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Smithtown University’s fund-raisers succeeded in getting donations from 80 percent of the potential donors they contacted. This success rate, exceptionally high for university fund-raisers, does not indicate that they were doing a good job. On the contrary, since the people most likely to donate are those who have donated in the past, good fund-raisers constantly try less-likely prospects in an effort to expand the donor base. The high success rate shows insufficient canvassing effort.

Which of the following, if true, provides more support for the argument?

A. Smithtown University’s fund-raisers were successful in their contacts with potential donors who had never given before about as frequently as were fund-raisers for other universities in their contacts with such people.

B. This year the average size of the donations to Smithtown University from new donors when the university’s fund-raisers had contacted was larger than the average size of donations from donors who had given to the university before.

C. This year most of the donations that came to Smithtown University from people who had previously donated to it were made without the university’s fund-raisers having made any contact with the donors.

D. The majority of the donations that fund-raisers succeeded in getting for Smithtown University this year were from donors who had never given to the university before.

E. More than half of the money raised by Smithtown University’s fund-raisers came from donors who had never previously donated to the university.

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Hi Ashuban,

Conclusion – The high success rate in collecting donations shows insufficient canvassing effort.

Premises –

  1. Smithtown University’s fund-raisers got donations from 80 percent of the donors they contacted.
  2. people most likely to donate are those who have donated in the past
  3. good fund-raisers constantly try less-likely prospects in an effort to expand the donor base which means according to the author, good canvassing means contacting people who haven’t donated before and expanding the donor base.
Option A says that Smithtown‘s fund-raisers were no better than other fund-raisers in getting donations from people who had never donated before. This indicates their campaign wasn’t successful or they did not run a campaign at all. This is the correct answer because it strengthens the conclusion that the fund-raisers did not put sufficient efforts into canvassing.
Option B – Weakens the argument by saying that the donations from new donors was larger
Option C says “most” of the donations. What about the remaining donations? They could have been from new donors. This means Smithtown fund-raisers did reach out to new donors and try to expand their donor base.
Options D and E weaken the argument.
Expert Answered on December 16, 2017.
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