you know the the first sector in Spain, you know, very very broadly, in a very broadly sense. We um we are seeing again that uh I mean the the capacity of or yeah the opportunity to the yeah have the choice to make partnerships, for instance, and to create long-term relationships with other strategic partnerships is something absolutely um determinant, more than important, absolutely determinant. And um and uh for sure to integrate you know new ways of approaching to new realities. So I mean, um uh yeah, um employee engineering, I mean engineers, uh, you know, uh people you know expert in programming, uh for instance, people you know, um that print in 3D and so on. I mean, there are a lot, a lot of um of talents that traditionally work, you know, putting extra moods there, the nonprofits, and now to be now um the big ones are uh assuming that they need to they need to integrate and collaborate together to provide more personalized products and services, and also to you know reinforce the trust the brand, the value of the brands, and um and uh to create long-term uh relationship of trust to guarantee sustainability. So this is not about financial sustainability, but also about social sustainability. And uh also non-profits, but my the the second the second uh the second area of interest uh of study nowadays are social enterprises. And um because they I mean they have common, they share a common playground with non-profits, but they have uh specific characteristics that uh that make them very you know very very um interesting uh from a point of view. And uh and yeah, this is the I mean uh we are I mean I'm approaching to social enterprises from the the the perspective of conservation of products and services, but also on the uses of new tools of funding, for instance. And crowdfunding is one of those.

SPEAKER_05 57:47

Yeah, really, really interesting to hear. Fascinating topics, and yeah, be really interested to find out more um, you know, as and when those uh bits of research are publicly available. And just remain to say thanks ever so much, Noelia, for uh finding time to come on the podcast. It's really interesting to hear about the work that you're doing and certainly wish you all the best of the future.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Bradley.

SPEAKER_05 58:16

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to all of uh my guests for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's always really interesting to hear about the research that's going on and what's coming up in the future. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find all of the relevant Earn Up research notes as well as the original journal articles, so you can dig into all of those if you'd like to. If you're interested in issues more broadly in philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com where you can find all of the back episodes of this podcast, which is a uh very much a growing collection, lots of interesting interviews there and deep dive explorations of various topics. There's also lots of articles, many of them quite long form, some of them shorter form, and also kind of short guides to all kinds of issues in philanthropy and civil society, as well as lots of news updates and things like that. So plenty to get your teeth into there. Um, if you're interested in following me and keeping track of stuff more broadly, uh do follow me on social media. Uh I'm like most people, I've pretty much left X now. Um I'm on LinkedIn, I'm also on Blue Sky, so do come and find me there. If you want regular updates, one of the things you can do is sign up via the website for the monthly newsletter that I pull together, which has proven to be pretty popular, where I curate lots of interesting articles and bits and pieces that I find in the course of my work, uh keeping tabs on Philanthby and civil society on a daily basis, and then I can share them with all of you. Uh if you've got ideas for people that I could talk to on a podcast or topics that you'd like me to cover in the coming year, do drop me a line. I'm always really pleased to hear suggestions. I, you know, some of you do actually act on this uh invitation, and I do actually then act on your suggestions. So quite a few of the episodes in the podcast now have come about because of people getting in touch with me. Uh, if you feel like you'd like to do that, just find the contact details at the Y Philanthropy Matters website and please do get in touch. If I don't get back to you immediately, it's not because I'm just horribly rude, it's because I'm massively snowed under with various deadlines at the moment, but I will do my best to respond when I can. Other than that, just like, subscribe, uh, please tell all of your friends about the podcast if you think they would be interested or share it with colleagues. And if you've got the time to leave us a nice review wherever it is you get your podcasts, that would really help boost us up the rankings, so please do that too. Uh, and I will see you next time. Bye.