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The scenario: Fundraising – for your kid's school, that 5K you signed up for ages ago or your favourite charity – seems to happen more often these days. What happened to the bake sale? So how do you get your colleagues, friends and family to loosen the purse strings? A study by the University of Missouri says that the best way is to divide and conquer – that is, separate your marks from each other before going in for the kill. This goes against the traditional $5,000 a table charity-dinner mindset, where guests cajole one another into spending more cash for a good cause.

Quite the opposite, the presence of others actually reduces an individual's likelihood of helping, similar to the bystander effect. In the study, participants were divided into three groups: those who donated solo, those who could see what others donated, and pairs of givers that could send texts to each other to discuss what to donate. The lone donors gave the most, while those who could text each other actually tended to convince each other to give less.

The takeaway: Next time you need to drum up funds, do what wildly aggressive street canvassers do and get your prey alone.

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