Americans Are Passionate About Social Causes, But Few Take Action Based on Their Beliefs, Study Finds

Americans hold strong convictions about issues of great importance to the nonprofit world — but few act on their beliefs, according to a new survey.

The survey by Porter Novelli, conducted last summer, found that 70 percent of Americans care deeply about a number of causes, such as protecting the environment, fighting poverty, and improving schools.

But less than 20 percent had done anything to better those causes in the past year. In fact, on most issues, just one in 10 Americans had put time or effort toward improving the problems they cared about.

For example, 73 percent of Americans expressed concern about the environment, but just 10 percent had made an effort recently to help.

Seventy-three percent of people also said they cared about improving schools and education, while 17 percent had donated time to the cause in the past year.

Even smaller percentages of Americans had volunteered to feed others (9 percent), assist poor people (8 percent), or help homeless people (7 percent).

The survey was part of a series called Porter Novelli Styles, which relied on interviews with more than 10,000 people.