A Close Look at Ways to Increase Giving by Women and to Instill the Habit in Girls

By MEG SOMMERFELD

The giving gap between men and women is beginning to close, experts told a meeting of 500 nonprofit, education, and business leaders here, but charities still have much to learn about how best to raise money from women.

Sponsored by the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, the meeting was designed to put a spotlight on how girls and women think and feel about money, and how they earn it, invest it — and give it away.

Cindy Sterling, director of gift planning at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., noted that solid data about giving by women are hard to find. But she pointed out that figures from Independent Sector, a national coalition of charities and foundations, showed that 71 percent of women give to charity compared with 65 percent of men. They give an average of 2.3 percent of their income, while men give 2.1 percent.

Although the average annual contribution to charity made by females remains smaller than men’s ($983 for women compared with $1,057 for men), their giving has been increasing at a higher rate, rising 26 percent from 1993 to 1995 compared with 6 percent for men.

Presenting data from a forthcoming article for Planned Giving Today, Ms. Sterling reported that a larger proportion of gifts made by women to women’s colleges tend to be in the form of bequests.

Scrutinizing data on giving to women’s colleges, as well as to several institutions that formerly were entirely for women, Ms. Sterling found that 19 to 28 percent of total dollars raised in capital campaigns completed in 1988 to 1998 were made through bequests, while at formerly all-male colleges 10 percent or less came that way. At colleges for women, the overwhelming majority of all campaign donors were female, while the majority of donors at the other institutions were male.

Among the reasons women may prefer to make such gifts: They are more fearful than men are about having enough money while they are still alive. Ms. Sterling and her colleagues described this as “the bag-lady syndrome”: concern that they will find themselves impoverished in their old age. By waiting until after they die to give away their money they can retain a sense of security, knowing that their assets are still available if they need them during their lifetime. “Women recognize that they will outlive their husbands,” she said, “and this creates a fear about their future well-being.”

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Speakers also advised audience members on what fund-raising strategies work best with female donors. Several observed that women are less likely to be swayed by fund-raising pitches that promise to name a building or program after big donors or by solicitors who try to persuade them to give more than a previous donor.

Ms. Sterling tried the competitive approach when she first arrived at Vassar, prodding an alumna to give more than another classmate. But she said the woman “was horrified that she knew what her classmate was giving.”

“By and large, competition is not a motivator,” agreed Jeannie Norris, the head of Miss Hall’s School, a private girls’ school in Pittsfield, Mass.

Debra Coleman, director of gift planning at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, noted that women can sometimes appear to be more “high maintenance” donors than men because they often want to get to know a charity first and develop a continuing relationship with it before making a gift.

“They want to be educated about an organization so they know it is well-run,” she said,

“Women are often volunteers first and donors second,” added Ms. Sterling of Vassar.

She recalled the case of a 1928 Vassar graduate who was an active volunteer but never a big donor. After the woman’s death in 1992, Ms. Sterling received a call from her lawyer informing her that the university was named as a beneficiary in the woman’s will. Guessing that the bequest might be in the range $10,000 to $20,000, she sat in stunned silence as the lawyer told her Vassar would receive $9-million, a third of the woman’s $27-million estate.

Ms. Sterling referred to bequests like these as an example of “stealth wealth” — large gifts that come unexpectedly from women who charities don’t realize have money. To ensure that such “invisible donors” consider making a gift, she said, it’s important for educational institutions to focus on developing strong connections with all of their alumni and treating them all kindly, “because they can choose to give anywhere.”

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At a session entitled “Raising a Philanthropist: Helping Girls Create a Vision for Giving,” Tracy Gary, a philanthropist, writer, and consultant to nonprofit groups, advised conference participants to start teaching their children about giving at an early age.

All too often, Ms. Gary says, parents help their daughters by giving them money to help them buy their first house or first car, but don’t help them make their first gift to charity.

Ms. Gary, who inherited a $1-million trust while in her 20’s, said her parents sat her down at age 14 and told her how much she and her brother would be inheriting and strongly encouraged her to think about giving a significant amount of her inheritance away.

Her parents started preparing her for the task by establishing a “giving fund” while she was still in her teens, presenting her with small sums of money each year that she could give to charity as she wished. In the two decades since she inherited her trust, Ms. Gary says she has given nearly three-quarters of it away.

Mothers and fathers don’t have to be millionaires to do the same for their daughters, she said.

For example, one couple set up a checking account for their daughter and put $50 each year into a “giving fund.” At the end of the year, the couple asked their daughter to report back on which gift was the most satisfying and which was the hardest or most challenging. Parents could also set up a similar fund for their daughter and agree to contribute additional funds if she volunteers for more than a certain number of hours per week, or they might promise to match with their own money any additional gifts their daughter makes.

Ms. Gary encouraged parents to share stories about gifts that didn’t produce an expected outcome or were otherwise problematic.

“We’ve all made mistake about money, and about philanthropy and giving,” she said. “So share those lessons with your kids.”

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While Ms. Gary and others are teaching girls how to be philanthropists, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, in Kansas City, Mo., is teaching them the skills they need to be entrepreneurs — and perhaps future donors as well.

Five years ago, the Kauffman Foundation created the MADE IT (Mother and Daughters Enterpreneurs in Teams) program to encourage women and their seventh-grade daughters to go into business together.

Each year, the foundation selects a class of 20 mother-daughter teams to attend a one-week summer institute in Kansas City at which they learn how to set up a business, from conducting market research to identifying sources of capital.

The following fall, the teams develop formal business plans and receive feedback from foundation employees, and are also linked with other female enterpreneurs who give them advice. The teams must pledge to set aside any profits from the business for the daughters’ college education.

The foundation decided to focus on seventh-grade girls because that is “an age when mother-daughter relationships tend to fray,” said Carol Allen, a teaching and research fellow at the foundation.

Among the mother-daughter businesses that have been launched through the program are a quilt-making company, a pet-sitting service, a dude ranch, a guided backpacking tour company, and a business that provides butterflies to release at weddings, parties, and other special occasions.

In a video on the program that was produced by the foundation, one of the daughters said: “Together we can be awesome — and profitable.”