Door-to-door Fundraising Experiment

After running a door-to-door pilot with a sample size of 1,528 houses spanning roughly a month, the data supports the general consensus within Charity Science that door-to-door fundraising on behalf of direct-level charities is not viable for a charity in our particular financial and reputational position. Below is a report unpacking our methods and discussing the results that ultimately led us to declare door-to-door fundraising  as a strategy not worth pursuing any further.  

Below are four key findings that ultimately informed our conclusions on the door-to-door fundraising pilot:  

• An insufficient number of conversions (defined as new recurring donors), likely due in no small part to a lack of brand recognition
• Substantial time and monetary costs exacerbated by a lack of manpower needed to generate donations offsetting initial sunk costs
• Perceived donor apathy and saturation of particular door-to-door territory
• Other potential confounding factors drawn from qualitative evidence

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Unlike several of the fundraising techniques previously explored by Charity Science, face-to-face fundraising, and door-to-door campaigns specifically, allow for a wide variety of metrics to be recorded and analyzed. In this particular pilot, the amount of data gathered was sufficient enough to make long-term projections on the viability of door-to-door as a method of fundraising for Charity Science, but not large enough to produce any conclusions of statistical significance. Despite the final outcome, Charity Science is nonetheless of the opinion that the aggregated data and analysis contains value for the effective altruism community and the nonprofit sector as a whole. ​

See D2D Report