Messamore Publishes Research Article on How Nonprofits Use Language to Attract Donors and Volunteers
Posted: 8/20/2026 ()
CSDE Affiliate Andrew Messamore (Sociology) published a research article in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly titled, “The Heart Versus the Head: How Nonprofit Use of Emotion and Cognition Attracts Donors and Volunteers.” In this article, Dr. Messamore and his co-authors investigate how nonprofits attract donors and volunteers by framing emotion and cognition in descriptions of their activities to make them optimally distinctive compared to their peers. They employ computational text analysis to measure the emotional and cognitive/rational valences of nonprofit mission statements in new administrative IRS 990 e-filer data. To read the full research article visit this link.