Fundraising facts, Part 1

We wanted to share some interesting facts about fundraising with you that we got from "Easier Said Than Done : 25 Random Things About Fundraising" by Jeff Brooks, who is the creative director at Merkle and keeper of the Donor Power blog.  The article appeared on the Fundraising Success website.

Most of the demographic and sociographic facts given here are from the book, “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism,” by Arthur Brooks.) 

The entire article is too long for our blog so we've edited it a bit.  We'll bring you some more facts later this week in Part 2 of this post.

"1. The oldest recorded fundraising appeal was written by St. Paul around A.D. 55. It’s an appeal to a group of church members in Greece to help impoverished church members in Jerusalem. The appeal is a masterpiece of donor-centered fundraising, spending most of its words describing the benefits of giving. 

2. Race and ethnicity are not good predictors of charitable giving. Age and sex, however, are strong predictors: Women give more than men, and older people give more than younger people.

3. Someone who regularly attends a house of worship is twice as likely to give to charitable causes as someone who seldom or never does. The churchgoer gives 100 times as much to charity per year — including 50 times as much to nonreligious causes.

4. Measuring by percentage of gross domestic product, the United States gives more to private charity than do any of the world’s nations. The U.S. is followed by Israel, Canada and Argentina. The most generous European nations — Spain, Ireland and the U.K. — give less than half of what the U.S. gives on a percentage basis.

14. The working poor are the most generous Americans, giving the greatest portion of their incomes to charity of all U.S. economic groups.

15. Wealthy Americans follow in generosity, giving slightly less than the poor do on a proportional basis.

16. The rest of us? We’re way behind. But there are so many of us that the bulk of charitable giving comes from middle-class donors."