What Makes Donors Give: a New Study Offers Clues

Affluent donors, and those with more years of education, are more likely to be motivated to give to causes that allow them to “make the world a better place,” rather than to groups that meet basic needs, according to a new study whose results were presented here today at the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

That was a key finding of a study of 10,000 Americans whose results were summarized in a speech here by Una Osili, director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The study examined motivations to give among people in different regions of the country as well as examining those who had similar ages, education levels, and incomes.

When all the donors in the study were examined together, nearly 18 percent said they made charitable gifts to meet basic needs, while 16.6 percent said they wanted to make the world a better place and 12.5 percent said they wanted to make local communities better.

While donors’ geographic regions did not appear to influence basic charitable motivations, their ages, incomes, and education levels all did.

Donors with more years of formal education and those whose household incomes were $100,000 or more, for example, were more likely to give to make the world better and less likely to be interested in meeting basic needs. The same was true of younger donors.

Donors with a high-school degree or less were more frequently motivated to meet basic needs and to respond to the idea of the poor helping themselves, Ms. Osili said. Donors with higher incomes, she said, are more concerned with making the world better by making a measurable difference than in solving stubborn social problems or preventing them from taking root in the first place.

Source: Chronicle of Philanthropy