The Science Behind Viral Kindness — and How it Affects Your Donor Communications
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA Author, The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution | Former Faculty, NYU Heyman Center for Philanthropy, School of Professional Studies
A three-minute read.
A reader of this blog — a development director — asked me an important question: "Why do images of kindness, like soldiers caring for animals or athletes helping opponents, become viral or iconic? I am asking because I want to use images like that in our fundraising materials."
It is a subtle question and the answer reaches into neuroscience, into the debate about what works in fundraising communications, and into the most current research on what actually moves donors to give. Allow me to share the research, and then suggest four action steps for you to consider. (You could skip down to the action steps if you prefer.)
Why Kindness Goes Viral
The psychological concept of elevation — named by University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt — describes the specific emotional response triggered by witnessing acts of moral beauty. It is distinct from happiness or amusement. Elevation produces a warm feeling in the chest, a sense of being uplifted, and — this is the fundraising-relevant part — a motivation to, in turn, do something good oneself.
Mirror neurons are at play. Mirror neurons are brain cells that fire both when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing that same action. They are, in the simplest terms, the biological mechanism of empathy. Your nervous system does not fully distinguish between watching someone act with kindness and acting that way yourself — the same neural pathways activate in both cases. When you watch a soldier gently tending to an injured animal, your brain is running a version of that experience. The emotion you feel is not imagined. It is neurologically real. Witnessing compassion activates the same brain circuits as performing it. This is why a video of a soldier gently tending to an injured animal stops you mid-scroll: your brain is, in a measurable neurological sense, briefly experiencing what the soldier is experiencing.
UCLA's Bedari Kindness Institute confirmed this in a controlled study — participants who watched a viral video of a man acting generously and kindly donated more of the money they received from the study compared to participants who watched a video of someone doing athletic stunts. (Psychology Today, August 2024.)
A separate pilot study found that people who watched kindness-inspired videos reported increases in happiness, calmness, gratitude, and generosity — emotions the researchers suggest have a ripple effect, inspiring more prosocial behavior in those who witness them.
Kindness, in other words, is contagious. Witnessing it increases the likelihood that the observer will act generously. The soldier and the kitten go viral not because they are sentimental but because they are biologically activating. That is the science behind the scroll-stop.
An Ongoing Debate — Negative vs. Positive Messaging
Our reader's question is really asking if negative messaging outperforms positive?
The conventional wisdom has been, for decades, that it does. Present the problem. Make it urgent. Show suffering.
The Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy — a UK-based research organization focused on the psychology of giving — documented this received wisdom in a May 2026 analysis, noting that fundraisers who question it are routinely overruled by colleagues citing past results: "Negatives raise more money than positives." "We have proven it." "Warm and fluffy loses charities money."
The logic is that donors need to feel the urgency of a problem before they feel motivated to solve it. And in new donor acquisition efforts — reaching a donor who does not yet know your organization — there is evidence to support this. Presenting the problem clearly and urgently does drive first gifts.
But the same logic breaks down when trying to retain a donor. A donor who has given to your organization three times does not need to be re-convinced the problem exists! They already believe it. What they need is evidence that their previous gift made a difference — and for that, impact messaging consistently outperforms urgency messaging in the research literature.
Research by NextAfter — a nonprofit fundraising research and optimization firm — found that fundraising emails containing a personal story outperform those without one by as much as 29 percent in response rate. (nextafter.com)
The M+R Benchmarks 2026 report, which analyzed data from 180 nonprofits, confirms the broader pattern: fundraising email revenue climbed 16 percent in 2025, with the strongest performers consistently those who sent more specific, story-driven content. (mrbenchmarks.com)
Nonprofits that post more diverse solicitation messages — mixing impact stories, mission content, and appeals — raise more money during online fundraising events than those that stick to a single message type. (Bhati and McDonnell, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 2025.)
The active ingredient appears to be story and specificity, not negative emotional valence.
What the Research Recommends
The Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy's conclusion cuts through the debate: the positive versus negative question is not the right question. The best approach is to ask whether the message connects to the donor's identity, values, and sense of self.
A donor who gives because they see themselves as a compassionate person responds to content that reflects that self-image back to them — which is exactly what a kindness image does. A donor who gives because they are outraged by injustice responds to content that names the injustice clearly. The emotional valence of the message matters less than the alignment between the message and the donor's motivation for giving.
This connects directly to what I wrote in a recent post on this blog about the Jewish philosopher Maimonides framework for understanding donor motivation — the idea that donors give for reasons that are specific to their values, their history, and their sense of obligation to the community. The communication that works is the one that speaks to those reasons, not the one that follows a formula derived from aggregate response rates.
→ Read it at laurencepagnoni.com: In Praise of the Donor: Donor Motivation, Donor Retention, and Three Development Practices to Adopt
Four Practical Action Steps
Kindness images are best when they reflect your mission honestly.
A soldier caring for a kitten goes viral because it is real, unexpected, and emotionally specific. A stock photo of smiling volunteers in matching t-shirts does none of those three things. The image that stops the donor’s scroll is the one that captures a genuine moment of human connection within your actual work. If you do not have that image, get it — send a photographer to a program site, ask a staff member to document a real moment. The genuine image will outperform the staged one every time.
Story is the active ingredient, not negativity.
The fundraising communications with the highest response rates contain a specific person, a specific moment, and a specific outcome. Whether that story is told through a problem or through a triumph matters less than whether it is specific and true. "Children in this region go to bed hungry" is a fact. "Amara, age seven, told our program coordinator last Tuesday that she had eaten breakfast for the first time in three days" is a story. One of those sentences will move your donor. You must know which one.
Match the message to where the donor is in their relationship with you.
Acquisition communications can highlight the problem — but a new donor needs to understand why the problem is urgent and why your organization is the right vehicle for solving it. Retention communications should lead with impact — a returning donor needs to know their previous gift mattered before they are ready to give again. Sending urgency-focused acquisition messaging to a seven-year loyal donor is both a missed opportunity and a relationship risk. Segment your list. Speak to each group in the language appropriate to where they are.
The no-AI Path
The no-AI path for a nonprofit's donor communications is not a technological decision. It is a values and relationship decision. Some nonprofits will read the research in this post — about story, specificity, human connection, and donor motivation — and conclude that the most direct path to all of those things is to remove AI from their donor communications entirely. That is a legitimate and defensible choice. It means your development program is managed by human hands and ingenuity. And for organizations whose donor base is built on deep personal relationships, whose community would notice and object to AI-generated content, or whose values explicitly center human presence and authenticity, the no-AI path is not a step backward. It is a brand promise. Some donors will specifically seek out organizations that make it.
To our reader who asked the question: the soldier and the kitten go viral because they trigger something ancient and biological in everyone who sees them — a recognition of what humans can be at their best, and a felt motivation to be that too. Your fundraising communications can do the same thing, not by chasing virality, but by being specific, honest, and human. That turns out to be both the scientific answer and the practical one.
Has your organization found that kindness images or positive framing has changed your donor response rates? Share your experience in the comments section of the website.
This post is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with development directors, communications staff, and board members who may find it useful — provided the author's byline remains intact: By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA. For more on nonprofit fundraising, governance, and strategy, visit laurencepagnoni.com.
