Fascinating new survey assesses gender impact on charitable giving

A recent survey has been released that shows there is a defined gender gap when it comes to donating to charities right across the board. The fascinating study shows women not only are more likely to donate to charity but also to give more than their male counterparts. The survey reveals that there is a gap at every income level which has surprised some observers who expected greater variation in the results.

The charitable behavior of more than 8,000 households across America was studied by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University. Director of the program Debra Mesch was the study’s lead researcher and added:

“The conventional wisdom is that women do not give a lot of money, this study shows that this is just not true.”

This might be the clearest study of its type conducted to date as many previous studies included married couples which impacted the data to a certain extent as the different habits based on gender were harder to distinguish when including couples within an analysis. The new survey excluded couples and compiled data only from households that were headed by single women or single men. To target the most specific matching thresholds, the study drew together men and women who represented similar incomes, education, age and number of children as each factor does impact just how much people are likely to give. Each and every category of income level demonstrated that women donate to charities more frequently than comparable men. At the lowest income levels the gap between the genders was the smallest with 35.2% of women donating versus 27.5% of men. There were five tiers of income assessed in the middle tier 76.8% of women donate as opposed to 51.6% of men, at the highest level (those earning more than $103,000 per year) the gap remains with 95.5% of women compared with 75.8% of men.

Results of gender impacting philanthropy

The report itself is a rewarding and diverse look at the numbers themselves and just how to interpret them. The researcher is keen to point out that perception is partially based on old ideas and does not take into account that more women than ever are in the workplace and indeed are earning more than previous generations.Other components of the analysis include a breakout of the  ‘likelihood of giving’ benchmark comparing both genders based on each of the three parameters as follows: never married/divorced or separated/widowed. Again women are more likely to give in each circumstance with the exception of the widow/widower comparison. While the likelihood of women giving to charities shows a significant gap in each income bracket, the gulf in the typical amounts donated per year becomes even larger in some cases specifically those earning the least and the most in which cases women are donating almost double the amount to nonprofits.

While the raw numbers themselves make for interesting reading in comparison I would highly recommend taking the time to read the included analysis by Debra Mesch which lends a lot of interpretation to the data while providing valuable background information. In addition to being Director of the program she is also a professor of Public and Nonprofit Management in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. I hope you can take time to review the survey which is available as a PDF via this link. Being actively involved as a provider of fundraising services we’re curious to see if our clients respond to these findings