Breakfast, donor trust, and donor intentions. What happens when what we say isn’t what we do?

Key Takeaways

Donor behavior doesn’t match stated intentions. What donors say about giving differs from their actions.

Trust influences giving, but only a bit. It explains about 5% of the variation in donor behavior.

Donor intent is unreliable. Many planned donations don’t happen, while many unplanned donations do.

Giving is situational, often momentary. Relevance, timing, and ease drive action. .

Article

Most Americans believe breakfast is important.

Surveys show that about 75% of Americans say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.¹ Based on this, one might conclude Americans are dedicated to a sound morning breakfast routine. As a marketer, I’d feel confident building a brand around the importance of a healthy, complete breakfast.

Their behavior tells a different story. Only about 35% eat breakfast every day,² and roughly 1 in 6 adults don’t eat breakfast at all on a given day.³ That gap in intention vs behavior changes the marketer’s challenge entirely.

As a marketer with this data, understanding factors like preparation convenience, mobility, time constraints, and on-the-go lifestyles becomes critical with this data. Those realities should shape product, messaging, potential partnership, and distribution strategies.

Even for something people broadly agree is important like breakfast, behavior is inconsistent or absent altogether. This gap between what people say they believe and what they do isn’t unusual. It’s a well-documented pattern in behavioral research.

Why this matters for nonprofit development.

Nonprofit leaders hear a similar version of this all the time: trust is the most important factor in donor decision-making. Surveys consistently show that up to 60% - 70% of donors say trust is essential or highly important when deciding where to give, and that higher trust increases their likelihood to support an organization.⁴

It sounds reasonable, reinforces what many organizations already believe and sets a course of action: invest in trust, increase transparency, improve reporting, strengthen credibility, focus on donors who know us.

But there’s a problem. Like with eating breakfast, what donors say and what they do with giving can be very different things and with very different implications for key strategies.

What empirical data shows about trust in donor giving.

Survey data tells us what people believe, and what they think they will do. Empirical data, on the other hand, doesn’t ask people what matters. It observes what people do (with statistical analysis). When researchers look at donor giving through that lens, the role of trust becomes much more nuanced.

Last week we highlighted the meta-analysis by Chapman, Hornsey, and Gillespie, published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, which examined charitable giving studies covering more than 80,000 individuals across 31 countries. It found that trust explains about 5% of the variation in giving behavior.⁵ Certainly a positive, but a slight one.

This all doesn’t mean trust doesn’t matter. It does. But it is a relatively small part of a much larger system of influences on donor giving. People give for a variety of reasons such as emotional connection, personal relevance, social context, and timing—many of which do not depend on organizational trust at all⁵.

And, there’s more…

Even if trust played a larger role, it still wouldn’t fully explain giving behavior, because intention itself is unreliable. A study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute examined what people intended to do versus what they actually did when it came to donating money, goods, or time.

The results of the study: about 37% of people who intend to give don’t follow through.⁶ At the same time, roughly half of people who did not intend to give end up giving anyway.⁶

In other words, intention is not a reliable predictor of behavior. People give for a range of reasons, and that’s the “95%” in donor variance beyond trust. Warm fuzzies. Top of mind. A friend mentioned the organization…the list goes on and on.

It’s just real life.

Take a moment and consider giving from a typical person.

Most don’t sit down and deeply evaluate an organization before deciding to give. More often, it happens in the flow of life. A cause feels relevant. A friend or neighbor mentions it. A direct mail piece shows up at the right time. Something connects and we act. And just as often, we don’t.

Not because we don’t trust the organization, but because the moment isn’t right. We’re busy. We have other priorities. Maybe finances are tight this month. Maybe something in life has shifted and our attention is elsewhere.

That “95%” isn’t randomness. It reflects how people live and have to make decisions.

In that context, giving is less about careful evaluation and more about presence, relevance, and ease. It’s about whether an organization shows up in the right way, and comes to mind at the right moment, with a clear path to act.

Addressing the other “95%” of donor giving.

To best address the “95%” of donor behavior beyond trust, a few consistent drivers emerge:

Distinctiveness — clear positioning and recognizable assets that are uniquely yours and easily come to mind

Being known — more often than not, the challenge isn’t rejection; potential supporters don’t know you exist

Reach — speak to as broad an audience as is reasonable and possible, not just a narrow base of committed supporters

Timing — be present on their time, not yours, i.e. beyond the annual campaigns

Ease — make it simple and accessible for people to support you whenever their interest arises

For nonprofits, especially small and mid-sized organizations, this reframes the challenge. Growth isn’t just about deepening relationships with existing supporters.

Be noticed, be remembered, and be easy to support.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences!

References

¹ CivicScience, Breakfast Trends / Importance of Breakfast
² CivicScience, Breakfast Consumption Frequency
³ U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), NHANES dietary data (MMWR)
⁴ BBB Wise Giving Alliance (Give.org), Donor Trust Report
⁵ Chapman, C. M., Hornsey, M. J., & Gillespie, N. (2021), To What Extent Is Trust a Prerequisite for Charitable Giving? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
⁶ Nguyen, C. et al. (2022), Mind the Gap: Understanding the Gap Between Intentions and Behaviour in the Charity Context, Journal of Business Research