Generosity Labs Podcast // What do narcissists have to do with #GivingTuesday?

Generosity Labs Podcast // What do narcissists have to do with #GivingTuesday?

Giving Tuesday is coming.

 

What are some preparations you’re doing?

 

For today’s episode, Kenny Jahng talks about an interesting article from Market Watch entitled, How to get narcissists to give money to charity.

 

Listen as Kenny shares his two cents on taking advantage of Giving Tuesday plus on getting Narcissists to give on this special day.

 

Check out the video below!

TRANSCRIPTION

 

Hey friends, this is Kenny Jahng with Generosity Labs and we are on our countdown to Giving Tuesday which is November 28, 2018. For those of you who just joined us and don’t know what giving Tuesdays we have Thanksgiving and then the Friday afterwards is a coma day before, better known as actually Black Friday, right? So when you wake up from your food coma and you’d go out at 5:00 AM or 4:00 AM or now 2:00 AM or even the day before to get those Black Friday deals and then you have the weekend and then you go back to work on Monday and you actually don’t do work because it’s Cyber Monday. That’s when all the deals happen online. And you’re going to continue your Black Friday shopping craze for Christmas online at work. And now the Tuesday after Cyber Monday has been designated as Giving Tuesday.

 

So if you have any money left over, nonprofits around the world are banding together using this as a day to mark for generosity and giving to causes. And this is the time for your organization, whether it be a nonprofit cause driven or Christian organization like a Church to jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of Giving Tuesday. One of the things that we always say is that Giving Tuesday does not cannibalize your end of year giving campaign, but rather should be looked at as something to kick it off. Use it as an excuse to talk about giving in November as you go into the final month of the year. And one of the things that we talk about Generosity Labs is psychology as well as positioning and messaging on how to get people to give to your cause. Today, there’s an interesting article in Market Watch that has come up and I just wanted to share with you, it’s called How to get narcissists to give money to charity, which is really interesting.

 

Narcissist, they’re not known for their empathy, but this trait can be exploited for good. And so it was a quick and interesting article. Just wanted to share with you some of the learnings that they talked about based on a study that was held with different personalities and the relationships with charities. So, one of the most important things. This is a very short article. They do note that charitable giving has been on the rise. We’re seeing a record giving levels for nonprofits. In fact, there was a 3.9 percent increase between 2015, 2016. I know there was an increase in Giving Tuesday giving between 2016 and 2017. And there’s definitely going to be one this year between 2017 and 2018. Because, this is just something that we need to think about in terms of all communications and messaging for donor development.

 

How do we take advantage of the increased generosity of Americans if you’re in our country? So, back to the title of this is talking specifically about narcissists. That profile or persona of community members in your ecosystem, they too can be tapped in terms of becoming a financial supporter. And one of the most important paragraphs here, and I’ll read it out loud, it’s charitable giving, is about having empathy, recognizing and responding to the needs and emotions of other people according to the co author of this study and an associate professor of marketing. So what our room says is, this is the most important part, narcissists have difficulty with that by having empathy for other people so they’re not going to respond to those appeals that require the receiver, the audience member of the target audience to display empathy in order to open up their checkbooks.

 

Narcissists have a difficulty with that. So instead, asking them to imagine themselves as the person in need can help elicit a response in terms of giving. So, this is a very important thing. Narcissists have difficulty with that empathy characteristics. So asking them to imagine themselves as the person in need, can help elicit genuine concern and thus, donations. Now, this is a study by these two professors, in terms of consumer psychology behavior at the University of Cologne. They had over 1,300 people, you know, in that study, in looking at their responses to different charitable appeals. So this is just something that I want to remind you when you have a diversity of call to actions and different messaging that targets sub audiences, right? We talked about the SWAT framework of targeting, define your sub audience, figure out the win is for them. Then you can talk about different actions or activities to involve them in and the specific tactic or technology in order to elicit a call to action.

 

These narcissists that are a subgroup of your community can be appealed to in a way that puts them at the center of the cause, the need, and that’s when that will trigger some genuine concern on their part and then open up their pockets. So, interesting article on Market Watch, How to get narcissists to give money on charity. Would love your thoughts, leave some comments and some questions. In the meantime, check out GenerosityLabs.org. Again, send us your questions. We’re going to do a roundup Q and A episode really soon. Would love to have your question in the pile of questions that we go through, just submit it using the contact form at GenerosityLabs.org. I’m Kenny Jahng. We will continue this march to do Giving Tuesday on November 28th with more tips, more questions, and answers, more resources as we get closer to that date. Remember, generosity begins with you.

 

Generosity Labs Podcast with Chris Willard of Leadership Network

Generosity Labs Podcast with Chris Willard of Leadership Network

Is your church ready for Giving Tuesday?

In this episode, Kenny sat down with one of the most respectable leaders in the aspect of generosity, stewardship and giving, Chris Willard.

They talked about how to encourage not-yet givers to be regular givers and how participating in Giving Tuesday will help spark generosity and giving to the hearts of people in your church and outside of your community.

Check out their conversation below.

 

WEBSITES MENTIONED

Year-end giving guide by generis.com

leadnet.org

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

Blog: ChrisWillard.me

 

HIGHLIGHTS

[00:53] I started working at Leadership Network. I am the director of generosity and initiatives. In Leadership Network, what we try to do is to put churches into groups and we try to encourage them to kind of dream big about strategies that can really help them be more effective in the church. And the area that I lead is the area of generosity and stewardship and giving.

[1:35] Most of the work I am doing is trying to work with pastors who are trying to really create a revolution of generosity and stewardship and giving in their churches.

[2:09] We are entering a season talking about Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday, if you haven’t heard about it before, basically, is the Tuesday that follows Black Friday.

[3:04] Giving Tuesday is the place where I have given to things that are not necessarily connected to my church or to some of the ministries that I support.

[3:21] Giving Tuesday has encouraged me to give those gifts over the years and I think it’s a genius idea.

[4:07] Last year, 2016, there was 1.56 million individual gifts. And I think the total amount of donation over 40% growth over the year and I think it raised over $168 million this past year. That’s pretty size-able.

[4:33] I think churches need to get involved in Giving Tuesdays.

[4:54] I think the church is really in a perfect position to encourage people or to leverage the whole idea of Giving Tuesday.

[6:21] You need to raise money and draw attention not for your church but for what the church stands for.

[6:48] I think it would be a great way for a church to get a not-yet giver, to give a modest gift for the very first time.

[6:59] The reason people are sometimes a little bit suspicious about giving at churches is often because churches haven’t done a great job with this topic.

[7:24] You can start to say in your congregation, “Look, if you’ve never given here in our church, we will encourage you to make Giving Tuesday your very first time to kind of get involved.”

[8:41] Probably, right now, here we are, in the beginning of October, it’s a little too early to start talking to your congregation about your year-end giving strategy, but it is definitely not too early for your team to start planning.your year-end giving strategy. And, in fact? You might also be a little bit behind. Christmas is coming, Kenny. It’s going to be here before you know it and we got to get ready for that.

[9:17] As the timing, when you’re going to be talking to your congregation about year-end giving, so you’re right. Because Giving Tuesday is the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, it’s the perfect place to be the launching point for your year-end strategy. And if I could, I would encourage anybody, it’s a free download, on the Generis website, we got a free year-end giving guide. Look for the year-end giving guide. It is an awesome tool that gives you from start to finish what you need to do to put together a really effective year-end giving initiative.

[10:48] Anytime I hear a church leader say, “I am afraid if they give that money there, they won’t give it here.” I want to remind that guy that the money we’re talking about doesn’t belong to you, it doesn’t even belong to them. It belongs to God and people need to do with it what He wants them to do.

[12:00] One of the core strategies that we have at Generosity Labs when we’re coaching end-of-year giving programs is when you name it and claim it, your campaign, we suggest there’s three parts. One is, you need to identify a project that is internal to your church, something that’s really inside the building. Then, name a project that’s inside of your building but outside of your community, that’s local. And then name a project that’s global. And Giving Tuesday could fund one of those pieces easily, right. What’s good about that is that there are people that are motivated to give to each of those.

[13:33] When you’re thinking about giving in the church, you want to challenge people to prayerfully give what they believe Lord wants them to give.

[14:07] So, whenever you offer a specific number like that, you have to be careful about the fact that you’re hitting some people and missing everybody else.

[14:49] One of the things that Giving Tuesday could do is you can give everybody a low number. Just because you want to get them involved. Just because you want to get them going. Just because it’s not about raising a huge amount of money. Sometimes, a strategy like Giving Tuesday could be just to get not-yet givers to start giving for the first time.

[15:15] Most in our churches, everybody could give a $25 gift. And maybe, that’s going to be your goal is to get more people involved as opposed to raising a huge amount of money.