Once again, Nicholas Kristof has found hard numbers to back up what old hands sort of knew: people don’t get motivated to help other people by statistics. In rigorous research, people were much more likely to give money to a single person ~ preferably a child ~ than to wrestle with the implications of systemic poverty. Put that way, it’s not surprising.
He points out that many of us in “the biz”, however, work hard to develop numbers in order to make a case for giving. And there are those funders like United Way and foundations that do insist on having a persuasive case to give. (My point, not Nick’s.)
But most individuals are hard-wired to respond to individual cases, not to global issues. So people who refuse to give to United Way at the office will dump their change into the jar at the cash register with a picture of a little girl and the words “Please Help!”
Someone, of course, including people like Kristof, has to put the numbers together. Someone has to understand the big picture and figure out how to move the rest of us to action. But we have to be able to speak at least two languages ~ the abstract and the concrete.
Britt's Blog 
Interesting — I’m teaching a college English course this summer, and I’ve been talking to my students about this.. how we get from numbers on a page to action.
Just today we were talking about the mixture of personal experience and stats that would make a more persuasive argument.
It sounds good in theory; I have no idea how it would work in practice. But I can dream…