Report on Women’s Support of Nonprofit Fundraising and Giving Habits Part 2

I have previously covered many nonprofit fundraising  reports such as Blackbaud Giving Index, 2011 donorCentrics Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report, the 3rd Annual Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report 2011, The Nonprofit Research Collaborative report (and Part 2), the 2011 State of the Nonprofit Industry Survey and the World Giving Index 2011. None of these, however, have dealt with the area of gender comparison as in-depth as The 2011 Study of High Net Worth Women’s Philanthropy and The Impact of Women’s Giving Networks conducted by the The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University and sponsored by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I began writing about the results from this report yesterday in Part 1 and focused on the giving habits of women versus their male counterparts. Today I continue with Part 2 and explore how giving networks impact women’s donor motivations and activities in comparison to men.

Giving networks are networks created by nonprofits and likeminded individuals that band together to not only have influence over their giving, but also share and learn from one another, their community and the cause they support. The report cites the Women Moving Millions network and the American Red Cross’s Tiffany Circle as examples of women led networks of leaders and philanthropists. Now in its 5^th year the Tiffany Circle has grown from eight chapters to over fifty across the U.S. and continues to grow. A very important fact to note is that in its inception, over 50% of the 235 were new donors to the Red Cross. Significant as this network alone engaged new donors that the charity would have otherwise missed out on.

As I mentioned yesterday, the top four motivators for women to give to charity include: 1) Moved at How their Gift Can Make a Difference; 2) Giving to an Organization that is Efficient; 3) Give back to the Community and 4) Volunteer to an Organization. Engaging women donors into a network can easily satisfy these very important motivators. As participants in the network, they can see first-hand how their gifts make an impact. It also gives them an opportunity to have a voice in organizational efficiency and satisfies the feeling of knowing they are giving back to their community in a cause they believe and care about. They can do all this while volunteering their time and supporting the organization with more than monetary contributions. High net worth women that become engaged with an organization can give more than just financially as they are highly skilled professionals with experience and expertise that can be shared with the nonprofit.

High net worth women who in the study self-identified as part of a giving network were overall more motivated to be engaged to a nonprofit than high net worth women who did not self identify being part of a giving network. The difference in results for the top four motivators is quite significant:
Diff (+/-)
Moved at How Gift Can Make a Difference         15.9%
Giving to An Organization that is Efficient            9.2%
Give Back to the Community                                9.7%
Volunteer for the Organization                             13.5%

What this study has identified and nonprofits need to consider is that there is great value in creating a giving network that will satisfy donor motivations for giving and being involved. Giving networks can take many forms and be of any structure and size. In fact they don’t have to focus on high net worth women like the Tiffany Circle and Women Moving Millions networks. Nonprofits need to understand their key demographic, what motivates them and create a network that satisfies those needs. What type of giving network will suit your organization?

I will complete my exploration of his report tomorrow with Part 3 on how men factor in this study and what the results show.
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