Celebrities Are Not a Big Draw for Donors

By Holly Hall

Many charities seek out ways to get celebrities to promote their cause. But a new poll suggests that few donors pick charities based on celebrity involvement.

Commissioned by Cone, a Boston company that helps charities and corporations conduct marketing projects, the survey of 1,022 adults found that 15 percent of Americans said they would be influenced by celebrities in deciding whether to support a charity.

That is far less than the percentage of respondents who said they would be influenced to support a cause by family members (77 percent), friends (64 percent), their place of worship (60 percent), co-workers (40 percent), or companies (30 percent).

Among the other findings:

• Seventy-six percent of Americans said that word-of-mouth requests from family or friends were the most effective way for a charity to reach them — followed by newspaper and magazine articles (56 percent), events (51 percent), and advertising (50 percent).

• Trust in a charity was more important than any other motivation, with 82 percent of respondents saying that influenced their support. Four out of five people said that they were motivated to give when they saw a charity's impact locally.

Less important were the ease and convenience of donating (68 percent), the chance to get involved with the charity in other ways (59 percent), and frequent news-media coverage of the organization (45 percent).

To obtain a free fact sheet about the survey, "2006 Cone Nonprofit Research," contact Kiva Starr, research associate, at kstarr@coneinc.com or (617) 227-2111.