Americans have a lot of confidence in the military and small business, but their moods have soured on many other U.S. institutions — and that general skepticism could make it challenging for charities to win more trust.
When Gallup announced the results of its annual confidence survey in June, it said the scores for most of 14 major institutions were below their historical averages, some significantly so.
Seventy-two percent of Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military and 64 percent felt similarly toward small business, the top two scores — both four percentage points above the average. At the other end of the scale, only 8 percent said they had that level of confidence in Congress — 16 points below the average.
Gallup, which bases its averages on polls conducted since 1993 (small business was added in 2007), said confidence has declined for years in response to concerns about the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and partisan gridlock in Washington.
General Slide
No equivalent long-term data exist for charities, which are not included in Gallup’s list of institutions, except for religious groups, which have also lost support. Forty-two percent of Americans this year said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in organized religion, down 13 points from the historical average.
A 2002 poll conducted for Paul Light, professor of public service at New York University, found that confidence in charities fell from 2001, when 25 percent of respondents said they had “a lot” of confidence in them, to 2002, when the level was 18 percent. He attributed the drop partly to controversy over the way the American Red Cross distributed money it raised for victims of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Since then, the percentage of people saying they have “a great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in charities has remained relatively stable. In follow-up polls by Mr. Light from 2003 to 2008, the number generally ranged from 62 percent to 65 percent (it spiked to 69 percent in 2006, but Mr. Light believes that was a statistical anomaly).
In a new Chronicle poll, 62 percent of those polled said they had “a great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in charities.
The general trend of declining public confidence goes back four decades, according to the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Politics and Society. The center conducts the General Social Survey, a poll that has measured Americans’ views on a range of topics since 1972.
The portion of people saying they had a “great deal” of confidence in 13 institutions fell from an average of 29.2 percent in the period 1975-77 to 22.6 percent in the period 2008-12, according to a 2013 analysis.
Rising Expectations?
Tom W. Smith, director of the Chicago center, says some of the scores respond to events. For example, he says, confidence in organized religion has fallen because of scandals involving televangelists and sexual abuse by Catholic priests.
Confidence in major companies and financial institutions plummeted during the Great Recession. Scores for the military, on the other hand, hit a low of 29.3 percent in 1978-82, following the fall of South Vietnam, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But the level surged during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, standing at 54.6 percent in 2012.
Confidence in the press and in television has been in a free fall, reported at 28.3 percent and 23 percent, respectively, in 1974 and dipping to 8.8 percent and 10.2 percent in 2012.
Mr. Smith says there are various theories about why public confidence in general has fallen. One is “rising expectations,” or people having higher ideals about the way things should happen — for example, that “companies really ought to care about consumers more.”
“I don’t buy into that,” he says, “but you can’t rule it out.”
Another explanation may be that some groups, such as banks and financial institutions, really are doing a worse job than they used to and Americans are judging that accurately, he says. Finally, some suggest that “people are just more pessimistic about life, the country, and where we’re going” and want to blame institutions.
Mr. Smith says it would be hard to design a scientific test to prove what exactly is behind the falling scores.
Bias Toward Small and Local
Charities would be hard pressed to use the military as a model for how to bolster confidence, but the high marks for small businesses might offer some clues. Americans judge big business much more harshly: In the latest Gallup poll, only 21 percent said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in such companies, down three points from the historical average.
Americans tend to judge institutions that are closer to home more favorably. Although the difference wasn’t as great as between small business and big business, people in the Chronicle’s poll gave charities in their own communities higher marks than charities in general; 69 percent of respondents said they had “a great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the former, while 62 percent had that attitude toward the latter.
Mr. Smith’s theory: People think major companies “have the power to do bad things and small business just doesn’t.” People are likely to know waitresses, barbers, and repair-shop owners, but aren’t likely to live next to a Fortune 500 chief executive.
Small businesses also have a federal agency on their side, which charities don’t. “Every time I hear a debate about the Small Business Administration, it’s always very positive,” Mr. Smith says. “They’re helping the little guy, they keep competition going.”