April 13, 2017 | Read Time: 4 minutes
The link between religion and philanthropy in the United States has a long and enduring history. But in this season of multiple religious holidays, persistent signs that Americans’ engagement with formal religion is waning may be causing fundraisers to wonder whether a decline in faith affiliation will lead to a decline in charitable giving.
The close relationship between religion and charity in this land dates back at least to 1630, when the Puritan leader John Winthrop, aboard ship from England to what is now Massachusetts, exhorted his fellow colonists with a sermon entitled “A Modell of Christian Charity.” While Benjamin Franklin and others later offered a secular rationale for philanthropy, the connection between religious belief and philanthropic behavior has been consistent through the centuries.
That is why data from the Pew Research Center’s “Religious Landscape Study” is noteworthy. The center’s survey of 35,000 Americans reveals that faith affiliation in the United States is declining. In 1972, 95 percent of respondents affirmed a religious affiliation; by 2016, that number had dropped to 77 percent.
According to Alan Cooperman, Pew’s director of religion research, the rise of the “nones” — people with no religious affiliation — could have an impact on nonprofits. His data reveals that people with a faith affiliation are more than twice as likely as those without to be involved with a charitable organization. Two-thirds of highly religious people polled by Pew reported making a charitable donation in the previous week, compared with 41 percent of those who are not highly religious.
Mr. Cooperman believes religion is just part of the story, and he speculates that an overall deterioration in community life — think Robert Putnam and Bowling Alone — might be driving the reduction in religious affiliation. That decline could have an impact on philanthropy.
‘Joiners Are Joiners’
“Religious people are more likely to invite you to their church, temple, or mosque, but they also are more likely to donate or volunteer at your local Little League,” Mr. Cooperman said last fall in delivering the annual Distinguished Visitor lecture at the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
“Joiners are joiners,” he continued. “People who are more active in religious organizations are more likely to be involved in other community organizations. This could be due in part to their religious teaching, but this also could be because of a disposition to be involved with community organizations.”
The downward trend in religious affiliation is especially pronounced among millennials compared with their ancestors. Consider the “silent generation,” people born from 1928 to 1945. When they were in their 20s and 30s, only 11 percent were not religiously affiliated. The figure for today’s millennials is 35 percent.
Mr. Cooperman noted in his lecture that millennials are not likely to change course as they get older. “No generation since the start of the 20th century has become more religiously affiliated as they age,” he said. “In fact, each generation becomes less religiously affiliated over time.”
Don’t Panic
David King, director of the Lake Institute, says fundraisers need to take note of these trends but not panic. At least not yet.
“Early research suggests that many people who now claim no religious affiliation were relatively inactive with religious communities in the first place,” he told me in an interview. “They might have been attending religious services a few times a year and now not at all. This leads us to believe that the decline in religious affiliation does not necessarily mean we can expect a drastic decline in today’s charitable giving.”
Still, he added, “participation in faith communities remains one of the best predictors for religious giving and even some secular giving. How this impacts future generations remains an open question.”
The subject of faith and philanthropy is complex, said Mr. King. Religion is not a prerequisite for charity, and many nonreligious people donate generously for multiple reasons. At the same time, many of the “nones,” while eschewing a specific religious affiliation, maintain religious beliefs and practices (belief in God, regular prayer, conversations with others on spiritual matters) that motivate their charitable giving.
As he analyzes the fluctuations in religious affiliation, Mr. King also cites evidence from the annual “Giving USA” report on American philanthropy, which the Lilly school researches and writes for the Giving USA Foundation. According to the study, both overall charitable giving and religious giving are at record levels, even after adjusting for inflation.
“The historic level of charitable giving has occurred at the same time as the decline in religious affiliation,” Mr. King says. “While we need to monitor these trends into the future, the rise of the ‘nones’ has not yet prevented a rise in charitable giving.”
Bill Stanczykiewicz is director of the Fund Raising School at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
