A growing share of donors are holding their giving steady rather than increasing their philanthropy, although more of them say they could contribute more.
The findings come from the latest Burk Donor Survey, produced by Penelope Burk, president of the consulting firm Cygnus Applied Research. The survey was conducted from August through October 2019 and asked donors how they gave in 2018 and what their giving intentions are for 2019 and beyond.
The report drew on anonymous responses from more than 18,500 donors who were contacted through charities they had supported in the previous two years.
More than half of the donors surveyed — 56 percent — expected to give about the same in 2019 and into 2020 as they did in 2018. That’s higher than the 51 percent who said they gave the same in 2018 as in 2017.
Thirty-six percent of respondents said they could have given more in 2018, the highest share the survey has recorded in the 10 years Cygnus has conducted the poll. Donors under the age of 35 and donors who gave $10,000 or more were more likely to say they had given less than they could have, compared with older donors and those who gave less.
While donors’ own financial stability and budgeting far outweighed all other reasons for maintaining their contributions at the same level, the study of American philanthropy shows fundraisers have plenty of opportunities to inspire greater giving.
One third of donors who planned to give the same amount said they could be persuaded to give more if a nonprofit made a compelling case.
Burk says the culprit is the way nonprofits ask for money. Requests for unrestricted support that rely on the organization’s brand keep nonprofits from raising more money, she says. Restricted appeals that focus on a single program, project, or area of focus are essential for raising more money.
“This sort of crazy belief that you can get donors to give, especially in this highly, highly competitive environment without telling them why they should — it makes no sense,” Burk says. Of the 37 percent of donors who increased their giving in 2018, 39 percent said they were impressed with the performance of some or all causes they supported. And 31 percent said they gave more in response to a special request, like a capital campaign or a memorial contribution.
Burk says she finds the results of this year’s results especially frustrating. She says the fundraising tactics she’s been railing against for 20 years, “those things that really aggravate donors, have come out even bigger in this survey than ever before,” Burk says.
Donors who planned to give the same amount or less said they would give more if fundraisers did not solicit them so often or send them premiums like trinkets and address labels. Burk says the tokens signal to donors that the charity didn’t need all the money it raised.
Burk’s exasperation — and alarm — is clear when she talks about the results of the donor survey. Fundraisers attend her speaking engagements, laugh at her jokes, and give her standing ovations. “And for what?” she asks. The rate of donor attrition is up, and “there’s been no improvement in behavior among nonprofits,” she says. The offending fundraising practices, which Burk blames largely on direct-marketing vendors, are out of touch with what donors want and are making fundraising more challenging for everyone, she says. “They will make fundraising obsolete.”
Other takeaways from the report:
Fewer donors said they increased their giving in 2018.
Thirty-seven percent said they gave more money to charitable causes in 2018 than in 2017. That’s down considerably from the 53 percent in Cygnus’s last donor survey, which reported that donors gave more to charitable causes in 2017 than in 2016. “Fundraisers were given a gift from heaven in 2017, and they blew it,” Burk says of the spike in donations that some charities saw following the election of Donald Trump and several natural disasters that year. “Fundraising didn’t cause the surge, nor did it capitalize on the surge in 2018.”
More big donors plan to increase their giving.
Thirty-four percent of people who gave more than $10,000 in 2018 planned to give more in 2019 and beyond. That’s up from the 25 percent who said that the year before.
Donors with the highest incomes were also more likely to say they increased their giving in 2018 over 2017 (46 percent), and those with the lowest incomes were the least likely to report an increase (33 percent).
Over all, 29 percent of donors expected to give more in 2019 and early 2020. But just 18 percent of those donors said they were motivated because they were satisfied with the performance of the nonprofits they had supported in the previous year. That number is down 5 percent from last year’s survey, mirroring other research charting a downturn in Americans’ trust in nonprofits.
Don’t underestimate small-dollar donors.
Fundraisers often assume that donors who give modestly are not capable of contributing more. Yet among donors who made at least one gift of $10,000 or more, 85 percent made at least one other gift of less than $100 to a different cause.
Burk says it’s a vicious cycle. Generous donors tend to receive better acknowledgments that include information about what the charity is accomplishing with their gifts. That leaves more modest donors out of the loop, making them less likely to give more generously — or even give at all — the next time they are asked. When fundraisers rely too heavily on current gift amounts as a determinant of donors’ future potential, they may hamstring their own efforts, Burk says.
Online giving is mainstream.
For the first time in the survey’s history, giving online, giving by direct mail, and recurring-gift programs were equally popular. Older donors over age 65 are still more likely to have responded to a direct-mail appeal. They’re also more sensitive to oversolicitation.
Social media is growing for all age groups.
The share of donors who have given by social media rose to 27 percent in 2019, up from 16 percent in 2018. Social media is more prevalent among donors younger than 35 (46 percent) than with either donors ages 35 to 64 (37 percent) or older donors (17 percent). And women (32 percent) were more likely to support a nonprofit through a social-media campaign than were men (18 percent).
Black donors are more likely to make their biggest gift to a faith organization.
Until this year, only about 1 percent of survey respondents identified as black, but this year, it’s 4 percent, or about 500 people.
Seventy-one percent said they were actively religious. Black donors tended to support half as many causes as white donors, on average. While the total dollar amount black donors gave in 2018 was lower on average than white donors, their per-contribution average was higher — $1,152, compared with $747 for white donors. Black donors were more generous to their houses of worship than white donors were. Thirty-eight percentage of black donors allocated 60 to 100 percent of their charitable giving to their religious institution. Black donors were also more likely than others in the survey to credit their faith for their commitment to supporting secular causes.
Nonprofits should expect to acquire fewer donors.
Over all, 75 percent of donors supported the same number of causes in 2018 as they did in 2017. On average, donors over age 64 made gifts to 17 causes compared with an average of only 12 causes for donors ages 35 to 64. In 2018, 46 percent of those donors gave to up to five organizations while only 21 percent supported more than 10 causes.
“We’re still volume-driven in fundraising in the mistaken belief that the more donors you have, the more money you will make or you could make,” Burk says. She recommends that organizations diversify their development operations to sustain net revenue over the long term. She argues nonprofits should dedicate more people and financial resources to expanding major and planned-gift programs, which rely less on the volume of donors and more on sustaining and increasing the average gift size.
