2007 Nonprofit Donor Trends
excerpts from The Nonprofit Times, July 1, 2008
Bequests could be up for several reasons, including charities doing a better job of marketing bequests, reminding people of the opportunities, financial advisors asking questions during estate planning and public awareness campaigns.
“Many organizations thought that bequests are one of those things that just happen, but you still need to market and remind people and steward the bequest donors,”Johnson said. “Think of the direct mail you get at home.They say ‘Remember us in your will.’ It’s kind of minor, but we’re seeing that kind of thing more and more. It’s starting to penetrate.”
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INDIVIDUAL GIVING
Last year’s 3.9-percent rise in giving reflects virtually the same growth rate as 2006, but it still represents 2.3 percent of the average American’s disposable income, said Del artin, chair of Giving USA FoundationTM. “This figure has stood the test of time, ever since we started producing Giving USA 53 years ago,” she said.
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“While higher-income families are major donors to many important institutions, ordinary-income donors are vital, too, for the health of the nonprofit sector in this country,” Martin said.
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Considering that almost half of individual giving went to religion ($102 billion), which only grew 1.8 percent after inflation, Salamon said that means giving to all other purposes must have gone down even more sharply to absorb the meager rise in half the total.
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Individual giving usually reflects the economy, said Elizabeth Boris, director of the Center on Nonprofits
and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.“When the economy kind of flattens
at the end of year, that’s when a lot of individual giving happens, and so people might be a little more cautious when the economy looks like it’s tanking,” she said.
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Giving USA cited a recent study by Campbell & Company which shows that Millennials (those born after 1981) are more concerned with causes that make the world a better place while those born before that time look to give their philanthropic dollars closer to home.Gunderson said this is especially true in the generational transfer of family foundations.“ Our grandparents would give that money to name a building after them at the university, their alma mater. The grandkids would give the money to healthcare in
Guatemala.They have no loyalty to their alma mater and they could care less about naming rights, they’re into that social justice focus,” he said.
Increases in international giving also might be boosted by the activities of the Gates Foundation and Clinton Foundation, as well as celebrities helping to raise the visibility of poverty and the need in many countries around the world, Boris said.
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