Religion, State Budgets, and Other Topics Will Changes Charities in the Next Decade

Many trends will influence philanthropy in the coming years. While The Chronicle highlighted five in this series—changes in demographics, technology, and the institution of charity, among others—experts offer a range of other ideas.

Chief among them are the lingering effects of the financial crisis and continuing economic woes.

The National Governors Association, for instance, has said that fiscal problems will result in a “lost decade” for states. For social services, public colleges, and arts groups that depend on state-government support, budget shortfalls will probably consume their attention during the next 10 years.

Other trends people say will shake up the nonprofit world by 2020 include:

Obesity epidemic. By 2015 the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that 75 percent of adults and 24 percent of children could be either overweight or obese. The weight gain will spur an increase in charitable efforts to promote healthy living and fight health problems like Type 2 diabetes.

Wealth inequality. Ten percent of the world’s population owns 85 percent of the world’s financial assets, according to the World Institute for Development Economic Research of the United Nations University. The wealth gap, which is expected to continue to grow in the years ahead, will trigger more international aid efforts.

Government-charity partnerships. Robert Egger, founder of the V3 Campaign, an effort to get more nonprofit workers involved in political elections, predicts that by 2020 many governors will have established high-level positions to oversee volunteering and charities in their states.

Religion. Twenty-eight percent of Americans have left the religion of their youth, says the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The shifting religious landscape will probably affect how Americans give and what causes they support by 2020, says Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor of public affairs and philanthropy at Indiana University and a Chronicle columnist.

Of course, predicting the future is an impossible task—the broad trends are relatively easy to point out, but figuring out the specific implications for nonprofit groups is harder.

In 1999, for instance, The Chronicle surveyed 460 top nonprofit executives about their views of the future. They said the Internet would transform their operations, a prediction that largely came true. But they also predicted that by 2010, 25 percent of donations would be raised online—a forecast wildly off the mark. Online gifts today make up a sliver of the overall fund-raising revenue for most charities. According to The Chronicle’s 2009 survey of online giving, Internet fund raising accounted for less than 1 percent of most respondents’ total donations. Only 10 groups said it made up more than 10 percent.

It’s a reminder that while 2020 may seem a distant date, the next 10 years may not bring the radical changes some foresee.