November 28, 2010 | Read Time: 3 minutes
How much will Americans give during the holiday season?
Press release after press release issued by big charities and companies trumpet surveys showing that most Americans plan to give this year, despite the tough economy.
But few of the studies offer much consolation for charities hoping for a big year-end lift. In fact, they offer a pretty gloomy window into giving trends.
More than a third of charities have seen giving drop in the first nine months of the year, according to a new survey to be released this week, and 22 percent expect giving to decline in the final three months of 2010. That is disturbing given that many charities struggled greatly to raise money last year and in many cases brought in less than in 2008.
The study of more than 2,500 charities by the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy and five other groups found that 20 percent of organizations expect to cut their budgets next year, and 7 percent said they are at risk of closing.
More Are Not Giving at All
Perhaps most troubling as the economy continues to stagger is the growing number of Americans who give nothing to charity at all. The share of Americans who report making no charitable contributions doubled in an online survey of more than 2,600 adults released in November by Harris Interactive. Twelve percent of Americans said that the economy has caused them to stop giving to charity altogether—double the portion who said so in 2009.
Meanwhile, nearly a third of more than 1,000 adults interviewed in late October for the American Red Cross said that they were not making any charitable donations during the holidays this year; more than half of the people who aren’t giving said they just don’t have enough money.
Similarly, 26 percent of American adults in another survey for the fund-raising software company Convio said they do not plan to give this holiday season.
Alternative Gifts
Even among Americans who do plan year-end donations, many are cutting back from the sums they gave in 2009 because of the economy.
In a survey commissioned by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, 36 percent of Americans who will give at least $200 to charity this year said they are donating less over the holidays because of financial constraints (30 percent) or uncertainty over taxes (6 percent).
Some bright spots can be found in the surveys of holiday giving, however. Americans seem to have warmed to the idea of giving charitable contributions to the needy as an alternative to traditional holiday presents.
A new survey conducted for the international relief group World Vision, which raised $27-million last year with its holiday catalog, shows the growing popularity of nontraditional gifts. The World Vision catalog and others like it allow people to make a charitable gift in honor of a friend or relative, such as paying $270 for a sewing machine or $85 for a bicycle to help needy people overseas. The catalogs, which look like traditional online and mail-order catalogs, offer to send gift cards to notify someone that a gift has been made in his or her honor and sometimes give donors the chance to get a small token, like a bracelet or mug.
More than half of the 1,000 adults polled by World Vision said that the hard economy is making them more likely to choose holiday donations that help others over other types of presents. Seventy-two percent of the adults had made such a gift, up from 55 percent who said so last year, while 42 percent had received one, up from 28 percent in 2009.
But whether that trend is really about the economy—or the result of better marketing by the growing number of charities with holiday catalogs—is anyone’s guess.
