June 6, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Children are great mimics — and it turns out that philanthropy is one of the many ways in which people of all ages follow what their parents and grandparents do
Researchers at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy say they have determined a correlation between both the causes and the amount adults give, based on what they saw their parents do.
That finding is among the first intergenerational data to emerge from information gathered from 8,000 households that have been followed and interviewed on a range of topics every two years since the 1960s.
The Center on Philanthropy’s director of research, Patrick Rooney, said that many wealthy donors set up charitable funds with family members and actively look for other ways to teach their children and grandchildren about helping others. “This really speaks to the need to involve children and grandchildren in the philanthropic experience,” he said.
