What happens when giving is fuelled by hate? The rise of retributive philanthropy

In 2023 you could donate $25 to name a cockroach after your ex and then have the Toronto Zoo send them a certificate.

A group called Sign My Rocket raises support for Ukraine by letting donors request personal messages be written on artillery shells on the front lines.

And when GoFundMe shut off the collection and release of donations for the Canadian trucker convoy in 2022, angry supporters ended up increasing their donations through competing platforms.

These are all examples of what’s being called retributive philanthropy.

New research published in the Journal of Marketing Research this year suggests that this is not outlier behaviour. Expect to see more campaigns that frame giving support through a lens of vindictiveness.

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While traditional giving is typically fuelled by compassion or gratitude, retributive philanthropy is geared around punishment. Not only do people donate money in order to support a cause, they also do it to inflict discomfort, embarrassment, or outright harm.

It helps explain the paradox of the fictitious Bruce Wayne billionaire philanthropist and his alter ego, Batman. Mr. Wayne spends more time fighting crime as Batman than he does building his wealth, which would enable him to write more cheques to solve more systemic social problems.

Now, you too can be a vigilante by weaponizing your wallet through retributive philanthropy.

It also gives a new tool to those who’ve long believed that voting with your wallet is worthwhile. Previously this has been primarily associated with removal of support through boycotts. Don’t like that a company or celebrity has aligned themselves with a cause you detest? Stop buying their products.

But retributive philanthropy goes a step further. Instead of simply withdrawing support, people channel money in ways that the object of their disdain will hate.

As detailed in the study, Planned Parenthood received a larger increase in donations after Donald Trump’s first presidential election win in 2016 compared with other organizations under threat of harm owing to proposed policies at the time.

One reason that might explain this is the more than 82,000 people who made donations to the group in vice-president Mike Pence’s name. Mr. Pence received thousands of letters of gratitude on behalf of an organization and cause he was opposed to.

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This new style of fundraising may increase the number of donors and the size of donations. The study’s authors found three ingredients that play a role in retributive philanthropy.

The donors generally believe that the target acted deliberately and maliciously (perceived intentional wrongdoing). Strong moral emotions such as anger, contempt, and disgust drive the donation behaviour more than empathy. And donors have a desire for punishment in that the donation is satisfying because it hurts or humiliates the wrongdoer.

It goes beyond symbolism. The punishment needs to feel real. It seems that donors may be more likely to give when they could directly tie the use of their funds to a consequence.

In the case of Sign My Rocket, their website shows pictures of artillery with personal messages written in marker from previous donors. Instead of just giving money to a cause where your money is perceived to be thrown into a big pot that has multiple possible uses, being able to see how a donation lands a punch is powerful.

For fundraising, this represents a dilemma. Anger can fuel donations. Some causes and many political players have been leaning on this strategy for a while. And if social media clickbait is any template, we see that getting people riled up leads to more views, likes, and shares.

Does it lead to better content being shared? Or the increasing polarization of society? When social media algorithms reward creators for being bombastic, guess what? They become more bombastic to keep the attention up. Any new competitors have to out-bombast the incumbents to get their own attention.

Retributive philanthropy is clearly an effective fundraising tool. And perhaps that is fine if outrage can be channelled into support for good causes.

But what happens when the very tactics used to raise funds start to mirror the wrongdoing they claim to fight? If anger is the fuel, there will always be the incentive to manufacture more of it.

Preet Banerjee is a consultant to the wealth management industry with a focus on commercial applications of behavioural finance research.