Only 45 percent of Americans polled in November said they trust nonprofits, 5 percentage points lower than the previous year, according to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual worldwide survey.
Globally, trust in nonprofits rose 2 percentage points to 59 percent. Worldwide trust in business, government, and the media also held relatively steady last year as the world grappled with the pandemic. Trust in government fell 1 percentage point to 52 percent, and trust in the media fell 1 percentage point to 50 percent. All of those variances were within the survey’s margin of error. Trust in business held steady at 61 percent.
Among 27 countries surveyed, the United States ranked fourth to last in terms of the level of trust for nonprofits, trailing only Russia, Germany, and Japan.
India had the highest score, with 78 percent of respondents expressing trust in nonprofits.
Faith in All Institutions Drops
Over all, the report paints a grim picture of American’s faith in institutions, with trust falling 3 to 6 percentage points in all four categories — nonprofits, government, media, and business.
The report warns that government and the media are feeding cycles of “division and disinformation for votes and clicks” and that nonprofits and business are being “pressured to take on societal problems beyond their abilities.”
However, Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor emeritus of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University, said he didn’t believe the results of the survey should alarm U.S. nonprofits. A 5 percentage point decline in trust is “not much on a year-to-year basis,” he said.
Lenkowsky also said that some level of mistrust in institutions, including nonprofits, can be healthy if it motivates people to think critically about them. He expressed a similar perspective in response to a survey released in July (with a different methodology) that found that only 30 percent of Americans expressed a great deal of trust in philanthropy.
Lenkowsky expressed some concerns about the methodology of the Edelman report, including the difficulty of achieving comparable results to questions that have to be translated into different languages. He also noted that in some countries, like China, respondents may fear answering questions honestly, which may explain why China ranked first in trust for business, media, and government and second for trust in nonprofits.
Other findings from the survey:
- 57 percent expressed a fear of experiencing prejudice or racism, up 6 percentage points.
- 75 percent expressed concern about climate change, an increase of 3 percentage points.
- Businesses and charities had positive scores in terms of both competence and ethics, while the media and government had negative scores.
As in previous years, business remains the most trusted of the four institutions.
The survey was based on responses from more than 36,000 adults worldwide from November 1 to 24, with at least 1,050 respondents from each country surveyed. The margin of error is plus or minus 0.6 percentage points for the global data and plus or minus 2.9 percentage points for country-specific data.
