Generational Succession in American Giving: Donors Down,Dollars Per Donor Holding Steady But Signs That It Is Starting to Slip

Abstract

Comparing two generations at the same point in their life cycles, four decades apart, indicates that average giving to charitable organizations (not including congregations) by Baby Boom families has remained roughly in line with the level of giving done by the Greatest and Silent generations, but that average giving by GenX and Millennial families is lower. All three generations exhibit the confluence of two divergent trends: lower percentages who give large amounts, but among families who do give large amounts, levels of giving compared with donors in previous generations are similar if not higher. The two divergent trends also characterize giving to religious congregations. Although “dollars per donor holding steady or up” describes Millennial, GenX, and Baby Boom families compared with the Greatest and Silent generations, when the former three generations are compared with each other, there are some indications that average giving among donors is starting to slip.

Keywords

generational succession in American giving comparing the giving of different generations at the same point in their life cycles average giving to charitable organizations Millennials GenX Baby Boom families compared with the Greatest and Silent generations

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anheier

H. K.

Salamon

L. M.

(2006). The nonprofit sector in comparative perspective. In Powell

W. W.

Steinberg

(Eds.), The non-profit sector: A research handbook (2nd ed., pp. 89-116). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bhagat

Loeb

Rovner

(2010). The next generation of American giving. Retrieved from http://www.afpnet.org/files/contentdocuments/afpinformationexchange_nextgenwhitepaper_convio.pdf

Blinder

A. S.

(2013). After the music stopped: The financial crisis, the response, and the work ahead. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Blinder

A. S.

Zandi

(2015). The financial crisis: Lessons for the next one. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Retrieved from http://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/the-financial-crisis-lessons-for-the-next-one

Bogaski

(2014). American protestants and the debate over the Vietnam War: Evil was loose in the world. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Brindle

(2010, July). Give more to charity, the government urges. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jul/05/government-urges-charity-giving

Brown

Einolf

C. J.

Ottoni-Wilhelm

(2015). Giving in the United States: Generous philanthropy in a classic liberal regime. In Wiepking

Handy

(Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of global philanthropy (pp. 44-63). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Center on Philanthropy. (2008). Generational differences in charitable giving and in motivations for giving. Retrieved from http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/22807/file-2177158942-pdf/Research_Studies/Generational-Giving-Study.copy.pdf

Charities Aid Foundation of America. (2015). Generation G: The Millennials and how they are changing the art of giving. Retrieved from http://www.cafamerica.org/generation-g-the-millennials-and-how-they-are-changing-the-art-of-giving/

10.

Chetty

Grusky

Hell

Hendren

Manduca

Narang

(2016). The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940 (NBER Working Paper No. 22910). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/papers/w22910

11.

Cowley

McKenzie

Pharoah

Smith

(2011). The new state of donation: Three decades of household giving to charity. Retrieved from http://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/documents/the-new-state-of-donation/the-20new-20state-20of-20donation.pdf

12.

Eisenberg

(2013, October). The charity divide: Boomers vs. Gen X and Gen Y. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2013/10/04/the-charity-divide-boomers-vs-gen-x-and-gen-y/#9711f1f95677

13.

Hadden

J. K.

(1969). The gathering storm in the churches. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

14.

Hoge

D. R.

Johnson

Luidens

(1994). Vanishing boundaries. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

15.

Hout

Fischer

C.S.

(2002). Why more Americans have no religious preference: Politics and generations. American Sociological Review, 67, 165-190

16.

Hout

Fischer

C. S.

(2014). Explaining why more Americans have no religious preference: Political backlash and generational succession, 1987–2012. Sociological Science, 1, 423-447.

17.

Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. (2015). Philanthropy Panel Study 2001-2013 [Data file and code book]. Available from https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/

18.

Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. (2016). Giving USA 2016: The annual report on philanthropy for the year 2015. Giving USA Foundation.

19.

Konrath

S. H.

O’Brien

E. H.

Hsing

(2011). Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 180-198.

20.

Light

(2008). How Americans view charities: A report on charitable confidence, 2008. Brookings Institution. Retrieved from https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/04_nonprofits_light.pdf

21.

Marsh

(1997). God’s long summer: Stories of faith and civil rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

22.

McCloskey

D. N.

Ziliak

S. T.

(1996). The standard error of regressions. Journal of Economic Literature, 34, 97-114.

23.

O’Neill

(2008). Public confidence in charitable nonprofits. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38, 237-269.

24.

Pew Research Center. (2014). Millennials in adulthood: Detached from institutions, networked with friends. Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/

25.

Putnam

R. D.

(1995). Tuning in, tuning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. PS: Political Science & Politics, 28, 664-683.

26.

Putnam

R. D.

(2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community (1st Touchstone ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

27.

Putnam

R. D.

Campbell

D. E.

Garrett

S. R.

(2010). American grace: How religion divides and unites us (1st ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

28.

Smith

(2012). Mind the gap: The growing generational divide in charitable giving. Retrieved from http://www.cafonline.org/PDF/1190H_PartyConf_MindTheGap.pdf

29.

Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. (1977). 1974 National Study of Philanthropy [Data file and code book]. Retrieved from http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/7496

30.

Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. (2015). Panel Study of Income Dynamics 2001-2013 [Data file and code book]. Available from https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/

31.

Taylor

(2014). The next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the looming generational showdown. Philadelphia, PA: PublicAffairs.

32.

Twenge

J. M.

Campbell

W. K.

Carter

N. T.

(2014). Declines in trust in others and confidence in institutions among American adults and late adolescents, 1972-2012. Psychological Science, 25, 1914-1923.

33.

Twenge

J. M.

Konrath

Foster

J. D.

Keith Campbell

Bushman

B. J.

(2008). Egos inflating over time: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality, 76, 875-902.

34.

Wald

K. D.

Calhoun-Brown

(2014). Religion and politics in the United States (7th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

35.

Wilhelm

M. O.

(2007). The quality and comparability of survey data on charitable giving. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 36, 65-84.

36.

Wilhelm

M. O.

Rooney

P. M.

Tempel

E. R.

(2007). Changes in religious giving reflect changes in involvement: Age and cohort effects in religious giving, secular giving, and attendance. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 217-232.

37.

Ziliak

S. T.

McCloskey

D. N.

(2004). Size matters: The standard error of regressions in the American Economic Review. Journal of Socio-Economics, 33, 527-546.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.00 MB