This may sound counter-intuitive, but an Israeli researcher says that the audience's psychological distance to the object of a charity needs to be taken into consideration.
"While the Sally Struthers approach — such as using a starving African child to personify the aims of the organization — may elicit an effective emotional response, this kind of 'victim highlighting' isn't always right when givers are geographically distant from the victim, the researchers found. And in some cases, says Dr. [Danit] Ein-Gar, it's not always appropriate. Child abuse and battered women's charities, for instance, need to protect the victims' identities. And in environmental NGOs, there are often no human victims — the victim is the world itself."
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