Giving – NVSQ Blog

Donor Reactions to Charities Highlighting their Religious Affiliation

By Jonathan Oxley, Trinity University.

Most charitable donations in the United States either go to a religious organization or a religiously affiliated charity. Giving to religious organizations such as churches, mosques, and synagogues represents the largest share of donations received in the United States, with Giving USA (2021) reporting that 29% of all charitable giving goes to religious organizations. However, this only represents a fraction of religious giving in the United States. Giving USA (2021) estimates that including donations to religiously affiliated charities as religious giving brings this figure closer to 75% of all giving in the United States. This expanded definition includes donations to large, well-known, highly-rated charities such as World Vision, Habitat for Humanity, Lifewater International, World Hope International, and Opportunity International.

Despite receiving nearly 45% of donation dollars in the United States, Scheitle (2010) finds that 22% of all religiously affiliated, non-church charities do not include a religious keyword identifier on their Form 990. This number increases to 45% for the second-largest category of religiously affiliated, non-church charities, relief and development organizations. My paper “Examining Donor Preference for Charity Religious Affiliation,” uses a laboratory experiment to explore how donor behavior changes with the inclusion of religious language in a charity’s description, with the goal of determining if religiously affiliated, non-church charities have a financial incentive to selectively display their religious affiliation. I find such incentives exist.

Charities are making giant leap towards cryptocurrencies in corona crisis

ripple etehereum and bitcoin and micro sdhc card — Photo by Worldspectrum on Pexels.com

Peter Howson, Nottingham Trent University, U.K.

This year was a leap year. In normal circumstances such a thing is nothing to celebrate in England, aside from an extra February day of bad weather, and waiting a day longer for one’s pay cheque. Today, how we all miss February. I will probably never forget that day in early March. A stranger in the street asks me where I had brought my 2 pints of milk (I paid £3 cash for it in the village pub as they were locking the doors indefinitely), before joining the queue at the fish and chip shop to buy a sack of potatoes. All our plans for the year; holidays, work projects, moving house, everything that was once considered concrete has changed in a matter of weeks for almost everyone in the whole world, in different ways.

The pandemic has triggered an unprecedented government support package for UK businesses, including for charities plugging the gap in underfunded medical and social care systems, weathered by a decade of austerity measures. The UK Finance Minister admits the £750 million of extra funding to support ‘front-line’ charities will not save them all from collapse during the corona crisis, while the charity sector as a whole faces a £3.7 billion shortfall over the next 12 weeks. Many social enterprises, small and international NGOs are in dire straits, as revenue from charity shops dries up, and nothing that was expected from summer events comes in during the lockdown. Cancellation of this month’s London marathon alone is estimated to cost the sector £66m. Continue reading “Charities are making giant leap towards cryptocurrencies in corona crisis”

Can Philanthropy be Taught?

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Lindsey M. McDougle, Rutgers University; Danielle McDonald, Northern Kentucky University; Huafang Li, Grand Valley State University; Whitney McIntyre Miller, Chapman University; Chengxin Xu, Rutgers University.

Experiential philanthropy is an innovative teaching and learning approach that allows students to study social problems and then invest funds into nonprofit organizations that they consider to be best able to solve the social problems they learn about. Experiential philanthropy has become widespread within higher education and many within the field have begun recognizing its potential for developing future philanthropists. Despite this potential, there has been little evidence of the effectiveness of experiential philanthropy on students—or, communities. Therefore, we conducted a study to explore learning and development outcomes associated with the use of experiential philanthropy in the college classroom, and to ultimately answer the question: Can philanthropy be taught? Continue reading “Can Philanthropy be Taught?”

Children, Giving and Volunteering

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Christopher Einolf, Northern Illinois University and NVSQ author

When my daughter was born twelve years ago, my whole life changed overnight: gone were the days of slowly cooked meals, relaxing on Saturday afternoons, and going out at every weekend with friends. Time became very scarce, with long sleepless nights, loads of laundry, cooking and cleaning. Just getting to work on time was a challenge; doing things outside of work seemed impossible. Expenses went up too, with doctor bills, baby furniture, clothes, and car seats.

A new baby is a wonderful thing, but a new baby places huge demands on parents’ resources of money and time. How does the arrival of a baby affect a parent’s charitable giving and volunteering? And what happens when the baby grows older – does parents’ giving and volunteering change again? These questions were the subject of my recent NVSQ article, “Parents’ charitable giving and volunteering: Are they influenced by their children’s ages and life transitions? Evidence from a longitudinal study in the United States.” Continue reading “Children, Giving and Volunteering”