Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy launched an interactive educational resource focused on household charitable giving on a website that makes a strong case for making generosity a family tradition.
GenerosityForLife.org makes the case mostly through individual and household generosity trend data it presents, and through research findings it makes available, designed to help address the following “Big Questions”:
- Can virtuous habits be cultivated?
- Does the generosity of parents have a causal impact on their children?
- Does gratitude increase with age?
- How is generosity related to character, thrift, and creativity?
- What are the consequences of generosity for health, well-being and life satisfaction?
- Can cutting-edge scientific work and reflective expression promote individuals’ lifelong practice of generosity?
- Can increasing online learning and engagement make us more generous?
Generosity education resources are presented on the website in the context of data on its homepage showing a marked, steady, downward trend in the percentage of U.S. households giving to charity, from 68 percent in 2003 to 56 percent in 2015.
“It’s possible some people had to stop giving during Great Recession or during the fairly slow recovery after that. Some people who stopped giving may not have been able to return to giving or they’re choosing not to,” said Adriene Kalugyer, the school’s public affairs manager.
“We do know younger people under 30 do not seem to be giving at same levels they did in the past few years. It could be high student loans or heavier debt burdens earlier in life, but we don’t really know for sure yet.
The decline in giving is not evident among wealthier or older respondents.
“Those groups are holding pretty steady,” she said. “While they are giving at similar rates, their demographic size is not enough to reverse the trend.”
The data is from the school’s philanthropy panel study, which tracks the giving and volunteering of more than 9,000 families and individuals with a survey taken every other year to learn how those practices are affected through the decades by major life changes, such as those relating to employment, health and marital status.
As children in respondent families become adults, they are added to the study with their own households.
“A great deal of demographic data lets us see both generational differences and how one generation’s teaching and practice of giving affects the next generation’s attitude toward giving,” Kalugyer said.
“We have learned that with people who talk to their children about their own charitable giving, their children, when they become adults, are more likely to give. Talking has a bigger influence than modeling.”
In addition to published research, resources listed at the site include lesson plans, student stories, student projects, donor stories and advice for fundraisers.
A Give-O-Meter there invites visitors to see how their giving and volunteering compares with that of Philanthropy Panel Study survey respondents in similar age and household income brackets.
The site’s “Generosity Reports” section presents data on charitable contribution trends, and a “Generosity Maps” section presents related geographic data by region and state. Survey participants were selected in a way that makes them representative of states and regions as well as the nation.
The maps section showed Indiana’s share of Philanthropy Panel Study survey respondents making charitable contributions was 43 percent, compared with 53 percent in Ohio and Illinois, 55 percent in Michigan and 57 percent in Kentucky.
The average contribution by philanthropy panel study survey respondents was higher in Indiana at $2,427 than in surrounding states. The average was $2,353 in Michigan, $2,180 in Kentucky, $2,177 in Illinois and $1,863 in Ohio.
Data presented by the website is intended to serve “as a discussion point with your family or your spouse to jump start your thinking about how you are currently doing your giving,” Kalugyer said.
Other Lilly Family School of Philanthropy research shows total giving, by corporations, foundations and bequests as well as individuals, has been increasing steadily in recent years, she said.
And researchers have yet to authoritatively assess in a comprehensive way what is taking place at sites such as gofundme.com and with other forms of online giving.
At the local level, “my experience has been that individuals in Allen County are giving; they care about their neighbors and they want to see their fellow mankind do better,” said David Nicole, president and CEO for United Way of Allen County.
Tax returns in Indiana showed 567,000 individuals gave $3.2 billion in charitable contributions during 2015, and 32,000 residents of Allen County included $208 million in charitable giving on their income tax forms for that year, he said.
Generosity education efforts can be worthwhile and are especially effective when they get into program details and focus on outcomes, he said.
Generosity data can start conversations, satisfy curiosity and help with fund raising research, but Nicole would not count on it to provide motivation. Donors are motivated by their hearts and their heads and “by the impact that organizations make on the community not the, ‘Here’s where we compare to Illinois or Ohio,’” he said.
“The more that individuals know and understand an organization, the more likely they are to give and to give more dollars to a charitable organization,” Nicole said. “There is a direct correlation between the strength of that relationship and the charitable funds that organization receives.”
GenerosityForLife was made possible through funding and other support from the John Templeton Foundation.