The Effects of Moral Framing on Online Fundraising Outcomes: Evidence from GoFundMe Campaigns

TL;DR

The paper addresses how moral framing in online fundraising influences donations and social support on GoFundMe. It deploys Moral Foundations Theory frames (care, fairness, loyalty) quantified via FrameAxis on 14,088 campaigns and assesses effects across fundraising categories using regression with interactions and controls for sentiment and presentation features. Findings show that negative framing of care and fairness can increase donation counts and comments, especially in the Emergency category, while ingroup loyalty framing enhances donations across categories; however, these effects can trade off with the average donation per donor in some contexts. The work offers actionable insights for fundraisers and platform designers, suggesting framing recommendations and analytics tools to optimize donor engagement and support delivery.

Abstract

This study examines the impact of moral framing on fundraising outcomes, including both monetary and social support, by analyzing a dataset of 14,088 campaigns posted on GoFundMe. We focused on three moral frames: care, fairness, and (ingroup) loyalty, and measured their presence in campaign appeals. Our results show that campaigns in the Emergency category are most influenced by moral framing. Generally, negatively framing appeals by emphasizing harm and unfairness effectively attracts more donations and comments from supporters. However, this approach can have a downside, as it may lead to a decrease in the average donation amount per donor. Additionally, we found that loyalty framing was positively associated with receiving more donations and messages across all fundraising categories. This research extends existing literature on framing and communication strategies related to fundraising and their impact. We also propose practical implications for designing features of online fundraising platforms to better support both fundraisers and supporters.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Example GoFundMe campaign. Fundraisers can upload their stories with photos to provide background information and explain why they want to raise funds. Donors can donate money and leave support messages. The fundraiser and donor names have been removed from the screenshot.
• Figure 2: Average moral foundation scores of comments for different score groups of campaign appeals across three moral frames. This figure specifically uses campaign appeals and their comments from the Emergency category.
• Figure 3: Average comment length for different score groups of campaign appeals across three moral frames. We computed the length of each comment by splitting the text by whitespace and counting the resulting number of tokens. This figure specifically uses campaign appeals and their comments from the Emergency category.
• Figure 4: Changes in average donation amount by donation position within each campaign. The line represents the mean donation amount at each sequential position, and the shaded area indicates the 95% confidence interval. We included only campaigns that collected at least 100 donations for this plot.