How environmental charities justify their causes and mobilize donors

What is it about?

We use a sample of mission statements and donation appeals by six prominent environmental charities from the UK. We identify textual strategies that position the prospective donor as a “beneficiary” of environment-oriented actions. We also analyze rhetorical strategies and visual resources that are to emotionally touch the prospective donors.

Featured Image

Photo by Rob on Unsplash

Photo by Rob on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study follows the assumption that social trust is more important to donations than accountability and shows how, despite its incomplete and selective representation of actions and decisions, a sufficiently prominent environmental organization can be regarded as legitimate. The rhetorical construction of legitimacy is taken as a key feature of charity communication with rationalizations (logos), moral evaluation and expert authorization (ethos), as well as prolific emotional appeals (pathos). This division corresponds to a choice of textual patterns: ways of representing actors (institutions and donors), processes (of helping save, care and educate) and attributes (trust, efficacy, global/local reach). In visual online appeals, the aestheticized photos additionally help with the identification with the causes championed by charities. legitimization and identification techniques have been illustrated with examples of devices strategically applied for the uptake of social trust.

Perspectives