Session: Brainhacking - 8 3/4 decision science insights to improve your fundraising results today

As fundraisers, we’re always asking – what makes donors tick? How do we get them to turn good intentions into real gifts?

What if there were a proven playbook—crafted by Nobel Prize-winning experts—that could unlock these answers?

Good news: there is. And Meredith Niles and Marina Jones have done the hard work for you, distilling it into 8¾? game-changing insights to supercharge your results. Welcome to Brainhacking.

In this session, they’ll reveal how decision science can transform your fundraising. You’ll learn why donors don’t always act how you expect, or economic models say they “should” —and how to design strategies that work with their brains, not against them. Discover the surprising psychology behind incentives (and how to win over your Finance Director), plus get actionable, budget-friendly ideas you can test right away.

Marina Jones

Marina is an experienced arts fundraiser and charity leader who is constantly curious and always learning about improving fundraising and how the latest in decision science can improve results. Working for arts and cultural charities she loves implementing and testing nudges that can work quickly and with limited budgets to drive big results. She loves sharing that knowledge with the sector and helping everyone to improve their fundraising.

Marina regularly speaks and writes about decision science and how it can be implemented teaching masterclasses and speaking at international conferences. Legacies and fundraising history are also passions and she loves exploring the history of fundraising and how insights from the past and decision science can help us develop our fundraising today.

Marina is Executive Director, Development & Public Affairs at the English National Opera. And has over twenty years experience working in fundraising at the Royal Ballet and Opera, National Arts Fundraising School, Vienna Ballet, Edinburgh Zoo, Lyric Hammersmith, Polka Theatre and the Orange Tree to raise money for everything from capital campaigns, apprentices, audience development to toilets! Marina is a Honorary Researcher at the University of Kent where she studied her MA in Philanthropic Studies.