What Do All The Giving USA Numbers Mean To Me?

I know often times in the world of philanthropy you hear about this statistic or that finding, or this study – and I always think to myself,

“What does all this mean for our sector and our clients?”

I think every statistic and finding is interesting, but no study is as interesting and comprehensive as Giving USA!   Getting to know and work with the Melissa Brown at The Center on Philanthropy over this past year on the new GivingUSA 2010 web site has been an honor and I have taken away so much valuable information from her and all her team’s research in the not-for-profit sector.

When it comes specifically to Giving USA 2010, three key things stood out to me:

1. 89.5% of all giving – yes ALL giving – comes from individuals and I’ll explain how in a second;
2. 15% of alumni give to their alma mater annually (or should I say, ONLY 15%. .  . more commentary on this to follow too); and
3. Giving did not decline as much as expected, or as much as the mainstream media would have had you thinking

So what does that mean?

Well, let’s start with the fact that nearly 90% of all giving comes from individuals.

Now I know the pie chart says 75% or over $227 billion, of all giving came from individuals in 2009, but if you take this 75% and then add in the bequests – which as Melissa Brown would call “Gifts from the non-living individuals”, you get up to 83%.

But there’s a funny thing about the wedge called Foundations, as nearly half of all Foundations are  “individual” or “family” foundations.

So if you add 75% from Individuals, 8% from Bequests and then an additional 6.5% from Foundations the grand total of giving by individuals is 89.5%!  Wow!

This by far is one of the most compelling findings to me as these numbers have rarely changed over the past 10-15 years, so I guess my question to all of you is:

“Why do we spend so much time researching what a corporation could give to your organization and less time on establishing relationships with individuals?”

Next, only 15% of alums give to their alma mater on an annual basis – who would have ever thought that?  Not me!

We work with a lot of community colleges and we’ll hear time and time again about how they want / need to better engage their alumni as this is how universities and other colleges are raising all their money.  Really?  Not according to the renowned research team at The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University!

So where is education getting their slice of the pie?  A more in-depth look at giving in the education sector can be downloaded in July via GivingUSA2010.org, via the Topical Digest page and I can’t wait to read it.

And finally, the fact that philanthropy was down only 3.6% speaks to the tremendous generosity of individuals in the United States.  Even though the economy was down and you would have thought that we’d be seeing bread lines soon if you listened to the mainstream media on a daily basis, Americans dug deep and they gave!

They gave to those organizations that focused on basic human needs – housing, food and clothing – and we all thank them!

So what does all this mean for 2010 and beyond?  Time will tell – but one thing is for certain, we need to continue doing a good job of cultivating relationships with individuals, and if history is an indicator, giving levels will slowly increase and should be back to where they were in 2007 in a few years.

Source: Giving USA 2010