Why did Tsunami giving tip?

Posted by irishg on February 16th, 2005 at 01:05pm

One of the lessons for fundraisers in the aftermath of the Tsunami is to look at what triggered the huge global giving response. Why did the urge to donate to this particular disaster catch on and become so big, so quickly, all around the world?

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell considers how big social ideas and trends get started and how they “tip” - specifically, how they cross a certain threshold where they catch on and then spread quickly throughout our culture.

In brief, Gladwell suggests that three rules of social dynamics play a critical role in making a social phenomenon “tip”:

1. Law of the few: Like the spread of disease epidemics, a new social trend can be triggered by a small number of individuals who are able to effectively package an idea and deliver it to the best audience in a form they can understand.

2. Stickiness: For an idea to catch on it must have a memorable quality - it must stick in the audience’s mind. It should have an emotional “hook” as well as a rational meaning.

3. Context: The environment in which an idea is embedded plays a important role in launching a social trend. It’s about being in the right place at the right time. Small shifts in the context can make the difference in whether an idea becomes big, or remains small.

The global Tsunami giving response is an excellent example of an idea or “meme” that tipped. Here are my own Gladwell-inspired thoughts on why the Tsunami disaster became a global flash philanthropy event

1 - Law of the few: The world started seeing reports and images from the tourist resorts in Thailand within hours of the Tsunami. These tourists were able to quickly get reports of their personal experiences of the disaster out into the world’s media. They had the tools (video cameras, mobiles phones), and the connections to make this happen much more quickly than if there had been no tourists affected. By comparison, the news of the full scope of devastation from Aceh took nearly two weeks to get out.

2 - Stickiness: Those film clips and personal accounts of the disaster from tourists were exceptionally compelling, and framed the disaster in the form of a personal experience that the middle-class global media audience could identify with.

3 - Context: Over the past few years ecommerce has moved into the mainstream, and that has been accompanied by the development of online giving tools by many NGOs and charities. However, online giving has not yet been widely adopted by donors (online giving currently makes up only a small percentage of the total money raised by most organizations through traditional direct mail/telephone/etc.) so I thnk that the potential for a massive unleashing of online giving had been building - just waiting for something to release it.

I also want to add that as an online fundraiser by profession, I can’t help but think we haven’t been doing a good enough job of tapping into the growing potential of online giving. We should be redoubling our efforts to engage potential donors and motivate them to give.

We have now seen that it can happen on a massive scale when everything comes together correctly.

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