At CryptonHero, we spend a lot of time studying how donors decide who deserves their trust, because that behavior shapes almost every design decision we make. It's the reason giving on our Marketplace is built into the transaction itself rather than left as a claim an organization makes after the fact. New research on donor behavior confirms the instinct behind that choice, and the data is worth walking through.
Most Donors Are Already Checking
Fifty nine percent of donors say they usually ask questions or look for information before making a contribution.[1] This isn't a small, cautious minority. It's a clear majority, and it holds true across every generation surveyed, with fifty two to sixty three percent of each age group reporting the same habit.[1]
The question isn't whether donors want to verify. It's what they actually check.
Where Donors Look
According to the report, the sources donors rely on most, before giving, are:[1]
✓ Research on the charity's own website: 54 percent
✓ Information from a third party charity monitoring organization: 39 percent
✓ Questions asked directly to the charity or the person requesting the donation: 36 percent
✓ General web searches: 35 percent
✓ Knowing someone involved with the organization: 33 percent
✓ Information contained in the charity's own appeal: 32 percent
✓ Information from family and friends: 30 percent
Two numbers near the bottom of that list are worth sitting with. Government agency information influenced only fourteen percent of donors, and AI generated summaries influenced just seven percent, the lowest of every source measured.[1]
What That Tells Us
Donors aren't looking for something to summarize the situation for them. They're looking for something they can check themselves, in their own words, at their own pace. Primary sources beat secondhand ones. Direct research beats delegated research. That's not a preference for more effort. It's a preference for verification over interpretation.
That's precisely the gap CryptonHero was designed to close. Every Social Collectible sale and resale on the Marketplace automatically routes a share to a verified cause through a smart contract, an on chain record that anyone can look up directly, not a summary someone else produced on their behalf.[2] Donors don't have to trust our description of what happened. They can go look.
The data backs up what we assumed going in. Donors don't want to be told to trust an organization. They want a reason to, and they want to find that reason themselves.
When you're deciding whether to support a cause, what's the first thing you actually check?
[1] Give.org (BBB Wise Giving Alliance), 2026 Donor Trust Report: Trends in Donor Trust and Perspectives.
[2] CryptonHero White Paper, v3.0.