Most donors consider cancelling their regular gift for a significant time before they actually do, according to new research.

Presenting research at the International Fundraising Congress, Martin Paul, of More Management Australia, said that 60 per cent of donors thought for at least a few weeks about cancelling a gift before they do it, and in the meantime tend to look for reasons to justify the cancellation.

Paul said that 31 per cent of donors consider cancelling for a few weeks, while 17 per cent thought about it for a couple of months and a further 17 per cent thought about it for “quite a few months”.

The top reason when they did cancel was that they were cutting back on all giving, but Paul said it was likely a more complex combination of factors.

He cited a variation between donors expectations of what charities will do, and what they hope they will do once signing up with a gift. Just 19 per cent hope that a charity will ask for more money, but 81 per cent expect that they will.

New donors expressed an interest in getting involved in the charity; 68 per cent said they hoped to be invited to a function and the same proportion wanted to be asked for feedback. Just a third believed a charity would do either of those things.

The research was compiled in Australia and consisted of surveys of 2,500 new donors, more than 1,400 regular givers and 1,350 cancelled givers.