Head or heart? What 124 studies tell us about why people really give
Authored by Sam Thomas
Ask most people why they give to a charity and they'll tell you it's because they know their money will make a difference. A large new review of the evidence suggests that's not quite what's going on.
In March, researchers at the University of Queensland Business School published two meta-analyses in Nature Communications. A meta-analysis pulls together the results of many separate studies to see what holds up across all of them. This one drew on 124 papers and almost 75,000 people, and asked two questions: how much does empathy drive giving, and how much does the belief that a gift will be effective?
The paper is written as a contribution to the debate about "effective altruism" – the idea that we should give with our heads, choosing causes by cost and impact, rather than with our hearts. But the findings are just as useful for anyone writing an appeal or a thank-you for a small charity on a Tuesday afternoon.
What the researchers found
Empathy matters, and it can be encouraged. People who felt more for someone in need gave more. And when researchers deliberately stirred that feeling – with a story or an image, say – giving went up by about the same amount. That's the difference between a link and a lever: empathy turned out to be both.
Not every kind of feeling worked equally well. The strongest link was with compassion felt towards someone – the person, or animal, at the heart of the story. Understanding someone's situation without that emotional pull still helped, but less. Feeling anxious or distressed yourself, with no one in particular to focus it on, made very little difference at all.
Effectiveness is where it gets interesting. People who believed their gift would do good gave noticeably more – on paper, an even stronger link than empathy. But when researchers tried to change that belief, by telling people a charity was highly effective or even teaching them the case for effective giving, giving barely moved. The authors call this the "effectiveness paradox". Put simply: we like to think we give with our heads, but we mostly give with our hearts.
Why the gap? The authors suggest a few possibilities. We may tell ourselves a gift was a sensible choice after giving for more emotional reasons. Many people see giving as a personal choice about what matters to them – closer to picking a favourite restaurant than following a doctor's prescription. And the feeling that "my gift makes a difference" may be shaped more by emotion, identity and experience than by facts, which is why a well-argued statistic struggles to shift it.
What this means for a small charity
Lead with someone, not something. Your strongest asset probably isn't a cost-per-outcome figure. It's the particular rescue dog, the family, the volunteer at the food bank on a wet Saturday. Smaller charities are often much closer to those stories than big ones are, and that closeness is worth using.
Aim for compassion, not discomfort. The finding on personal distress is worth sitting with. An appeal that leaves people feeling uneasy or guilty, without someone to care about and a clear way to help, is pulling the weakest lever. It isn't much fun to receive, either. Good fundraising should feel good for supporters too, not just the charity.
Keep your impact information, but give it a different job. None of this means impact doesn't matter – believing your gift makes a difference is closely tied to giving. It just suggests a fact sheet won't create that belief on its own. My reading is that it grows over time, through the relationship: a prompt, personal thank-you, a clear picture of what someone's gift actually did, a "because of you" update a few months later. That's where impact earns its place – after the gift, not only in the ask.
Help people give to what matters to them. If giving is a personal expression of what someone cares about, part of your job is helping them see how supporting you fits with who they are. Ask what drew them to you. Offer real choices about how they get involved and what they hear about. People tend to stay where they feel their values are reflected back.
Check it against your own supporters. Research like this tells you what tends to happen across thousands of people, not what will happen with yours. If you send appeals, try two versions – one led by a single story, one led by the numbers – and see which your supporters respond to. Even a small test is better than guessing.
A few honest caveats
This is a strong piece of work, but it's worth being clear about what it does and doesn't tell us.
The effectiveness experiments are a small set. Only 29 results came from studies that tried to change people's beliefs about effectiveness. The authors are open that this raises questions rather than settling them.
It's mostly about Western donors. Nearly all the studies came from Western countries. On the plus side, most weren't student samples, and around a third measured real giving rather than intentions.
It's about the moment of giving, not staying. The studies looked at whether and how much people gave, not whether they kept giving. Retention is a different question.
It doesn't cover overheads. The researchers deliberately left out studies on admin costs, so this says nothing either way about how donors feel about those.
It's about individual giving. Trusts and foundations will still rightly want to see your evidence.
Head and heart, not head or heart
For most small charities, the choice between head and heart is a false one. People give because they feel for someone, and they stay when they can see their giving meant something. Get the first right in your asks, and build the second into everything that happens afterwards.
If you'd like to understand how your own supporters feel about the difference they make, the Supporter Loyalty Index is a self-guided survey tool that looks at exactly that, alongside trust, commitment and satisfaction. Or if you'd rather talk it through, a Power Hour is a focused hour on whatever you're trying to work out.
Either way, I'd love to hear from you. Let's talk.
Source
Hornsey, M. J., Spence, J. L. & Chapman, C. M. (2026). Meta-analyses on charitable giving clarify evidence for empathic and effective altruism. Nature Communications, 17, 3727. Open access.