Do Words Matter in Feminist Fundraising?

This thesis explores the impact of linguistic choices in the external online communication of feminist non-profit organisations (NPOs) on individuals' willingness to donate. It particularly focuses on the effect of feminist references and their connotative power on donor appeal. Given the fact that feminist NPOs increasingly rely on private and individual donations due to possible diminishing government support, this study is particularly relevant in the current right-wing socio-political context in the Netherlands. The online audience of WOMEN Inc., a large feminist NPO in the Netherlands, is taken as a case study within this thesis. The primary research question investigates how specific language used by feminist NPOs influences individuals’ willingness to financially contribute to a feminist NPO, after being exposed to this language. This research is grounded on framing theory, which posits that the way information is presented can significantly affect decision-making and behaviours. Utilising a between-subjects survey experiment conducted via Qualtrics, the study engaged 209 participants who are social media followers of WOMEN Inc., a prominent feminist NPO in the Netherlands. Participants were exposed to one of four donation slogans featuring different references to feminism; gender justice, gender equality, feminism or a control group who were exposed to no reference to feminism. These references to feminism were proxies of the following linguistic framings: advocacy-focused language, future- oriented appeals, negatively connoted words, or a neutral control group. These donation slogans were carefully crafted to test specific hypotheses about the power of language in the context of donation appeals. The analysis employed a one-way ANOVA to compare the mean willingness to donate across these groups, providing a robust statistical framework to assess the impact of different linguistic strategies. The main hypothesis of this study was that feminist NPOs’ word choice in external online communication effects individuals’ willingness to donate. Although the findings of this study rejected this hypothesis, because the effect of word choice on WTD was statistically insignificant, this study did find various tendencies and observations in which ‘gender equality’ is the word that results in the highest mean WTD. The findings thus indicate that a reference to feminism that is a future-oriented appeal enhances WTD, compared to a negatively connoted word like ‘feminism’, which scored lowest. These results underscore the importance of strategic linguistic choices in fundraising communications for feminist NPOs. They offer practical insights for enhancing donor engagement and support, suggesting that NPOs should carefully consider the framing of their messages to maximise individual donations. The study concludes with recommendations for future research, including the exploration of qualitative research on the linguistic elements of this thesis and the potential cross-cultural variations in response to different framings. This research contributes to the broader field of nonprofit communication by providing evidence-based strategies for more effective donor engagement.