Todd Stiefel, a resident of Raleigh, N.C., who made millions when his family sold its health-care products company in 2009, is an atheist. He advocates for his free-thinking philosophy through his own foundation.
He also supports the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, serving as volunteer coordinator for walkathon teams through Foundation Beyond Belief, a three-year-old giving Web site aimed at donors like him who do not follow organized religion, or any faith at all.
For decades, many donors have tied their giving to their religious beliefs, and nonprofits of all missions have reaped the benefits. Studies have consistently shown that people who regularly attend a house of worship give more on average than people who don’t.
Increasingly, however, charities will find themselves making their case for support to people like Mr. Stiefel.
The work the leukemia group does—research, education, and provision of care—makes for an easy pitch to Mr. Stiefel and donors like him.
“Nontheists are typically all about reason and science-focused thinking, so educating people about cancer and researching cancer are seen as important,” he says.
But the pitch for support shouldn’t be all head and no heart, he adds: “There’s a misunderstanding that atheists don’t believe in anything. We don’t believe in a higher being, but we have many beliefs and being good to each other and to mankind is one of them, so the compassionate-care aspect of LLS is very important.”
Last year the charity got $215,000 from walkathon teams of atheists and other secular donors Mr. Stiefel helped organize through Foundation Beyond Belief, and he and his family made a matching gift. This year, the foundation hopes to recruit 200 teams of walkers, up from 150, and raise a total of $500,000.
So far, Foundation Beyond Belief has raised more than $1-million, benefiting 112 charities.
Eyeing Special Appeals
Now, some nonprofits that have received the foundation’s grants, such as Team Rubicon, a disaster-relief group, are waking up to the possibility of tapping secular donors directly. “We see that it might make sense to make special appeals specifically to the nonreligious, maybe with a special message that appeals to them,” says Mike Lee, a Team Rubicon spokesman.
Foundation Beyond Belief doesn’t have a playbook of such solicitations, but its deep ties to the secular movement and its fundraising accomplishments may offer some hints about what interests and motivates nonreligious donors.
The number of Americans not affiliated with any religion is increasing rapidly; they now make up one of every five Americans. That’s up from just 7 percent in 1972, says the Pew Research Center.
The trend is most pronounced among young people: One-third of adults under 30 say they have no religious affiliation.
Dale McGowan, a writer and speaker on atheism who founded Foundation Beyond Belief, says the group gives the growing ranks of nonreligious people a way to demonstrate their generosity and create a community of donors in the way that churches and other religious organizations do.
Donors to Foundation Beyond Belief sign up for an automatic monthly contribution of at least $5; four times a year they designate which groups they want to support, picking from a changing list of featured charities. The foundation selects the recipient groups, all secular or nonproselytizing organizations, based on their mission and how efficiently they work.
The foundation also raises money for disaster response, such as after the Oklahoma tornados in May, when it collected more than $45,000 in online donations for a local food bank and a relief group working in the area.
Diversity of Beliefs
Atheists are a core constituency of Foundation Beyond Belief, which has about 1,430 monthly donors, but the group draws nonreligious people of all kinds—including those who identify themselves as agnostics, freethinkers, secular humanists, or skeptics—and they are hardly a homogeneous group.
“More than anything, there is diversity of people and opinions, and people want choice,” says AJ Chalom, a foundation fundraiser. The foundation offers donors a range of options for their philanthropy, and that’s helped spur giving, the organization’s leaders say. Members cannot only choose from among 20 beneficiary nonprofits each year but can also nominate charities to be considered as recipients. They can also use an online form to propose relief efforts after a disaster here or abroad.
“Nothing is unanimous in the nontheist community, and of course there are a lot of people out there who are simply non-joiners,” notes Mr. McGowan. What the foundation’s supporters do have in common, though, he says is an “enthusiasm for the idea of linking acts of philanthropy to a world view of mutual care and responsibility.”
For marketing and fundraising, the foundation relies heavily on word of mouth and social media. The group regularly posts videos on YouTube about the work of its beneficiaries and has a steady presence on Facebook and Twitter.
Posting quotes about philanthropy, philosophy, science, and topics of religion, atheism, humanism, and ethics on the social networks helps drive traffic to the group’s Web site.
“Our message is, we want you to think,” says Bridget Gaudette, the foundation’s development director. “We’re engaging people and that’s what gets responses.”
Sensitivity in Pitches
When pitching to secular donors, sounding too preachy is a no-no, foundation officials say, as is appearing to prey on people’s sympathies or guilt. Each quarter, one of the foundation’s beneficiaries is a charity that works to curb poverty, but the foundation is careful to avoid tear-jerking appeals.
Foundation officials recently scuttled, at the last minute, a Facebook post that was meant to publicize the group’s new Pathfinders Project, which organizes yearlong service trips to poor countries. The post would have featured the photograph of a boy living in an impoverished village without access to clean water.
“Showing Manuel without enough to eat and flies around him is an entirely legitimate reality, but we decided that the picture crossed the line and it would be seen as emotionally manipulative,” Mr. McGowan says. “Our donors want to be generous and show compassion, but they don’t want to feel manipulated.”
Coincidentally, one of Foundation Beyond Belief’s newest donors is the advertising executive behind an iconic series of television commercials from the 1980s—the ones featuring the actress Sally Struthers’ heartrending appeals for donors to sponsor poor children abroad.
Perry Mitchell, now retired, says those ads for the Christian Children’s Fund (since renamed ChildFund) were very effective.
But, he says, solicitations that strike that kind of tone are not right for every charity.
“My advice is that the foundation actually get a little more human, because I don’t think that atheists and humanists are necessarily any less emotional than anyone else,” says Mr. Mitchell, who joined Foundation Beyond Belief last year. “But they might be more likely to see themselves as more about reason and rationality, so you do have to be careful about how you craft your message.”
