Telling donors that their neighbors have donated high-quality furniture, clothing, and other goods can halve the number of worthless items charities receive.
That’s what my colleagues Sindy De La Torre Pacheco, Mahyar Eftekhar and I discovered when we collaborated on an experiment with the Phoenix chapter of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a charity that helps low-income people.
Over 12 days in fall 2020, we followed 763 people who had registered to donate their used sofas and other items to the charity. These donors were randomly assigned to receive one of two emails related to our study or no email at all before the charity picked up the items.
One email said, “Most donors give us items that are in very good condition and have a high likelihood of being sold in our thrift stores in the valley.” The other said, “Please note that we only accept gently used items. Items that we would have a hard time selling in our stores end up costing us tens of thousands of dollars each month to dispose of, which takes money away from our mission.”
According to the drivers who picked up the donated goods, the average quality of the items was 15% higher when donors received the first email than when they received the second – or none at all. This 15% improvement, in turn, led to a 50% reduction in the number of donations that had to be thrown away.
Telling people how much it costs to sort through valuable and worthless items and throw them away has not improved the overall quality of donations. This is important because it is how most nonprofits want to avoid giving donations that they will later have to throw away.
We believe peer pressure works best because people don’t like being told what it costs charities to receive things they can’t give away or sell to those in need at an affordable price. At the same time, people tend to conform to social norms when they learn about it.
Importantly, we found evidence that emphasizing what other donors were doing right did not deter them from giving to the charity again.
We found this out by following the same 763 donors for another year to see if they would make additional in-kind donations. All were equally likely to do so, with about one in five donating additional items to the charity.
Why it is important
In 2020, when we conducted this experiment, about half of U.S. households donated clothing, food, or other items to a nonprofit organization. These donations can help charities reduce their costs and increase their impact while reducing the volume of a community’s solid waste. That same year, Goodwill diverted 3.3 billion pounds of usable goods from landfills, and the Salvation Army reported $598 million in sales from its 1,116 thrift stores, accounting for 18% of its total sales that year.
Unfortunately, not all donated goods are useful. Sorting through all of this stuff takes a lot of time and can cost a lot of money, as does disposing of items destined for the landfill.
Goodwill Northern New England, for example, spends over a million dollars annually to dispose of 14 million pounds of unusable items from just 30 thrift stores. Despite this financial burden, turning away donations can damage relationships with donors. That means Goodwill, the Salvation Army and similar organizations must figure out how to reduce the flow of worthless donations without alienating their supporters.
What is not yet known
Understanding why many donors prefer to donate low-quality used goods is critical to developing strategies to improve charitable practices.
Further research is needed to determine whether the successful approach we identified would work generally or whether it is only worthwhile trying in certain situations and with certain communities.
What’s next
Our study focused on improving the quality of donated items, but many social organizations would be better off if more donors gave money instead.
My research team is currently working on a study to determine which strategies are most effective in encouraging donors to give cash rather than in-kind donations.
The Research Brief is a short overview of interesting scientific papers.
