Jonathan Meer and Harvey S. Rosen concluded a study earlier this year where they set out to discover the impact of incremental personal solicitation on alumni giving. The basic idea is that people have a certain amount in mind that they are willing to give but they will not give it until they are asked to and even then it is likely that they are doing so just to avoid any disapproval from the solicitor. So, the more observable their behavior is the more likely it is that they will give (to avoid the disapproval) which means the more personal the solicitation the more likely it is that you’ll get a donation. So how did Meer and Rosen reach the conclusion the personal solicitation does indeed have an impact on alumni giving?

They conducted a 12 month study. For the first 11 months, alumni received at least two direct mail pieces accompanied by a few reminder emails. By the 12^th month whoever did not yet donate was put on a list to be solicited by personal phone calls from volunteers. Each volunteer received at list of 20 names arranged in alphabetical order. Most of the volunteers ran out of time before reaching the end of their list so at the conclusion of this 12 month time period the data declared that people whose names were in the beginning of the alphabet were more likely to donate than those whose names were at the end of the alphabet. While this is only the case because a larger portion of people in the beginning of the alphabet were contacted versus people at the end; it does go on to show that personal solicitation did play a role in getting the remaining alumni to donate. Even though the personal phone calls increased the chances that someone would donate, it did not affect the amount the donated.