wikipedia says entertainment is any
activity which provides a diversion or
permits people to amuse themselves in
their leisure time and may also provide
fun enjoyment and laughter with this
broad definition of entertainment you
can see it covers a lot of things but
could philanthropy be a form of
entertainment I'd like you to think back
to the last time you did something nice
for someone maybe you shared some food
with a co-worker at work or took a
friend out for a drink after they had a
bad day maybe you gave to a charity or
even gave to your cousins crowdfunding
campaign how did it feel kind of warm
and fuzzy if you did something that
really made a difference maybe you felt
pretty excited research has shown that
when we do good things for other people
our brains flat our bodies with a
special set of hormones they're called
oxytocin serotonin and dopamine and
together they make up what's known as
the Happiness trifecta
now this trifecta does some great things
it boosts our mood it gives us a feeling
of connection with our community of
bonding it pumps up our immune system a
route reduces our experience of stress
and pain it helps improve our our
digestion our memory our sleeping and
our ability to learn and it motivates us
to do this all again so anyway when
we're flooded with a sense of dolphins
with a set of endorphins we experience
pleasure so what we can say is that
giving feels good does good and it's
good for us but what motivates giving
some of our generosity zzyx inspired by
feelings of community responsibility
social responsibility sometimes we give
because we need to make ourselves feel
better
we've seen things that happen in the
world that caused us emotional
discomfort we might see a child who's
been injured or a family that's hungry
living in poverty these things make us
feel unsettled scared maybe even
outraged the good news is that if we see
something that we can do to help even a
little bit this discomfort motivates us
to try and help so we might volunteer
our time and put some effort into trying
to make a difference or we might give
some money to other people in order to
try and get them to help fix the problem
but no matter what we do it costs us
something cost us some effort some time
some energy some money and in order for
us evolutionary wise to be rewarded for
this our bodies will create a profound
physiological response and it will flat
our bodies with a little bit of this
addictive happiness trifecta and we'll
feel a little bit better and because of
the of the other dopamine that's
involved we're also feeling like we want
to do it again let's talk about
philanthropy philanthropy is anything we
do to help others be it an individual a
group or society at large we channel a
whole bunch of our philanthropy through
charities and one of the big worries
that we have right now is that charities
are facing a funding squeeze individual
donors are one of the largest sources of
funding for charities but in the first
half of this year despite the really
good economy the number of donors has
been reduced by 6% if this continues
over the course of the next few years
it's going to cause a major source of
financial pain for our charities and
that's something I'm really worried
about charities provide some work on
some of the hardest problems in our
society that businesses and governments
can't or don't want to address we need
to figure out how to reverse this loss
of donors and one of the ways to do that
is to look at the underlying causes
one of the biggest influencers of that
the demographic shift that's occurring
in our society people that were born
after the internet was invented have
grown up in a world where online access
is a fundamental part of their lives
some people who were born before the
internet but have nevertheless have
enthusiastically embraced it both of
these groups of people like to
participate and live their lives online
because of that I call them digital
citizens some people were are not as
excited about the internet and only
occasionally adventure into the digital
landscape I call these people digital
tourists they find the culture of the
Internet a strange and exciting world
that they want to visit but prefer the
familiar comfort of living their lives
offline now I was I was talking with a
social entrepreneur a while ago and she
assuming I was a digital tourist she
said how do how do charities get money
or donations from older people like you
I told her about a charity I support I
said every fall they send me a glossy
annual report and in this annual report
that is filled with facts and figures
lists of major donors and stories of
things that they've done over the last
couple of years they have a little piece
of paper in it they asked me to write
down my gift put down my credit card
number or if I like send the back of
paper check there's even a little
envelope included so I can mail it all
back to them and they gave me a little
fridge magnet so I can think about them
every time I go get a snack I said to
her if they asked you to donate in this
way how would you look at it and she
said well they killed some trees turned
it into paper covered it and colorful
but toxic ink that's hard to recycle it
shifted out to me on a carbon belching
truck it's filled with stories about
other people and old news with all these
paper processes I wondered whether or
not my gift was actually going to do any
of the work and solve the problem and
they asked me to write down my credit
card
number and risk having somebody steal it
or I could send them a paper check like
grandma used to use who uses checks
anymore and how do you recycle that
little fridge magnet thing is that metal
or plastic or what I said I guessing
that's a mess the point about this is
not to malign either group but to point
out the really significant differences
but in the way fundraising techniques
that worked for one group of citizens
don't work for another older people are
frequently digital tourists they prefer
to engage with the charity offline using
mail or a charity event this is
important because individual tees are
some of the largest donors other people
and especially younger people prefer to
interact with a charity digitally these
digital citizens are now the largest
component of our population
unfortunately charities haven't been
adjusting their fundraising techniques
in order to work with them so what we
need is a fundamentally a new approach
to how to get digital citizens to become
digital donors now one of the most
important things that a donor say they
want is to understand the impact of
their gift and they want transparency
they want to understand how the charity
spent the money the challenge is if you
give twenty five dollars to a charity
that has an annual budget of millions it
doesn't feel like you made much of a
difference and it's really hard to know
exactly what that money would have been
spent on so one of the things charities
are doing is they're adopting a
divide-and-conquer approach where they
use digital technology to talk about
their work as a series of smaller
projects each one of them has a much
smaller goal and so therefore feels like
it's more achievable if a donor has now
choices about what they could fund and
we'll know more clearly how their money
will be used if the charity follows up
and tells the donor the impact or the
completion of the story the donor will
not only get a sense of completion
they've got that done but they'll also
feel like they actually
a difference they may even want to give
again the challenges that this shift
from major projects to micro projects
intensifies the funding squeeze the
target audience for it is digital
citizen
the big challenge with it is how do we
get these donors to give more now Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation did some
research and what they've discovered is
at first glance a bit counterintuitive
they said that if you want to get
someone to give more over the course of
a year the best thing for you to do is
to ask for substantially less money but
to ask for more often if we think about
this in terms of the happy train
happiness trifecta it starts to make
some sense if I make a small gift I get
a small amount of feel-good of the good
hormones if I make a gift that's ten
times bigger I don't get ten times as
much good feeling so in order to make
this work what we have to do is
encourage donors to gate make these
micro gifts on a regular basis because
what that does is our brains start to
pump out a little bit of the Happiness
trifecta each time and the aggregate
experience is much better as well
the dopamine actually helps us
anticipate the good feelings we're going
to get and so therefore helps make
giving a habit okay
so that's all well and good but how do
we get digital donors to give multiple
times I mean this is an e-commerce we
just can't send them a bonus gift every
time they give us a gift that's kind of
defeats the purpose and they get mad at
us anyway for for wasting their money
but fortunately the solution to this is
surprisingly simple what we've
discovered is that while telling the
donor the impact of their gift is good
telling them an entertaining backstory
about it and then keeping them updated
on the progress is much better it costs
the charity almost nothing and yet
scales up to huge numbers of donors let
me give you an example so imagine one of
your friends shared a story with you in
social media Apollo is a guide dog who's
being training to help someone who can't
see the charity needs help funding
Apollo's training it takes two years in
the costs about $35,000
in order to get that done the charity
starts a crowdfunding campaign that
tells the story of Apollo's journey and
a very important part of this is it
tells the impact result what's gonna
happen in the end once this happens and
in this case is that Apollo will end up
having his partner for life whose own
life will be transformed by his arrival
you're asked to make a small donation
you go hey I can spare 10 bucks and
donate to help Apollo accomplish his
mission a couple of weeks go by and you
get an email from the charity it's a
photo of Apollo hanging out with one of
his friends Bravo they didn't ask you to
donate it's just a show-and-tell it's
the kind of thing that you'd share with
your friends if this was your puppy so
you search the charity's campaign site
you find Bravo's campaign and you follow
it so you get updates about her - and
you share with a couple of your friends
in case they can help contribute a
couple weeks go by you get another email
the story says Apollo is eating like a
horse
they cost twenty dollars just to feed
them for four days if anyone out there
can please help feed this ravenous beast
please make a small donation you think I
can spare 20 bucks and help to give
again I've just made multiple donations
to the same small project a week goes by
we get another email it's a photo of big
stacks of dog food with a little caption
that says Apollo likes his food thanks
now when charity shares stories like
this they're promoting transparency
they're showing you how your money was
used and the donor gets an idea that
even making a small gift can have a
tangible impact further it gives what's
called social proof that other people
are also helping to move this project
forward it's been validated by the
community so three weeks go by no email
you check the web
to find out how your puppy is doing and
the trainers have been posting videos of
their sessions you really like the work
that Sharma one of the trainers is doing
with Apollo she's amazing in the way she
helps him and it shows how much time is
spent actually doing this training work
so now you have an understanding of how
expensive it is why it's so expensive to
train a guide dog so you share that with
your friends because they want them to
see why you're so excited about your
puppy project this kind of episodic
incremental storytelling goes on the
entire time for Apollo's journey and it
ends up in culminates with Apollo
meeting his new life partner Grace and
going home what you've just heard is
what's known as a hero's journey it's a
common archetypal story in theater and
movies
Apollo's our hero he has a mission he's
going to be a guardian angel for someone
who needs his help we have a plot
training will be full of ups and downs
as it goes we have a supporting cast
Sharma the trainer grace the new life
partner may even have some villains
don't get me started on all those office
cats we have some setbacks that hot
juicy state disti riously disappeared
from the dining room table we can have
some challenges some dogs like playing
in mud puddles but don't like taking a
bath and we can have some small triumphs
Apollo helped grace avoid a dangerous
traffic situation during training and in
the end we end up with a climactic final
scene Apollo going home with grace that
was a real tearjerker through all of
this through all the social sharing
Apollo ends up with a huge audience and
group who through a series of small
contributions have helped make him
achieve his mission I hope what you can
see is that philanthropic storytelling
can be entertaining as well as impactful
it enables charities to work with
digital donors and harnesses our love of
stories and our biological feedback
mechanism
to help make giving a habit now I admit
Apolo story is particularly compelling
compared to other causes but this same
technique works for all sorts of
different kind of projects the secret is
in the quality and variety of the
storytelling
there's many different ways to tell a
story in visual entertainment we have
different genres we have
action-adventure science-fiction
romantic comedies in philanthropic
entertainment we also have genres
disaster recovery environmental issues
poverty reduction the lists on both
sides are huge we can currently browse
hundreds of thousands of movies and TV
shows with our internet connected
fingers and when we find one we like we
tend to binge watch them what if we
could find a similar-sized list of
charitable projects around the world
where we could discover
entertaining stories that we want to
support and where we can make a
difference and we participate because
that makes us feel good we could end up
binge watching charity for good so if
you will
binge watching charity feels good and
does good for our society and because of
the hormonal benefits is also good for
us as a donor and a consumer demand the
charities tell you detailed stories
about the projects that you support and
how your money is used offer to give
them more money if you'll do it if we
can do that we can reimagine
philanthropy and change the way the
charity is funded philanthropy now
that's entertainment
[Applause]