Up Next with Gabriella Mirabelli
Sep 3, 2026 · 31 min · 12 segments
Do process photos increase charity donations? **Josh Lundberg**, assistant professor of marketing at North Carolina Central University, joins Up Next to answer that question. His research with…
Josh LundbergGuest
Gabriella MirabelliHostMany fundraising appeals rely on a similar visual shorthand, a before photo and an after photo.
And you and your colleagues research asks whether that shorthand is working for a charity and what would happen in a donor's mind if in addition to the before and after shots, you show the in-between too.
And at the top of your paper, you have a quote that a lot of listeners will be familiar with.
And you picked this quote because research has shown that donors often hold back because they worry that their gift will only fund a temporary fix.
And yet, despite all the research into how to motivate charitable giving, prior to your paper, nobody had really looked at this sort of solution longevity as an element in a donor's decision matrix.
Solution longevity, as we term it, basically captures the concept that a charity's intervention is going to provide long-term benefit.
Are they going to teach someone to fish? Charities oftentimes come under fire for these quote-unquote band-aid solutions.
And later on that aid runs out or it breaks down and the people to whom they provided aid are left back where they started.
So donors like charities that have this long-term impact and it's important enough that it's become one of the primary means of differentiation and competition in the nonprofit sector.
this concept of solution longevity as far as why it hasn't been covered in consumer behavior research lately or prior that's a good question because the importance is there it's present in the marketplace and it's not a recent development charities have been striving to do this for a long time There are advances in communication, say, that might make this more important or might make it easier to evaluate.
For example, if a charity goes and supplies or helps a rural village in Africa get access to clean water.
Decades ago, we might never have known if the water ran out or the well ran dry or something like that.
So now in the information age, it's possible that donors are better equipped to evaluate whether a charity is making long-term impact.
The other thing that occurs to me is that one of these subjects of pro-social giving in consumer research is charities' efficiency.
So how well are they making use of their resources? Of every dollar donated, how much of it goes to the cause, the programs that they run, and how much of it goes to administration? Again, this is another critical aspect on which charities compete, but it's somewhat easier to quantify than solution longevity.
So it could be that Research has focused on that because it's relatively easier to access this information and make use of it and figure out how consumers respond to it.
Research on nonprofit branding has long found that charities are seen as warm, but not especially competent.
How does competence relate to likability and trustworthiness? I often think of them as in one big pot, but they're really not.
Many fundraising appeals rely on a similar visual shorthand, a before photo and an after photo.
And you and your colleagues research asks whether that shorthand is working for a charity and what would happen in a donor's mind if in addition to the before and after shots, you show the in-between too.
And at the top of your paper, you have a quote that a lot of listeners will be familiar with.
And you picked this quote because research has shown that donors often hold back because they worry that their gift will only fund a temporary fix.
And yet, despite all the research into how to motivate charitable giving, prior to your paper, nobody had really looked at this sort of solution longevity as an element in a donor's decision matrix.
Solution longevity, as we term it, basically captures the concept that a charity's intervention is going to provide long-term benefit.
Are they going to teach someone to fish? Charities oftentimes come under fire for these quote-unquote band-aid solutions.
And later on that aid runs out or it breaks down and the people to whom they provided aid are left back where they started.
So donors like charities that have this long-term impact and it's important enough that it's become one of the primary means of differentiation and competition in the nonprofit sector.
this concept of solution longevity as far as why it hasn't been covered in consumer behavior research lately or prior that's a good question because the importance is there it's present in the marketplace and it's not a recent development charities have been striving to do this for a long time There are advances in communication, say, that might make this more important or might make it easier to evaluate.
For example, if a charity goes and supplies or helps a rural village in Africa get access to clean water.
Decades ago, we might never have known if the water ran out or the well ran dry or something like that.
So now in the information age, it's possible that donors are better equipped to evaluate whether a charity is making long-term impact.
The other thing that occurs to me is that one of these subjects of pro-social giving in consumer research is charities' efficiency.
So how well are they making use of their resources? Of every dollar donated, how much of it goes to the cause, the programs that they run, and how much of it goes to administration? Again, this is another critical aspect on which charities compete, but it's somewhat easier to quantify than solution longevity.
So it could be that Research has focused on that because it's relatively easier to access this information and make use of it and figure out how consumers respond to it.
Research on nonprofit branding has long found that charities are seen as warm, but not especially competent.
How does competence relate to likability and trustworthiness? I often think of them as in one big pot, but they're really not.
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