[MUSIC] Now we're going to look at what makes people want to give. So, in this module, we'll spend some time exploring motivations for generosity behaviors. We'll examine how incentives, constraints influence our giving behaviors. And then we'll examine how different types of giving and different types of generosity might have different motives. And finally, let's think about the ways to increase the impact of our generosity, of our giving behaviors. We start by looking at motivations so there's something puzzing. I'm puzzled because we all work really, really hard to make money, if we're thinking of giving money away. And after we've worked really hard and got the money, we turn around and give it away and that seems like a bit of a puzzle. Why do we do that? And it's not just little bit. If you look at Americans in 2018, they collectively gave over $427.71 billion. That's close to like $428 billion. This is a lot of money. We need to know what is it that makes people, wants people to express their generosity by giving this much money away? In fact, we've seen that regardless of the business cycle, whether it's good times, bad times, the amount of giving in America, at least in the US, hovers around 2% of the income. Now, what's surprising is that that's the average, there are many people who give a lot more, especially those who are, by duty, need to give 10% of tithe due to religious reasons. So giving ranges from 0 to 10 to more depending on the individual. GivingTuesday refers to the Tuesday after the US Thanksgiving. It was a movement created to create an actually an international day of charitable giving. I just want to tell you in 2019 this GivingTuesday, this Tuesday when people are asked to give money away, generated just online, $501 million just in the US. And in the US if you took online and people who wrote checks and gave money away in other ways, it generated close to $2 billion. Again, this is not a small sum of amount but it's special also because it captures people's generosity in a period of time when people are feeling generous, and that's between Thanksgiving holiday when you're actually saying thanks for all the things you've received and before Christmas. Actually, it is a time when people spend a lot on themselves. So it's an antithesis of the consumer culture, where people go to shop for gifts for other people for Christmas or they're buying things to celebrate Thanksgiving. And so it's really in opposition to that very consumer culture of shopping that surrounded Thanksgiving and Christmas. So the idea of GivingTuesday was to create some generosity around spending money for others and not for people themselves. Now, I'd like to turn to some more hard research about motives for giving. There are many theories that explain why we work so hard to make money and then give it away. Theories on rational giving employs concepts from economic theory to explain donating behavior, where individuals are concerned about the outcome of committing that action. So if I take any action, I want to know what's the outcome. For example, what would be the impact on the charitable cause? What is the impact of my private donation? Do I get some gifts in return for making a donation? Because many organizations will give their big donors nice gala party or some mug that says thank you. There's some gifts. Or the importance of tax incentives. At least in the US and many countries around the world, governments encourage of generosity and philanthropy by making it either tax deductible or giving some tax incentives. Most of us also say we give because we feel good and economists have called this the warm glow. And hold on to that because when I look at the neurobiological motives for giving, I will return to this idea of warm glow where economists write, say, we feel good, we have a really warm glow. And maybe it's our brains generating some endorphins and we have individual feelings of happiness. We also feel good about ourselves. When you give away something, it makes you look good to yourself. It enhances your own positive image of yourself. Every time you catch yourself doing something nice, you feel, I'm a good person. But it also enhances the way people think about me if somebody notices I'm giving, right? So on the giving pledge we notice the billionaires are giving and we feel, okay, it is not too bad man after all, or Warren Buffett is a good guy, right? So it enhances your reputation not only for yourself, but also amongst your colleagues. And this is why people like to let other people know when they've made a gift or they've done something good because it enhances your reputation amongst your networks. And some people give because they want to relieve the guilt of having more than other people. So if I walk down the street and I feel that I have something in my purse that I could take out and help somebody who is suffering, I feel like doing it because if I don't then I'm going to feel guilty for a while. And say, I could have done something, would not have hardly cost me anything and I just walked by. So often people will say they give to alleviate the suffering of some other group or another person. And then again, some people give because it's a religious duty. Some people give because they are aware of the need. If I know at this time when I recording this, we have a global pandemic, we're aware of the need of many people who are suffering dire consequences due to the global pandemic and that may move us to give. The interesting thing is that when we ask people why they give, one of the top reasons that comes out often is because they were asked to give. That is the really practical reason, why did I give? Because I was asked to. That doesn't uncover the motives to give, but actually the act of giving is often, the initiative often comes because somebody asked you, whether it's your friend or you saw a message on the internet or you got something on Twitter. Somebody is telling you or encouraging you to give. Some other people would say they give because they want to reciprocate. They have received help from some groups or strangers or even an organization, and now I feel that I need to give back when I'm in a position to give back. And the idea behind reciprocation is not just to give because you've received but it could also be for the future that if those in need were in a better position and I, later on, I'm not in a good position, this might set up some kind of a cycle of they would then support me. It's to look for help in the future. It's some kind of an insurance policy if you like. Or I give for research on, let's say, breast cancer because my mother suffered from it. And so I want to help research with the idea that maybe in the future incase I have the problem or my children have the problem, maybe we'll have a cure. So there's some kind of reciprocity in giving. And the last one I'm going to talk about is emotional giving. Sometimes we just have a gut feeling. We don't have the reasons. We haven't figured out the tax incentives. We haven't figured out that we're going to get something and we just moved to give. And this could be an external crisis. It could be for many reasons where we just simply have an emotional or a gut feeling about giving. At the end of the day, if we're talking about generosity in terms of money and giving, we generally part with our money when we get something in exchange. That's what consumer theory would tell us, that I got this computer because I was willing to part with some money. So if you look at it from a consumer point of view, what are people who are donating buying? Maybe you would argue they're buying any one of those things that I listed already. It could be they were buying a warm cloth. It could be they're buying an insurance policy. Because after making money, it's not all just about just making it and keeping it, it is to consume goods and services. Maybe you want to save some for a rainy day or some for your children, but most of us use money as a tool to consume things. So you couldn't think that maybe some people want to use their money to actualize some of their own values of generosity of seeing that there is less inequality in the world, that the world is a better place than they found it. So you could also think of donations as a sort of consumption that gives the donors some satisfaction, and that satisfaction underlies the motives we've discussed. So I can buy popcorn because I like to eat popcorn and I feel good after eating popcorn. I can travel with my money because I like to travel and I feel good when I'm doing it. I can donate because I have the money. I like to donate money and I feel good about donating. So you see how consumer theory can also explain that maybe we are actualizing our generosity by buying or by giving money as philanthropy. Now, what is the role of motives? As you saw, many reasons facilitate giving and we give for different reasons, and we don't always give for the same reason. If once I gave money because I felt guilty, that's not the same reason I gave it another time. So we give for different reasons and these can change over time. It depends on where we are in our lives. When I was a student, I gave for a different reason when I'm a mother I gave for a different reason, when I became a great parent I give for a different reason. When I started my employment I gave for a different reason. It depends on where I am in my life cycle. It can also differ by the nature of my gift. The motives can differ by who gets it. And the reasons I give can differ by the impact that gift makes. So yeah, we're not simple creatures, we're multidimensional and we cannot say we always have one motive for practicing generosity. But what we can say is that some of the motives we listed dominates some of the times and then other motives dominate other times. And why does anyone care about motives? Well, the people who do care about motives are usually people who are trying to raise money. Fundraisers like to know why you're giving money, because if they know why you're giving money, they can target the right population, or they can make their appeals in a way that would appeal to you to give. If they know you give for religious reasons, that's what they're going to appeal to. And that's where you would get your appeal probably from your minister if you're attending a Sunday service. And why is that important? Because it's a voluntary distribution of resources among society. It's not done because the government taxes you and forces you to redistribute your wealth. But you get your own agency to redistribute your resources in a way you want and the way you feel. And so fundraisers, people trying to help you do this, need to know what motives motivates you. Because there are so many causes that you could give to. There are so many needs that need to be fulfilled. And if I have only $20 to give, I don't have the time to find where is the best need, so you need fundraisers. You need organizations to make you aware of the needs and to make the ask because a lot of us give because of the ask. But some tips before you give away that hard earned money, please research who's doing the ask? Who's the charity that's asking you to give away your hard earned money? Ask if your donation is tax deductible because then you know that the charity has to be registered with the government and the government has done some oversight on that particular charity. Make sure your charity's website is secure if you're doing it online, there have been many charity scams, and you don't want to lose your hard earned money to charity scams. And you can find useful non profit reports on Guide Star, Charity Navigator, Business Bureaus, Wise Giving Alliance and several other places that will research your charities and tell you where to go? So yes, it's good to know why you're giving your money away, but please, make sure you're not scammed on your hard earned money.
