Lately the ethical imagery debate has largely centred around the use of AI. But questions over ethical imagery existed long before AI. When it comes to choosing the photos we use on landing pages and in our appeals, our choices as fundraisers are both guided and limited by what is considered ethical.

The real challenge is the sector definition of ‘ethical’ is contentious and more than a little hazy. At least in practice. Dr Cassandra Chapman recently shared some research conducted by her team that she hopes will help: What Does Ethical Imagery Look Like? An Experimental Examination of Potential Donor Perceptions of Nonprofit Marketing Imagery.

The study was carried out using 186 real images from the Red Cross image databank. Through a survey of members of the public, the goal of the research was to:

• understand potential donor perceptions of what is or isn’t an ethical image
• identify exactly what image characteristics could make a donor label it unethical.

The findings were interesting. For instance, neither gender, ethnicity, setting nor camera angle affected a donor’s perception of whether an image was ethical.

If you’ve ever worked for an INGO then you’ll know this runs counter to some of the more commonly held guidelines around what constitutes ‘ethical’ in this field. Especially for those organisations in Australia which are ACFID Code of Conduct signatories. Typically, their ethical image and story guidelines might include something like following:

• Women and girls are disproportionately affected by poverty. So make sure your image choices properly reflect this gender narrative.
• Likewise, ethnic minority groups experience higher rates of poverty. So make sure ethnicity is equally and fairly represented across both your story collection and image bank.
• Every photo should treat the people in it with dignity. So make sure you always select the setting or backdrop for portraits accordingly. Refrain from trying to make poverty itself the subject of your photo.
• Always shoot portraits at eye level. Never take a photo from a camera angle that’s above your photo’s subject. It implies a power dynamic that you shouldn’t perpetuate, however inadvertently.

However…

The one big question mark I have with this research is it measures donors’ perceptions of what constitutes an ethical image, rather than whether or not they respond to those images by donating. This is noted in the research discussion.

Many times we see there is a big disconnect between what donors say they want and their actual behaviour. For example, many donors will say they don’t want to receive direct mail because they believe it’s a waste of money and they want to help the charity by not receiving it. But when you don’t send them direct mail, they give less.

So in this case, it may well be that donors say certain images are more ethical, but if charities use them in fundraising communications, they may actually give less. I’d love to see research testing whether the images that donors perceive to be most ethical do in fact drive them to give more. In other words, we need research that tests actual donor behaviour.

However, the positive out of this is that donors do distinguish between ethical and unethical imagery. And I believe we do need to use ethical images. But there is a need to define exactly what we mean by ethical (that’s a subject for another post).

Ultimately, all charities are looking for the same thing—a solution to the challenge of ethical fundraising imagery that also raises money.

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