Donors stepped up their giving significantly to address the crises of 2020, according to the latest Burk Donor Survey. More than half of respondents — 56 percent — said they gave a larger sum to charity in 2020 than in 2019. By contrast, just 37 percent of respondents to an earlier survey said they gave more in 2019 than in 2018. Donors’ motivation last year was clear. Nearly three-quarters increased their giving because of the pandemic.
“Covid-19 gave donors a focused, narrow, urgent case to support,” says Penelope Burk, president of the consulting firm Cygnus Applied Research and author of the report. Such a specific need appealed to donors who, Burk says, have long stated that they prefer to support programs that will yield tangible results rather than overhead.
“I gave money like I’ve never given money before,” one donor said in the survey. “I don’t have a lot, but I have more than others. It’s only right.”
The survey echoes other recent reports that have found donors expect to keep contributing at high levels in the year ahead. Fifty-three percent of respondents to the Burk survey said their 2021 giving would keep pace with 2020. More than a fourth said they expected to give even more this year, and of those, 38 percent were motivated by the continuing public-health emergency, 27 percent by calls for racial justice, and nearly a quarter by election issues and voter rights.
While donors’ plans for 2021 are positive, Burk warns fundraisers not to be complacent.
“Donors can’t sustain an emergency mentality for too long,” she says. In 2017, for example, supporters increased their giving in response to deadly hurricanes and wild fires, but they reverted to their previous giving behavior the following year.
To avoid a drop in giving in coming years, fundraisers need to inspire donors with a new, compelling reason to give — and this strategy needs to start with the nonprofit’s management, Burk says. Charities need to “find their new case, which is also compelling and very specific,” Burk says.
She says nonprofits should also point to their successes of the past year, telling donors, “We proved back to you that you can trust us because we did a great job in Covid. Now look what we’re going to do with this new initiative.”
The share of donors who said they contributed less than they could have decreased slightly, from 36 percent in 2018 to 31 percent in 2020. Among donors who gave $10,000 or more, those numbers were 35 percent in 2018 and 28 percent in 2020.
Even so, some donors said in their comments that the economic uncertainty and health threats of last year dissuaded them from giving as much as they could have.
How the Survey Was Conducted
The latest survey polled 20,098 donors from February 23 to March 31 about how the events of the past year — including the Covid-19 pandemic, racial-justice protests, and the presidential election — affected their giving decisions.
Burk relied on 55 nonprofits to send the survey to donors who had given them a gift in 2019 or 2020 or both. Fifty-six percent of the respondents were 65 or older, 40 percent were 35 to 64, and 4 percent were 34 or younger.
The survey also collected data on the race and ethnicity of respondents, but because 85 percent were white, it would be hard to determine any difference in giving based on those demographics, she said.
Burk has produced the survey for 12 years but plans to retire at the end of 2021. She says she’s still determining whether and how the survey will continue without her.
Other takeaways from the report:
Calls for racial justice inspired donors.
The survey asked donors how the events of last year motivated them to give. Almost a third — mostly young people — gave more in 2020 because of racial-justice protests. Sixty-two percent of respondents age 34 or younger said they made a contribution to that cause last year.
“As a result of the Black Lives Matter movement, I have read more books about social injustice, which inspired me to give more and start giving to some new not-for-profits,” one donor said in the survey.
Racial-justice giving is likely to remain strong this year. Thirty-seven percent of respondents age 34 or younger and 27 percent of all respondents said they would give more in 2021 to advance racial justice. Nearly all donors who contributed to a racial-justice charity last year — 97 percent — said they would give again to the group to which they gave the most toward that cause in 2020.
Online giving outpaces direct mail.
For the first time in the survey’s history, donors of all ages said they were more likely to give online than by mail. Sixty-six percent said they made an online contribution last year, and 60 percent said they gave by mail.
Crowdfunding is growing in popularity.
In 2017, just 15 percent of survey respondents said they had contributed to a crowdfunding campaign; that share jumped to 28 percent last year.
A smaller survey released in April by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University found a similar share of donors — 32 percent — made an annual crowdfunding gift, and more than 47 percent said they had contributed to a nonprofit through a crowdfunding platform.
Burk’s survey found that 47 percent of donors age 34 or younger contributed to a crowdfunding campaign last year, but so did nearly 40 percent of 35- to 64-year-olds. Just 22 percent of supporters ages 65 or older did the same.
Stimulus checks gave nonprofits an unexpected boost.
Thirty-two percent of respondents said the extra cash from federal stimulus checks enabled them to give more last year. “I thought about it and felt I could donate it to a good cause,” one donor said in the survey. “It made me feel acutely aware of how fortunate I am.”
These donations were especially popular among donors 34 or younger and donors earning less than $70,000. Forty-three percent of young donors said they gave a portion or all of their payments to charity, while 54 percent of the lowest earners did the same.
More donors gave to more causes.
Fifty-five percent of donors gave to the same number of charities in 2020 as in 2019, and 37 percent gave to more causes. In the previous survey, three-fourths of respondents said they had given to the same number of groups in 2018 as in 2017 and 17 percent gave to more organizations.
That doesn’t mean, however, that donors were spreading the same amount of cash among more charities. “Donors were digging deeper and giving more money,” Burk says. “Some of the way they expressed that was in supporting more causes. Some donors didn’t support more causes, but divided a larger giving budget among the same number of causes.”
One donor used federal stimulus checks to give more in 2020. But that was an anomaly. “Now I intend to get back to my original plan, which is to strategically increase my giving to a limited number of organizations while adding a few more to the mix over time,” the donor said in the survey.
Younger donors were the most likely to give to more causes whereas middle-aged donors preferred to make big gifts to just a few charities, Burk says.
Donors gave high marks to virtual fundraising events.
Nearly half of respondents who contributed at least $10,000 in 2020 said they attended at least one virtual fundraising event in 2020. Among all respondents, that share was 37 percent. The most popular were virtual galas.
In good news for fundraisers, 79 percent of respondents gave positive ratings to the virtual events. A little more than half of respondents — 53 percent — gave high marks to new fundraising events that nonprofits created specifically for a virtual audience compared with the 46 percent who gave positive ratings to longstanding fundraising events that went virtual last year.
“I may be willing to consider attending some again virtually this year because not-for-profits seem to be learning from the experience,” one donor said in the survey.
DAF holders gave more from their funds.
Survey respondents with donor-advised funds said they used them more generously last year. The nation’s biggest DAF sponsor, Fidelity Charitable, also reported stepped up giving last year: Its fund holders gave 24 percent more in 2020 than they did in 2019.
Only 6 percent of Burk Donor Survey respondents reported holding one or more DAF, but in 2018, just 4 percent did.
Fifty-five percent of the DAF holders in the Burk survey said they contributed more from those funds in 2020 than in previous years. Of those who gave more, 61 percent said they did so because of Covid-19 and 20 percent because of racial justice.
Another 14 percent said they disbursed grants from those funds for the first time last year. A quarter of those first-time DAF donors said their grants were inspired by the pandemic, while 11 percent said they gave to advance racial-justice efforts.
The increased disbursement could also be due in part to fundraisers feeling more emboldened to ask donors to give from their DAFs, Burk says.
When people contribute to DAFs, they reap immediate tax benefits but are not required to disburse the funds within a specified time period and thus they can remain in the DAF for years or even decades.
“While nobody said much for quite a long time, now that that collective principal has grown to an enormous amount,” Burk says “fundraisers are quite rightly saying this is not right and it has to change.”
