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Comment by awillen | Hacker News Reader

But if sending the incompetent American gets you a lifetime donor who pays for many houses to be built (assuming he would not have without the feeling of personal connection he got from his experience incompetently homebuilding), then isn't that the right thing to do if your goal is to build as many houses as possible?

You mentioned efficiency, but the goal was never efficiency - it's to build houses. Would it be better if people were entirely rational and just gave money instead of incompetently homebuilding and then also became lifetime donors? Of course. That's not reality, though.

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> if sending the incompetent American gets you a lifetime donor who pays for many houses to be built (assuming he would not have without the feeling of personal connection he got from his experience incompetently homebuilding)

If that is the case, yes. Basically you are saying that, because of a quirk in human psychology, the only way to get people to donate, over the long term, a portion of their income, derived from them doing jobs they are much more productive at than building houses, to building houses, is to engage them by having them build a house themselves first.

The question then becomes, does this actually happen? Do people who volunteer to build homes end up becoming lifetime donors? Or are those two separate sets of people?

Speaking from personal experience, getting involved with volunteer work ensures I always consider those organizations when donating.

Certainly I volunteered because I had strong feelings towards those needs anyway, but those connections make a big difference.

> Basically you are saying that, because of a quirk in human psychology, the only way to get people to donate, over the long term, a portion of their income, derived from them doing jobs they are much more productive at than building houses, to building houses, is to engage them by having them build a house themselves first.

Having people engage in a process isn't just for personal fulfillment of "morally incompetent" people: it also serves as due diligence.

Trust is a big factor of deciding where you want to donate your money. Having walked through the process as a volunteer, you have a much clearer picture of how your donations are spent, and yes you are more likely to donate.

Trust has to be earned one way or another.

Piggybacking on this home building example with an extreme example: how would you feel if you donated for years to some non profit which builds houses, but later learned that child labor is used to build those as well as cheap, structurally unsound materials, with the non profit CEO pocketing millions?

I used to donate a lot, but have lost trust when I've seen reports on how much money is wasted by groups. Now I tend to donate directly to someone or group that I personally know and/or have worked with.

> it also serves as due diligence

Yes, this is a good point. But note that it's a different point from the one that I was responding to. If the purpose of having volunteers build the houses before becoming lifetime donors is due diligence--them gaining trust in the process--then it doesn't matter how efficient they are at building the houses, because the tradeoff is not them building houses vs. whatever more productive work they could have been doing with that time and energy. Nor is it about having to overcome any irrational quirks of human psychology, giving the donors "personal connection", etc. The tradeoff is the donors having trust in the process vs. not--i.e., them gaining the information they need to rationally believe that their donations will accomplish the end goal, vs. not. In short, it's a perfectly rational investment of time and energy for the donors, even if they are terrible house builders.

Donor engagement is a primary driver of donor loyalty and retention. This is pretty fundamental stuff in the nonprofit world. If you can build a deep personal and emotional connection, such as "helping build a house with their own hands", that is a big boost to average lifetime donor value. (Nonprofit donor development can run on decades-long timeframes - engage a high schooler and you're more likely to be able to solicit funds from them in their 50s.)

On a smaller level, this is why many charities will get an initial $5 donation and then spend more than $5 on further solicitation of the same donor. The best indicator that you're going to give money to a charity (or political campaign) is that you've already done so. Lots of people feel this doesn't apply to them personally, but data-driven fundraising bears the point out.

> The best indicator that you're going to give money to a charity (or political campaign) is that you've already done so.

This ignores why you gave the money though. Example, I donated to a particular children's hospital because it was the dying wish of a friend that donations be made to that specific charity instead of sending flowers to the funeral. I don't care about or have a connection to that charity in any other way and I'm not going to dontate to them again but they hound me incessantly for more money.

GP describes a situation I observed working in non profit, not habitat for humanity but something similar.

They didn't have much to show for their efforts but it seems to be a popular strategy. I haven't given them my time or effort since leaving.

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