How can you use science to engage donors?

Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. Today, we are going to ask the question: How can you use science to engage donors? And if you’ve listened to our podcast before or worked with Big Duck, you know we think a lot about the intersection of fundraising and communications, and how we can use communications to build relationships with donors, program participants, volunteers, and activists. And I’m excited to dig into this particular topic with Cherian Koshy. Cherian uses he/him pronouns and is a globally recognized expert in fundraising strategy and innovation. He’s the author of Neurogiving: The Science of Donor Decision-Making, a sought-after keynote speaker and advisor, and a board member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and The Giving Institute. He founded the AI-powered platform NonprofitOS, which was acquired by Kindsight, where he now serves as vice president. Cherian works at the intersection of ethics, technology, and philanthropy, which positions him as a leading voice shaping the future of social impact. Cherian, welcome to the show.

Cherian Koshy: Thanks so much for having me.

Farra Trompeter: Now, if folks have attended fundraising conferences, either online or in person, you may have actually heard Cherian speak, but just in case, let’s do a little getting to know you. You mentioned, or I just mentioned in your bio, how you work at this intersection of ethics, technology, and philanthropy. How did that combo come to be, and tell us a little bit about your work.

Cherian Koshy: Yeah, so I mean, I think like a lot of people, I fell backwards into nonprofit fundraising work. I was starting out in college, and someone said, “Hey, you’d be good at this” (fundraising and advocacy work). I was in Minneapolis, and there was a job opening for knocking on doors and getting people involved in environmental campaigns and human rights campaigns. And so I started doing that, and I turned out to be reasonably good at it, and so pretty much every job after that was in nonprofit work. And then I sort of started doing the work, but not really knowing how to do the work, and it was a lot of trial and error. And so I listened to a lot of speakers. I went to a lot of conferences. I read a lot of books, and I tried a lot of things. Some of them worked; a lot of them didn’t work.

Cherian Koshy: And I sort of assumed that it was a lot of user error, like, I wasn’t getting it right. And I kept seeing people telling me, you know, “You should do it differently”, but it sometimes worked, and it sometimes didn’t work. And that got me into this like rabbit hole of maybe I am not doing it right, and if I just like learned more and if I got more certifications, like if I got my CFRE, if I got my CAF, like that would be the answer. But it didn’t. And so I spent more time learning, more time reading and building technology, and I ultimately discovered that it had more to do with understanding how humans make decisions, what makes a person trust, what makes them act, what makes them be loyal to something. And that led me to behavioral science and neuroscience, and all of that kind of led to where I am today. And it really is more around, “How do we understand people?” And so I guess what I would say is like, I didn’t really necessarily fall in love with fundraising. I fell in love with why people make decisions and how to understand and honor that process more than anything else.

Farra Trompeter: I love that. Well, as someone who fell into fundraising in college also, I appreciate that. And I was also a psychology major, so you and I have lots to talk about, but we’ll keep it to our confined, usual conversation here and have a follow-up some other time. This idea of, you know, what makes people tick and what do they care about, you wrote a book that just came out in December, 2025. Again, for folks who are interested, it’s called Neurogiving: The Science of Donor Decision-Making. We are recording this conversation in January, 2026, and just to note that for those who are listening. The book explores how neuroscience can inform communications and fundraising, align with audiences’ interests and messaging, and connect to equitable storytelling. And we’ll get into some of that in a moment. But I’m just curious, again, the book’s been out for a month or two. What’s the most interesting or surprising reaction you’ve gotten so far to folks who’ve read it?

Cherian Koshy: There’s so many things. Let me start by saying, like, the most surprising thing is the number of people who have said, “I studied psychology or psychology was my favorite class, or something like that.” Like the number of people who have said that blows my mind. And the people who have picked up the book and have said like, “This really speaks to my experience in understanding the why behind what I’m doing.” So, my aim in writing the book was not to say something that has never been said before. It was really to put together all of this research that was out there already, and put it in sort of like a desk reference, for lack of a better term. Like what, what you’ll find when you, when you read the book, if you read the book, is that it’s 220-something peer-reviewed source citations.

Cherian Koshy: So it’s documenting essentially the journey that I went on of saying like, “What are all of the research findings that I basically collected when I went on figuring out why do people make decisions?” And I did a lot of research. I put them into presentations and workshops, and people kept asking me like, “Where is that source citation that you presented at this workshop or in that webinar?” or whatever. I put them all into the book and kind of put them in order. And that’s the point of the book. And when people are reading it, they’re like, “Oh, that explains why this worked or why this is why we do this thing.” Whether it’s in like a capital campaign, this is why we do a thermometer, or this is why we do these gifts in this order, or this is why we do planned giving this way, or this is why we do, you know, donor communications this way, and it suddenly makes sense. And what I like to say is, you probably did it this way and knew that it worked, but now you can sort of play jazz with the way in which you put things together because you understand the peer-reviewed science behind it. So that was probably the most interesting or surprising piece, is that it connected to how people were already doing the work that they were doing. And some people, you know, it’s totally new to them, and that’s fascinating to watch.

Cherian Koshy: I guess the most surprising thing is that it was so popular. I mean, the book hit the USA Today bestseller list, the day after it was published, and then hit the bestseller list the next week and was number 11. I mean, that was shocking. I don’t think a nonprofit book, like a real nonprofit book, has ever hit the USA Today bestseller list, so that’s really wild. So that’s super surprising. And it’s not a book about, like, hacking donor behavior. It’s not like a, it’s never been billed as like “You’ll raise more money if you use this book.” It’s not that kind of strategy-type of book. It’s just like, “This is the way the brain works.” So, I would sort of get it if people felt like, “If you read this book, you’ll make a million dollars,” or something like that, but it was never billed that way. So that was kind of surprising all on its own.

Farra Trompeter: Well, congratulations for that. And yeah, I hope folks go out there and read the book, and just to get them maybe a little more intrigued, I’m wondering if you can share two or three of those insights you’ve learned about what the science is saying about why folks give, and how do folks make these decisions around generosity? How does the brain work when it comes to fundraising? Again, I know you can spend hours talking about this, but if you could give us just a little teaser of a few insights about that.

Cherian Koshy: Yeah, so I mean, there’s a ton of them. And it sort of depends on where you jump into the game of Double Dutch into the book, right? Like, what’s insightful to you is different from what’s insightful to someone else. But I will say that one of the things that I think is probably more insightful to me is that decisions are felt first, and then explained. And what I mean by that is that most people think that our brains, or that we as people are logical, that we are rational, that we make decisions based on this decision-making calculus, that we are evaluating pros and cons, that we look at all the facts, and then we make a decision. And the reality is that we really make a decision based upon meaning and emotion and identity, and then draft our rationale afterwards.

Cherian Koshy: And the more facts that we have, the more our brain sort of stalls out. And so, I was actually on a webinar yesterday, and what I said was, “A lot of times, as communications professionals or fundraising professionals or marketing professionals, we feel like we have a lot of control over how someone makes a decision. And the reality is that we don’t. We don’t. As talented as everyone is that’s listening to this (and they are, they’re very talented, everyone is very talented at their job), but they’re not so talented as to convince someone who hates dogs to suddenly convert and love dogs so much that they are going to volunteer and make a big gift to a dog charity. Like, that’s not going to happen.”

Cherian Koshy: Are you talented enough to convince someone who loves dogs to make a donation to a dog charity today? Yeah, you can do that. You can do that, but you’re not going to convince someone who hates dogs to make a donation to a dog charity. Not going to happen. So I think that’s the first bit. And so when you start to approach it from that perspective, like the first takeaway is that we’re not in the business of moving someone from like zero to one or even necessarily like zero to five. We’re actually in the business of moving someone from like five to six or five to seven. And that framework is much more liberating and empowering, and like permissive, I think in a certain way.

Cherian Koshy: I think the second thing is that people give most when they emotionally identify with someone. So Dr. Paul Zak is the study that I quote, and he does a lot of great work in this space. He actually like doses people with oxytocin. And so the joke is like, “Can we dose people at like events with oxytocin and then convince them, and then they’ll like, give more money?” And we probably shouldn’t do that. Like that’s a bad idea. But the idea is that connection precedes contribution, that, like, if we’re connected to other people, then it drives us to engage with someone, you know, to volunteer, to advocate for someone, to obviously give. All of those things, in terms of connection, drive the way in which we decide to engage with someone.

Cherian Koshy: And Dan Ariely does this, and I don’t know if you can see this, like we can see each other, but your audience can’t. There’s a book on the back shelf from Duke professor Dan Ariely. He talks about this in terms of “in groups” and “out groups”. And when someone is in a big group, and you see someone who’s wearing like a Penn State Jersey and your alma mater is Penn State, and they like say something that, you know that’s a lie, but they’re a Penn State grad, you are more likely to let them slide on the lie if you are also a Penn State grad. But if they’re from a rival school, you’ll absolutely call them out. It’s this weird psychological phenomenon. If we emotionally identify with someone, we connect with them and will agree with them even if there’s like a reason for us to disagree with them. So this connection has this really powerful signaling tool to us in our brain.

Cherian Koshy: I think the last thing that is an important takeaway is that compassion doesn’t scale the way that we think it does. And this is a really weird phenomenon. Like we would think that when more people are suffering, our brain would naturally say that more people means we should care more. And our brain does the opposite. When more people are in need, our feelings actually go down, and it’s a pattern that research has called “Compassion fade”, and it can actually start as quickly as the second person. So when the scope of the problem increases, we accidentally create numbness to the problem.

Cherian Koshy: So there’s another phenomenon, which is unfortunately called “The identifiable victim effect”. I like to call it “The identifiable individual effect” just because I think that’s a better framing of the issue. When we can talk about one person, like this person, you know, “Jasmine is in trouble.” We can identify with that person and connect with that person, but when we start to talk about even a family or a group of people, it changes our understanding of what happens, and we start to lose connection with that problem. And then when you talk about hundreds of people or thousands of people, our brain loses compassion very, very quickly. And it’s a strange brain phenomenon that makes people less feeling, less compassionate, less capable of moving. So those are a few things that I think are fascinating insights to me.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, and I’m curious about the last piece, because I know you also think about ethics, right? Just because we know something is effective doesn’t always mean we should do it, right? If we’re working on an issue where there is a system we need to change, or there is a family or a community that’s impacted, even if we have read and seen the science that people are more likely to connect if we just talk about one person, but if our work is bigger than that, I know there’s been a lot that’s come through about how just talking about that one person not only is inaccurate, but then it could also wind up exploiting that person. So I think with all of these things I’m thinking about not just what works, but also what’s right to do.

Cherian Koshy: Yeah. And so that’s where the importance of agency really comes into play and how we authentically tell the story of either a community or an individual. And, you know, there’s a less right answer to that question. And the challenge comes into play where the importance of how we represent the issues that we’re talking about, right? And we need to do that by representing the people or the issue properly with authenticity. And even if we do so with psychological distance, of course, like representing the issue is more important, I would argue. That’s a primary responsibility, even if it causes some level of distancing, because of that primary responsibility. It’s not as though there’s zero attachment, because there’s that fade is not zero. Does that make sense?

Farra Trompeter: Great. Well, I want to get practical for a moment. In the book, you do touch on some communications topics, which I’m obviously particularly excited by. And listeners of this podcast are often writing copy or designing materials to engage donors, volunteers, program participants, and others. And I imagine, you know, some maybe in the midst of planning a campaign, maybe it’s an anniversary campaign, a capital campaign, a spring giving campaign, whatever it might be. Maybe they’re working on a specific appeal, maybe they’re cultivating a prospect, or they’re thinking about how to engage their current supporters. So knowing if people might be in that space, what are some things they can do based on the insights you gathered? Are there any specific tips you can offer for how nonprofits can execute these, or perhaps even have conversations with donors?

Cherian Koshy: Yeah, so I mean, I think one piece of this is to write for the brain’s first question, which is, “Am I safe in this environment?” And that means starting with clarity and stability, not trying to be clever with the conversation. So I’m sure that your audience knows this, but this is just to reinforce what your audience is already thinking and to be able to reinforce this with their leadership. They know as professionals that we shouldn’t use jargon or insider language, and sometimes leadership can feel like we have to talk about the work that we do to demonstrate how much we know about the circumstances, or the environment, or the expertise that we have. And the reality is that the community not only doesn’t need that, but doesn’t need that first. They need that simple promise of knowing that there is safety and stability here. So that part is critical, and we don’t want to exclude people from the conversation.

Cherian Koshy: There’s a concept, this isn’t in the book, but there’s a professor from the University of Minnesota, Ed Schiappa, who talks about this language as a “terministic screen”. These words that exclude people from the conversation, but because you have to be an insider to the language in order to know what those words mean, in order to be part of the insider club. So like acronyms or like complex language can define who’s part of the inner circle and who’s outside of that. And particularly with prospects, and I don’t just mean donor prospects, community prospects, or advocacy prospects, can feel like I’m on the outside looking in when you use that kind of language.

Cherian Koshy: The other thing to think about is like specific timeframes or outcomes. So within days, within hours, within one phone call, these pieces of framing can help people understand what’s happening. The other thing to think about is coming back to the scale. How do we understand what’s happening within that timeframe or within the scope of the work that’s being done? So translate the information into something that my brain can understand and can hold. So how can I help? What can I do? Does money make a difference? Does it solve this problem? Does money allow food to be provided for a day, for a week? Does me doing something change policy? Does it advocate in a way, like what does it create in terms of meaning? I need to be able to grasp what’s happening.

Cherian Koshy: I think the other thing is to note that we’re tying the work to design choices that feel empowering, not coercive. So offering options that people understand, instead of one giant ask, like “Help” is very vague. Choice is very empowering. To let people know, “Help a family today,” “Keep a pantry stocked for a month.” Or, you know, whatever that means. Sometimes I see organizations say, “Anything that you can do can help.” And that is far too vague for anyone to grasp or to get their arms around. So we need to give people agency around how they can actually do something that is empowering, particularly in a time like this, when the narrative in our world is so disempowering. We feel like we don’t have any control over what’s happening in the world around us. Generosity, nd I don’t just mean giving, generosity in all its forms of time and advocacy and dollars is the counter-narrative to the disempowering narrative that’s out there. We feel like we can do something by having a choice to engage in the world, to say, “I can do something to reclaim power around what I can do in the world to make the world a better place. I can do something to help. So give me something that I can do to help that makes something different.”

Cherian Koshy: And what I mean by that is sometimes I feel like people use the word “pitch”, and I don’t love that word for a lot of reasons, but I think we need to say that it’s not as much a pitch as it is permission for someone to act. What we’re saying is, “Can I share what we’re learning about what’s happening in our community and what’s actually helping people to recover from the circumstances that they’re in? And if this feels true to you, then this is permission for you to be able to be involved in what’s happening here.” What it keeps saying in the book, and what I think, and what the science says is that our goal is not necessarily to try and persuade someone, it’s to be understandable and trustworthy in this space.

Cherian Koshy: So that permission to act is to say, “Here’s what’s happening. Here’s what’s happening in our community, and we’re opening up a space for someone to have permission to be part of a solution.” And that resonates with identity and values that are held, that give them an opportunity to say, “I see myself in this way, that there’s an opportunity to do something that matters.” I know that’s messy, but that’s a way in which you could craft something that aligns with what the approach of writing copy, designing materials, or planning campaigns could look like that might be a little bit different, or approach it a little differently might look like.

Farra Trompeter: I appreciate that. And I’m thinking about the ideas you were, you were talking about around how do you use this information to remind you to make sure you’re being understandable. You’re using communications to build trust. And we think about that with branding, too, right? That’s the whole point. It’s not just to be known and known for the right things; it’s to make sure people understand what you’re about so they can participate with you. So I appreciate that very much. Well, there’s so much more we could talk about, but I’m afraid we’re wrapping close to end of our time here. If you’re out there, you’d like to learn more about the book or get resources from Cherian, be sure to check out his website at Cherian Koshy, I’ll spell that; C-H-E-R-I-A-N-K-O-S-H-Y.com (CherianKoshy.com). You can also follow him on LinkedIn. We will link to all of these things in the show notes at bigduck.com/insights. Cherian, before we go, anything else you’d like to share with our listeners? A point you want to make sure people take home that we didn’t make, or you want to make again?

Cherian Koshy: I would just say the big takeaway is, “Don’t confuse data with insight.” I think insight is data that changes what you do on Monday. If your communication doesn’t produce a clearer next step for your audience, it’s not strategy yet, it’s output. So the future of every organization out there is that it belongs to organizations who can do two things at once. It’s scale personalness and protect trust, just like what you said. So if you lead with dignity and consent and clarity and consistency, the science is already on your side, so you’re doing what’s right. So thanks for being part of this community and the larger Big Duck community and, you know, we want to continue this conversation. I’d love to be part of that.

Farra Trompeter: Great. Well, thank you so much, and everyone, enjoy the rest of your day.