title: Understanding Donor Motivation and Behaviour Among Middle – Class Americans

authors: Marten, Charlotte

abstract: The primary purpose of this study is to gain further insight into why donors give money to charitable organizations, looking particularly at American middle class households. The study examines the giving patterns, priorities, attitudes, and motivations of American households for the year 2014. This research has three major goals: (1) to obtain further insight into why Middle - Class Americans give money to charitable organizations, what they want from their giving and what drives them, (2) to compare charitable giving motivations and behavior amongst middle class and wealthy households, 3) ) to create segments to help understand donor behavior. The intent is to create segmentations based on underlying motivations to help charities understand not just how and when donors give, but why.

The most recent Internal Revenue Service records of Americans show that middle-class Americans give a far bigger portion of their discretionary income to charities compared to their wealthy counterparts (How America Gives, 2014; Stern, 2013). Academic literature has little to no content on the American middle – class donor group. This study attempts to bridge the gap in the literature by exploring empirically class difference in motives for charitable giving.

The study was conducted in the United States during August, 2015 and consisted of a 30 question web survey. 211 subjects participated via online platforms. The main statistical methods used to analyze survey data include; cluster analysis, cross tabulation, classification tree analysis, analysis of variance, and significance testing.

This study reveals that 92.5 percent of middle class households gave to charity in 2014. Middle class donors are impact driven, and are consistently motivated to give because they feel moved about how their gift can make a difference, they want to give back to the community, make the world a better place, and they feel that those who have more should help those with less.

The survey data illustrated that income and education are significant characteristics when understanding differences in donor motivation and behavior, including preferences for cause, level of charitable commitment and knowledge on charitable giving. Furthermore, classification tree analysis was used to identify the variables that are most related to level of charitable giving. It was concluded that average annual donation increases with 1) household income, 2) religious attendance, 3) knowledge about charities, and 4) age.

The survey results identified four distinctive segments of donors based on differences in attitudes and motivations. The analysis clustered people based on the things that matter to them, which gave us insight into why they give and what they want from charities. The segmentation provides a rich resource for understanding and influencing donors.

This thesis hopes to provide new information and insight into donors’ underlying motivations for giving, and opportunities to influence it, whilst providing the nonprofit sector with useful data needed to produce marketing strategies that are more efficient at both targeting and retaining donors.

This study is an initial attempt to investigate the relationship between giving motivations, behavior, marketing strategies and fundraising efforts. I expect the findings from the research to provide a platform for further research and discussion, thus make a small contribution to improving marketing efforts among charities. In particular, the results of this study will enable researchers to “test” the findings and put the segmentation in practice while gathering evidence on the impact of doing so. The aim is to increase quantity and quality of giving worldwide.

text: Understanding Donor Motivation and Behaviour Among Middle – Class Americans The primary purpose of this study is to gain further insight into why donors give money to charitable organizations, looking particularly at American middle class households. The study examines the giving patterns, priorities, attitudes, and motivations of American households for the year 2014. This research has three major goals: (1) to obtain further insight into why Middle - Class Americans give money to charitable organizations, what they want from their giving and what drives them, (2) to compare charitable giving motivations and behavior amongst middle class and wealthy households, 3) ) to create segments to help understand donor behavior. The intent is to create segmentations based on underlying motivations to help charities understand not just how and when donors give, but why.

The most recent Internal Revenue Service records of Americans show that middle-class Americans give a far bigger portion of their discretionary income to charities compared to their wealthy counterparts (How America Gives, 2014; Stern, 2013). Academic literature has little to no content on the American middle – class donor group. This study attempts to bridge the gap in the literature by exploring empirically class difference in motives for charitable giving.

The study was conducted in the United States during August, 2015 and consisted of a 30 question web survey. 211 subjects participated via online platforms. The main statistical methods used to analyze survey data include; cluster analysis, cross tabulation, classification tree analysis, analysis of variance, and significance testing.

This study reveals that 92.5 percent of middle class households gave to charity in 2014. Middle class donors are impact driven, and are consistently motivated to give because they feel moved about how their gift can make a difference, they want to give back to the community, make the world a better place, and they feel that those who have more should help those with less.

The survey data illustrated that income and education are significant characteristics when understanding differences in donor motivation and behavior, including preferences for cause, level of charitable commitment and knowledge on charitable giving. Furthermore, classification tree analysis was used to identify the variables that are most related to level of charitable giving. It was concluded that average annual donation increases with 1) household income, 2) religious attendance, 3) knowledge about charities, and 4) age.

The survey results identified four distinctive segments of donors based on differences in attitudes and motivations. The analysis clustered people based on the things that matter to them, which gave us insight into why they give and what they want from charities. The segmentation provides a rich resource for understanding and influencing donors.

This thesis hopes to provide new information and insight into donors’ underlying motivations for giving, and opportunities to influence it, whilst providing the nonprofit sector with useful data needed to produce marketing strategies that are more efficient at both targeting and retaining donors.

This study is an initial attempt to investigate the relationship between giving motivations, behavior, marketing strategies and fundraising efforts. I expect the findings from the research to provide a platform for further research and discussion, thus make a small contribution to improving marketing efforts among charities. In particular, the results of this study will enable researchers to “test” the findings and put the segmentation in practice while gathering evidence on the impact of doing so. The aim is to increase quantity and quality of giving worldwide.

year: 2015

title: Organisational volunteering: Meanings of volunteering, professionalism, volunteer communities of practice and wellbeing

authors: McAllum, Kirstie Lynd

subjects: volunteering

abstract: Volunteering has become the major means by which individuals and communities connect and engage with significant social issues. While volunteering is typically constructed as an inherently positive activity that improves personal and social wellbeing, this project critically examines the relationship between organisational volunteering and wellbeing. Scholarly literature from multiple disciplines suggests that three key dimensions are particularly salient in understanding connections between volunteering and wellbeing. The first dimension is the significance and meaning that volunteers themselves attach to what they do. The extensive volunteering literature contains multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives on the core features of organisational volunteering, without considering how volunteers themselves might reconcile these tensions. 
The second dimension is the role that organisational expectations and messages about professionalism in particular play in shaping volunteer identity and practice and its relationship with wellbeing. Professionalism is usually framed as an attribute of paid work and hence as inconsistent with the volunteer role and the mission of nonprofit organisations more generally. The third dimension involves the connections between organisational volunteering and wellbeing as they are evident in nonprofit communities of practice, where wellbeing emerges from the collaborative relationships that volunteers develop. CoP scholarship tends to position collaboration as a component of “good” CoPs and conflict as negative.
Accordingly, the objective of the thesis is to understand the meanings of volunteering as they are constructed by volunteers, shaped by understandings of professionalism embedded in core organisational codes of conduct, and enacted in communities of practice. Doing so will enable a close and comprehensive assessment of the connections and potential tensions between volunteering and wellbeing. In addition to advancing research on volunteering, the research has implications for three core organisational communication constructs: occupational and organisational identity, coordination and relationality. The study of the meanings, identities and practice of volunteering offers insight into how individuals manage multiple identity positions, especially in non-work settings, and how particular identities cue the ways in which relationality is enacted. The study of communities of practice in nonprofit contexts could also extend studies of coordination that explore how organisations attempt to control their members by focusing on meaningful participation.   
The thesis is structured around five research questions. First, I ask: what meanings do individuals engaged with voluntary organisations give to their volunteering? Second, in order to assess the impact of professionalism, I ask three questions: How do organisational codes of conduct construct professionalism for volunteers? How do these codes of conduct position the relationship between professionalism and wellbeing? How do volunteers relate organisational notions of professionalism to their own wellbeing? Finally, in order to understand the connections between organisational volunteering, relationships and wellbeing in practice, I ask: How do volunteers enact communities of practice?
As a broad frame for the entire project, I employ a hybrid phenomenological perspective based around three key postulates: (1) individuals create meaning through intentional interaction with objects of experience; (2) we use both experience and context to understand a phenomenon; and (3) individual and group differences in how an object is experienced enrich our understanding of a phenomenon.  The postulates suggest that, in order to understand the phenomenon of organisational volunteering, both a detailed account of volunteers’ experiences and an analysis of the organisational context in which volunteering occurs is required. Specifically, I analysed volunteering in three nonprofit organisations in New Zealand: Refugee Services, the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society, and St John Ambulance. A total of 49 in-depth interviews were conducted with volunteers in all three organisations in order to answer questions about the meanings of volunteering, the impact of professionalism on wellbeing, and communities of practice. Additionally, I collected textual data in the form of reports, brochures, promotional materials and training manuals, as well as observational data to assess how codes of professional conduct were constructed in each organisation. Data were analysed for each of the three key dimensions of the volunteering-wellbeing relationship as follows. I used a phenomenological method of analysis adapted from the Duquesne School to unpack the meanings that volunteers gave to their experiences of volunteering. In order to develop emic understandings of professionalism within the nonprofit organisations in this study, I highlighted statements from organisational representatives and in organisational texts that discussed professionalism and clustered key elements into themes. In contrast, I applied an a priori coding method to address the last research question on communities of practice. Specifically, I adopted Lave and Wenger’s (1991) framework to analyse how volunteers used shared repertoire, mutual interaction and joint enterprise to create communities of practice, and I parsed these categories for evidence of both collaboration and conflict. 
The findings of this project have significant implications for research on volunteering. First, this study challenges uni-dimensional visions of volunteering found in both academic and popular literature as a free act. Instead, the data highlights the dual nature of volunteering, which is simultaneously agentic and deeply relational. Moreover, two distinct pathways, or ways of negotiating this duality, emerge. Volunteers on the freedom-reciprocity pathway move synchronically between agency and relationality, while those on the giving-obligation pathway shift diachronically from agency to relationality. 
Second, the study shows that codes of conduct regarding professionalism and its relationship with wellbeing are constructed differently across organisations. Further, participants in each organisation diverged in their responses to organisational notions of professionalism. One group enjoyed the structure and control afforded by professional standards, while the other group resisted professionalism as impersonal and negative for their wellbeing. 
Third, contestation and conflict were as prevalent as collaboration and cooperation in volunteer communities of practice in all three organisations. While it was clear that dissent was an important part of “well” volunteer communities, the expectation that volunteering would lead to wellbeing and collaborative relationships did influence volunteer retention and intentions to exit. 
 These findings have implications for organisational communication research on identity, coordination and relationality, as well as theorising on nonprofit organising, in the form of three dialectical tensions. First, the study suggests that the process of identification is dynamic and dependent upon how volunteers manage the duality between agency and relationality inherent in volunteering. Second, the study offers an expansive view of what “collaborative” behaviour in communities of practice might entail, implicating both consensus and dissensus.  Finally, the study demonstrates the key role that relationality plays, both in definitions of occupational identity as well as the construction of collaborative communities of practice.

text: Organisational volunteering: Meanings of volunteering, professionalism, volunteer communities of practice and wellbeing Volunteering has become the major means by which individuals and communities connect and engage with significant social issues. While volunteering is typically constructed as an inherently positive activity that improves personal and social wellbeing, this project critically examines the relationship between organisational volunteering and wellbeing. Scholarly literature from multiple disciplines suggests that three key dimensions are particularly salient in understanding connections between volunteering and wellbeing. The first dimension is the significance and meaning that volunteers themselves attach to what they do. The extensive volunteering literature contains multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives on the core features of organisational volunteering, without considering how volunteers themselves might reconcile these tensions. 
The second dimension is the role that organisational expectations and messages about professionalism in particular play in shaping volunteer identity and practice and its relationship with wellbeing. Professionalism is usually framed as an attribute of paid work and hence as inconsistent with the volunteer role and the mission of nonprofit organisations more generally. The third dimension involves the connections between organisational volunteering and wellbeing as they are evident in nonprofit communities of practice, where wellbeing emerges from the collaborative relationships that volunteers develop. CoP scholarship tends to position collaboration as a component of “good” CoPs and conflict as negative.
Accordingly, the objective of the thesis is to understand the meanings of volunteering as they are constructed by volunteers, shaped by understandings of professionalism embedded in core organisational codes of conduct, and enacted in communities of practice. Doing so will enable a close and comprehensive assessment of the connections and potential tensions between volunteering and wellbeing. In addition to advancing research on volunteering, the research has implications for three core organisational communication constructs: occupational and organisational identity, coordination and relationality. The study of the meanings, identities and practice of volunteering offers insight into how individuals manage multiple identity positions, especially in non-work settings, and how particular identities cue the ways in which relationality is enacted. The study of communities of practice in nonprofit contexts could also extend studies of coordination that explore how organisations attempt to control their members by focusing on meaningful participation.   
The thesis is structured around five research questions. First, I ask: what meanings do individuals engaged with voluntary organisations give to their volunteering? Second, in order to assess the impact of professionalism, I ask three questions: How do organisational codes of conduct construct professionalism for volunteers? How do these codes of conduct position the relationship between professionalism and wellbeing? How do volunteers relate organisational notions of professionalism to their own wellbeing? Finally, in order to understand the connections between organisational volunteering, relationships and wellbeing in practice, I ask: How do volunteers enact communities of practice?
As a broad frame for the entire project, I employ a hybrid phenomenological perspective based around three key postulates: (1) individuals create meaning through intentional interaction with objects of experience; (2) we use both experience and context to understand a phenomenon; and (3) individual and group differences in how an object is experienced enrich our understanding of a phenomenon.  The postulates suggest that, in order to understand the phenomenon of organisational volunteering, both a detailed account of volunteers’ experiences and an analysis of the organisational context in which volunteering occurs is required. Specifically, I analysed volunteering in three nonprofit organisations in New Zealand: Refugee Services, the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society, and St John Ambulance. A total of 49 in-depth interviews were conducted with volunteers in all three organisations in order to answer questions about the meanings of volunteering, the impact of professionalism on wellbeing, and communities of practice. Additionally, I collected textual data in the form of reports, brochures, promotional materials and training manuals, as well as observational data to assess how codes of professional conduct were constructed in each organisation. Data were analysed for each of the three key dimensions of the volunteering-wellbeing relationship as follows. I used a phenomenological method of analysis adapted from the Duquesne School to unpack the meanings that volunteers gave to their experiences of volunteering. In order to develop emic understandings of professionalism within the nonprofit organisations in this study, I highlighted statements from organisational representatives and in organisational texts that discussed professionalism and clustered key elements into themes. In contrast, I applied an a priori coding method to address the last research question on communities of practice. Specifically, I adopted Lave and Wenger’s (1991) framework to analyse how volunteers used shared repertoire, mutual interaction and joint enterprise to create communities of practice, and I parsed these categories for evidence of both collaboration and conflict. 
The findings of this project have significant implications for research on volunteering. First, this study challenges uni-dimensional visions of volunteering found in both academic and popular literature as a free act. Instead, the data highlights the dual nature of volunteering, which is simultaneously agentic and deeply relational. Moreover, two distinct pathways, or ways of negotiating this duality, emerge. Volunteers on the freedom-reciprocity pathway move synchronically between agency and relationality, while those on the giving-obligation pathway shift diachronically from agency to relationality. 
Second, the study shows that codes of conduct regarding professionalism and its relationship with wellbeing are constructed differently across organisations. Further, participants in each organisation diverged in their responses to organisational notions of professionalism. One group enjoyed the structure and control afforded by professional standards, while the other group resisted professionalism as impersonal and negative for their wellbeing. 
Third, contestation and conflict were as prevalent as collaboration and cooperation in volunteer communities of practice in all three organisations. While it was clear that dissent was an important part of “well” volunteer communities, the expectation that volunteering would lead to wellbeing and collaborative relationships did influence volunteer retention and intentions to exit. 
 These findings have implications for organisational communication research on identity, coordination and relationality, as well as theorising on nonprofit organising, in the form of three dialectical tensions. First, the study suggests that the process of identification is dynamic and dependent upon how volunteers manage the duality between agency and relationality inherent in volunteering. Second, the study offers an expansive view of what “collaborative” behaviour in communities of practice might entail, implicating both consensus and dissensus.  Finally, the study demonstrates the key role that relationality plays, both in definitions of occupational identity as well as the construction of collaborative communities of practice.

year: 2012

title: Māori child rearing and infant sleep practices

authors: Jones, Horiana Majorie

abstract: Sleep is important to a healthy lifestyle for parents and children, and having effective ways of putting a child to sleep contributes significantly to mental and physical wellbeing. Cultural groups around the world have developed a variety of approaches to this task, for example, rocking, co-sleeping, bed-sharing, breastfeeding to sleep, and encouraging infants to self soothe through various methods of infant sleep training. In New Zealand the continuation of traditional Māori approaches to infant sleep, e.g. co-sleeping, bed-sharing, responsivity to infant cues have been over-shadowed by its negative association with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and dependence on parent interaction when initiating infant sleep. In this study, we were interested in the approaches Māori parents used to put their pēpi (child, 2 months-2 years of age) to sleep and the various factors that have influenced these approaches. Data were collected through online surveys (n =58) and face-to-face interviews (n =10) with Māori parents. Survey results indicated that being held and breast or bottle fed to sleep were the most practiced techniques by Māori parents. Parent assisted approaches, e.g., rocking, feeding, lying with baby until they go to sleep, were the most practiced. Many parents planned for their babies to sleep separately but very few actually persisted with self-soothing approaches due to a number of factors, such as discomfort with listening to their babies cry, culture, whānau (extended families) influences safety, and convenience. The majority of participants expressed a desire for separate sleep; however, few within the interview group actually successfully practiced separate sleep regularly.

text: Māori child rearing and infant sleep practices Sleep is important to a healthy lifestyle for parents and children, and having effective ways of putting a child to sleep contributes significantly to mental and physical wellbeing. Cultural groups around the world have developed a variety of approaches to this task, for example, rocking, co-sleeping, bed-sharing, breastfeeding to sleep, and encouraging infants to self soothe through various methods of infant sleep training. In New Zealand the continuation of traditional Māori approaches to infant sleep, e.g. co-sleeping, bed-sharing, responsivity to infant cues have been over-shadowed by its negative association with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and dependence on parent interaction when initiating infant sleep. In this study, we were interested in the approaches Māori parents used to put their pēpi (child, 2 months-2 years of age) to sleep and the various factors that have influenced these approaches. Data were collected through online surveys (n =58) and face-to-face interviews (n =10) with Māori parents. Survey results indicated that being held and breast or bottle fed to sleep were the most practiced techniques by Māori parents. Parent assisted approaches, e.g., rocking, feeding, lying with baby until they go to sleep, were the most practiced. Many parents planned for their babies to sleep separately but very few actually persisted with self-soothing approaches due to a number of factors, such as discomfort with listening to their babies cry, culture, whānau (extended families) influences safety, and convenience. The majority of participants expressed a desire for separate sleep; however, few within the interview group actually successfully practiced separate sleep regularly.

year: 2017