August 13, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The most generous donors to charity do not necessarily live in the wealthiest neighborhoods, says an article by a non-profit researcher in American Demographics (August), a business magazine that tracks consumer trends.
By comparing giving data from the United Way with estimates of charitable donations produced by a demographics company, Josh Galper, who works for UNICEF, demonstrates how income alone may not be a good indicator of how much money people are likely to give to charity.
According to statistics from the company, Mr. Galper writes, charitable giving should be high in the country’s most-affluent counties, like Litchfield, Conn., and Chester and Delaware, Pa. But, he points out, those three counties rank near the bottom in average gifts per person to the United Way. High giving and high income do seem to go together in other counties, however, such as Fairfield, Conn., and Somerset, N.J.
Mr. Galper says he finds most interesting the counties where few are wealthy, but giving is high. Apache County, Ariz., he writes, is one of the nation’s poorest places, and it is almost completely covered by the Navajo Indian reservation. Yet United Way giving is higher there than the national average.
Demographic income data, says Mr. Galper, “cannot measure the social factors we have seen that influence the decision to give to charity.” And, he says, while his study was limited to examining gifts to a single charity, it points to the pitfalls of relying on demographics to find donors.
As a result, he says, fund raisers are well-advised to keep relying on mailing lists of people who have previously contributed or who have otherwise shown interest in their cause. “Until a truly reliable model is developed that allows for good identification of likely fund-raising hot spots by type of organization,” Mr. Galper writes, “it may be best to stick to the mailing lists.”
