Charity fundraising strategies in Hong Kong

: evaluation & development

Abstract

Recent surveys by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service clearly show that the demand for charitable giving has continuously increased because of the increase in poverty. The number of non-profit organizations dependent excessively on government funding is rising and, as a result, these organizations are losing their excellent features such as initiative and flexibility in obtaining donations from the public. Charities need to understand the factors that impact giving and switching behaviours and they need to tailor their fundraising strategies to ensure a wider segment of Hong Kong's society can be persuaded to give. In order to promote charitable giving and better utilize the existing resources, a deep understanding of donors' switching behaviours and the relationship between donors and the charity organizations is essential. Considerable research on charitable giving, charity switching behaviour and donors' loyalty has been conducted in different American states and other regions. Review of extant research shows that there is still a gap between Hong Kong and several developed countries in terms of similar research, as well as in terms of scope and depth. To address such deficiency, this research attempts to investigate fundraising strategies employed in Hong Kong, developing localized tools to understand the factors impacting the donors' switching behaviours and to develop models for formulation of fundraising strategies for Charities. The study is divided into two parts, a qualitative research with a series of in-depth interviews were carried out to investigate the current fundraising methods and strategies used by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Hong Kong. Then, a comprehensive questionnaire was designed, which includes: 1. Evaluation of impact factors on donations among the donors and the Charities; 2. Development of performance evaluation models to analysis of switching and loyalty and to derive insights on fundraising strategies applicable in Hong Kong. The study reveals that database and technology marketing is unavoidable for survival of NGOs in Hong Kong and instead of developing strategies based on project types, NGOs should pay more attention to the performance and image of the organization. This very first comprehensive study of donors in Hong Kong has revealed that donors pay more attention to the effectiveness of sharing of the information of the non-profit organization and require their operations to be transparent. Communication also plays a vital role as both the NGOs and the donors often overestimate the other side's view on important factors that lead to donation. In order to keep the donors giving, the NGOs should attempt their most effort to keep the donors interested, not only barely fulfilling their needs but continuously providing new ideas and events to them. Also, the NGOs should not limit themselves to use the donation amount and duration of giving to differentiate the donors' loyalty and instead pay more attention to other demographic factors, for example, the family status. With its highly localized content and design, the questionnaire can act as a tool for local NGOs to carry out surveys on their own and develop their own fund-raising strategies that truly fulfil the needs of their donors.

Date of Award	2 Oct 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kin Keung LAI (Supervisor)