 Gratitude in fundraising: do ‘thank you in advance’ and handwritten thank you notes impact fundraising success?Maja Adena, Steffen Huck and Levent Neyse EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2025, vol. 28, issue 4, 900-909 Abstract: While almost all charities rely on a set of donor appreciation strategies, their effectiveness for the success of fundraising campaigns is underresearched. Through two preregistered field studies conducted in collaboration with a leading German opera house (N = 10,000), we explore the significance of expressing gratitude and examine two different approaches to doing so. Our first study investigates the impact of a 'thank you in advance' statement in fundraising letters, a common strategy among fundraisers. In the second study, we explore the effectiveness of handwritten thankyou postcards versus printed postcards, shedding light on the roles of personalization and handwriting in donor appeals. Our findings challenge conventional wisdom, revealing that neither 'thank you in advance' nor handwritten thank you notes significantly affect donor contributions. Keywords: charitable giving; donations; field experiments; thank you notes; solicitation letters (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:340790 Access Statistics for this article More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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