Charity fundraising: Storytelling, Engagement, and Immersive Technologies

Creative Language Technologies

This is episode #26 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 29th of September, 2022.

Today I sat down with Dr. Andrea Macrae, a researcher in the fields of cognitive narratology and stylistics at Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford, England. She works on literature and on non-literary discourse - most recently the discourse of charity fundraising. In her research she studies the relationships between text, readers' interpretations, and broader socio-cultural narratives and ways of thinking.
Our discussion theme was the discourse of charity fundraising — a timely topic, as we live in a hyperconnected world where everybody fights for our attention. Specifically, we talked about the role of charity fundraising letters and touched on how research within the sector has only recently begun to connect with theories of narrative. This was important to address given some disconnect between the strategies employed by academic philanthropic researchers and charities on how to measure the engagement with the beneficiary’s story that would eventually drive donation.
The second part of the interview covered the the future of digital technologies as contributing to storytelling for non-profit fundraising. Although virtual reality (VR) has already started to play an important role in charity fundraising, Andrea believes that traditional fundraising letters are here to stay.

Here is the show.
Show Notes:
- the discourse of charity fundraising and fundraising letters
- some disconnect between the strategies employed by academic philanthropic researchers and charities on how to measure the engagement
- the role of empathy in the context of charity fundraising letters; the shift from individual to ‘universal compassion’
- the future of digital technologies as contributing to storytelling for non-profit fundraising (next 10-20 years)
- engagement with the donors in immersive environments (AR/VR)
- ethical implications of individual’s story as representative of others
Relevant papers:

Andrea Macrae; Small Stories in Charity Fundraising Letters and the Ethics of Interwoven Individualism. Poetics Today 1 June 2022; 43 (2): 219–241.
Link to Dr. Macrae’s professional webpage: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/profiles/staff/andrea-macrae