A Third of People Globally Lack Confidence in Charities, Gallup Study Says

A third of people worldwide say they lack confidence in the world’s charities, according to a new Gallup and Wellcome Trust study based on survey data of more than 140,000 respondents from 144 countries.

Over all, 52 percent of participants around the world said they had confidence in charities.

The countries that had the least trust were Bulgaria, Colombia, Greece, Peru, and Russia, which all came in under 30 percent. On the other end of the scale, 70 percent or more of respondents from Iceland, Malta, New Zealand, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Uzbekistan expressed trust in charities.

In the United States, 60 percent of respondents said they trust charities, and 27 percent said they don’t. Those results are similar to a Chronicle poll in 2015, which found that 62 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in charitable organizations.

The report’s authors, Mohamed Younis and Andrew Rzepa, wrote that confidence in nonprofits varies little in rich versus poor countries. Slightly more people in low-income countries express confidence than people in high-income countries — 57 percent versus 52 percent.

“The trust that people have in these organizations can either enhance or inhibit the organizations’ effectiveness and their ability to generate public goods,” the report said.

Generally, nations in Central America and Eastern Europe had among the lowest levels of trust.