Donor Identity, Morality, and Nonprofit Organizations: Soliciting Donations and Recruiting Volunteers for the Red Cross, 1863-1919

Donor Identity, Morality, and Nonprofit Organizations: Soliciting Donations and Recruiting Volunteers for the Red Cross, 1863-1919

Abstract:

Recent literature has highlighted the central role donor identity, the perception of oneself as a giving person, plays in fundraising. In this, nonprofit organizations develop strategies to encourage a generous self-perception among potential donors and volunteers in order to elicit donations. However, existing literature has not yet examined the cultural repertoires organizations develop to portray convincing representations of donor identity to their donor- and volunteer-base. This article argues that nonprofit organizations draw on broad, culturally-defined notions of the moral good in order to create idealized depictions of a donor identity. To demonstrate, the article looks at the early decades of the Red Cross movement. It shows that the movement developed four different logics in order to depict romanticized notions of donors and volunteers, each of which based on a different idea of the social good. The article argues that such meaning making is a key aspect of nonprofit organizations’ work.

Last updated on 05/14/2023