Charitable Giving Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Charitable Giving survey that was conducted in partnership between e11even.org and Dexterity Consulting.  Congratulations to Mark Menzies, of Menzies Printers, he is the winner of the $500 Charitable Gift Card to donate to a charity of his choice through CanadaHelps.

Over 720 people were solicited to respond (not including those who came through Twitter and Facebook), and we received 87 responses from United States, Canada and Israel.  While this is by no-means a scientific representation, there were some interesting comments shared and similarities between respondents.

The majority of the respondents are very satisfied with how donations were invested in programs/services/ organizations.  While those same respondents felt that how the charities reported back to them on those investments hovers just above generally satisfied.

The question about what would donors change about their charitable investment experience highlighted two consistent messages - the dislike for direct mail (too much, too impersonal, too expensive) and the lack of personal connection upon receipt of the donation (personal thank you note, phone call, ongoing personal communication).

A respondent brought up a point about the categories highlighted for how people make charitable decisions.  We chose the words: Local Issues, International Issues, Advocacy, Capacity Building, Other.  It was suggested that we should have used Stats Canada categories.  In planning this survey we opted not to use those categories because it was being sent out internationally and we found that there is no international standard on charitable sector divisions.  At least, none that we could find... If you do know of one, please share it in the comments section of this blog post.

The other reason why we opted for these titles is so we could keep things as broad as possible.  What I mean by this, is you can put Education as a title, but are those university scholarships, research, women's issues, capacity building...???  The breakdowns are endless.  In hindsight, we should have had a second question that allowed for more explanation of respondents.  Overwhelmingly, the majority of people choose to support Local Issues over anything else.

Another point raised was that we did not ask if people are solicited person-to-person.  68% of the respondents give under $5000/year and that seems to match with the responses about not feeling a personal connection.  Perhaps charities would be wiser to conduct more face-to-face solicitations, keep that personal connection and some of those smaller donors will increase.  Often, charities leave the face-to-face solicitations for their major donors, opting instead to spend money on direct mail for the smaller donors.  Looking at it from this perspective it seems a little topsy-turvy.

One last finding of interest is typically how people give.  36% of people said that they mainly give online; this is close to the North American average of 40%. 

As we delve deeper into the survey we will share more of the findings.  Again, thank you for taking the time to answer!