Testing the giving calendar: a seasonality protocol for family philanthropy

Challenge the calendar assumption carefully

The paper compares giving to the German Red Cross during the Christmas season and summer in two studies. It reports lower laboratory giving in the Christmas period and explores self-reported stress and relative savings as possible explanations. The result challenges the assumption that a familiar giving season automatically increases an individual’s willingness to donate. It does not establish that a family foundation should abandon year-end fundraising, that every donor is less generous in December, or that a seasonal change will improve the office’s net receipts. The study setting and the real fundraising environment differ materially.

The research lead should preserve the distinction between individual giving in a controlled setting and aggregate annual fundraising. Aggregate receipts can rise because there are more appeals, different tax incentives or larger institutional gifts, even if a particular person’s response to a standardized opportunity falls. A family office reviewing partner fundraising plans should therefore request a denominator: donations per invitation, per donor or per eligible audience, alongside total receipts. A headline about a strong December is not enough to tell whether the campaign was efficient or whether it simply involved more solicitation.

Audit the existing calendar before changing it

The development lead should map the prior campaign calendar using actual records. Record audience, channel, appeal content, ask amount, staff time, direct expenditure and receipt dates. Identify which gifts were already committed before the seasonal appeal, which were new decisions and which were merely processed late. This prevents a transfer date from being confused with the date a donor chose to give. The paper does not supply this audit method; it motivates a local examination of the assumption that the established calendar is necessarily optimal.

Keep restricted and unrestricted gifts distinguishable, and record whether a campaign created reporting obligations or costs that fall in a later period. A campaign can generate substantial gross revenue while leaving little discretionary funding after costs and restrictions. The finance controller should reconcile the fundraising report to actual receipts and document refunds or failed payments. If comparable records do not exist for earlier periods, label the historical comparison incomplete rather than filling gaps with estimates presented as facts. Establish a consistent data definition before using the history to justify a calendar shift.

Design a modest timing test

If the organization has enough eligible supporters and the experiment is appropriate, the evaluation lead can propose a bounded timing test. Keep the message, cause, donation mechanism and audience selection as similar as feasible, while varying the sending period. Define the primary outcome and observation window in advance. A recipient cannot be randomized to a different calendar without other aspects of their environment also changing, so the interpretation should remain careful. Record contemporaneous events, competing campaigns and changes in organizational need that may influence the comparison.

Avoid testing timing by withholding urgent support or misrepresenting the urgency of an appeal. The beneficiary need may dictate the appropriate date regardless of fundraising efficiency. The grants or program lead should confirm that the test will not compromise services. If timing cannot be varied responsibly, use the study as a prompt for better measurement rather than forcing an experiment. Stop the test when the recipient’s circumstances change so materially that the original comparison is no longer meaningful, and preserve the reason and date of the change.

Treat stress as a hypothesis, not a donor diagnosis

The authors’ questionnaire evidence suggests possible links involving stress and savings, but they acknowledge that the channels are indicative and alternative explanations may exist. The family office should not infer a donor’s stress level from silence or target individuals based on presumed emotional vulnerability. A practical response is to make appeals clear, concise and easy to defer or decline. Offer a convenient route to choose contact preferences without requiring disclosure of personal circumstances. These design suggestions are editorial proposals rather than interventions established by the paper.

The donor-relations lead should record requested contact frequency and honor opt-outs promptly. Track complaints, unsubscribes and requests for more time alongside donation outcomes. Do not assume that a higher immediate response justifies a communication that burdens or pressures people. If a supporter asks to postpone a conversation, do not describe that decision internally as evidence of reduced generosity. A family’s giving can be thoughtful and deliberate even when it does not align with the organization’s preferred calendar. Maintaining trust is a distinct objective that cannot be inferred from short-term revenue alone.

Choose a calendar using costs, needs and uncertainty

The committee should compare net receipts, participation rates and relationship measures across the predefined periods. Include staff and channel costs, and separate campaign-specific expenditure from fixed overhead. Report uncertainty and sample size; a small difference among a few major gifts may be driven by one donor. Do not select the most favorable subgroup after seeing results and present it as a general seasonal effect. If the evidence is too imprecise, retain a diversified calendar and continue measurement instead of claiming that a new optimal season has been found.

The original work relies mainly on students, laboratory endowments and a particular charitable recipient; those constraints limit transfer to intergenerational wealth and major-gift relationships. Social-value-orientation measurement and self-report explanations add further uncertainty. This AI-assisted companion proposes a responsible local evaluation with the development lead, finance controller, program lead and donor-relations lead accountable for their respective records. It does not report a tested family-office intervention or source-author endorsement. Revisit the decision when the audience, mission, financial context or urgency changes, and keep beneficiaries’ needs visible alongside fundraising performance.

Source, attribution and limits

[1] Stephan Müller; Holger A. Rau. Too cold for warm glow? Christmas-season effects in charitable giving. PLOS ONE (2019-05-22). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215844. CC BY 4.0.

Adjacent laboratory evidence mainly involving students and endowment allocation to the German Red Cross. Season, selection and contextual differences limit transfer to wealthy donors; stress explanations remain indicative.

Prepared by the Family Office Private Wealth Journal editorial research desk with AI assistance at the direction of Dr. Freedom Cheteni. Original research authors retain full credit and are not authors or endorsers of this companion. This proposed process has not been evaluated in a new empirical study; no independent peer-review acceptance is claimed. This is educational analysis, not individualized investment, legal or tax advice.

Implementation record

Open the cited sources

1. [1] Stephan Müller; Holger A. Rau. Too cold for warm glow? Christmas-season effects in charitable giving. PLOS ONE (2019-05-22). ↗