Analysing Donors' Behaviour in Non-profit Organisations for Disaster Resilience: The 2019--2020 Australian Bushfires Case Study

TL;DR

This study investigates how social media campaigns influence donor behavior during the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, revealing that online engagement correlates with increased donations via dedicated websites.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative framework to analyze social media's impact on donor behavior during natural disasters, focusing on online engagement and donation patterns.

Findings

Social media campaigns boost online donations.

Online engagement correlates with donation spikes.

Dedicated website donations increase during social media campaigns.

Abstract

With the advancement and proliferation of technology, non-profit organisations have embraced social media platforms to improve their operational capabilities through brand advocacy, among many other strategies. The effect of such social media campaigns on these institutions, however, remains largely underexplored, especially during disaster periods. This work introduces and applies a quantitative investigative framework to understand how social media influence the behaviour of donors and their usage of these platforms throughout (natural) disasters. More specifically, we explore how on-line engagement -- as captured by Facebook interactions and Google search trends -- corresponds to the donors' behaviour during the catastrophic 2019--2020 Australian bushfire season. To discover this relationship, we analyse the record of donations made to the Australian Red Cross throughout this period. Our exploratory study reveals that social media campaigns are effective in encouraging on-line donations made via a dedicated website. We also compare this mode of giving to more regular, direct deposit gifting.