from The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Parents Matter: New Study Shows Influence of Family on Giving Decisions

Household income and education levels are usually the key elements fund raisers use to figure out who is most likely to give, but it turns out something else is more important: whether a potential donor’s parents were involved in charitable causes.

That is one of the findings of new study of donor attitudes and giving behavior released this week by Russ Reid, a Pasadena, Calif., company that provides direct-marketing services to nonprofits. The study was released here at the Direct Marketing Association New York Nonprofit Conference.

Parental involvement in nonprofits increases the odds of a child becoming a donor by more than 80 percent; with parents who don’t, there’s only a 25-percent chance the child will grow up to be a donor, the study found.