Wealthy Men More Likely Than Women to Replace Charitable Giving With Impact Investing

Title: How Women and Men Approach Impact Investing

Organization: IUPUI Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Summary: This report analyzes data from the Bank of America/U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy series. The studies are based on nationally representative surveys of wealthy donors whose annual household income is at least $200,000 or has a net worth of at least $1 million.

Among the findings:

• Men and women had nearly the same level of awareness of impact investing — 82.5 percent for men and 81.3 percent for women. But 16.2 percent of women said they wanted to learn more about impact investing, compared with 13.1 percent of men.
• Over all, women were a little more likely to invest for social or environmental impact — 36.4 percent of women versus 32.4 percent of men — but that varied by age group. Baby-boomer women (those in their mid-50s to early 70s) were more likely to hold impact investments (37.7 percent) than boomer men (33.4 percent). However, among Generation X (people in their late 30s to mid-50s) and millennials (people in their early 20s to late 30s) men were more likely than women to invest for social and environmental impact.
• Men were more likely than women to make impact investments in place of some or all charitable giving. Among singles, 18.9 percent of men said their impact investments took the place of charitable giving, compared with 11.4 percent of single women. Among married couples, impact investments took the place of giving for 15.2 percent of couples where the husband made giving decisions, 11.6 percent when giving decisions were made jointly, and 10.7 percent when the wife made the giving decisions.