• Home
  • About
    • About
    • Policies
  • Submissions
    • Op-eds
    • News / Announcements
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

eJewish Philanthropy

Your Jewish Philanthropy Resource

  • News Bits
  • Jewish Education
  • Readers Forum
  • Research
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / American Philanthropy / Study: Young, Single Women Who Are Religiously Unaffiliated Are Generous Charitable Givers

Study: Young, Single Women Who Are Religiously Unaffiliated Are Generous Charitable Givers

November 16, 2014 By eJP

Women-Give-2014-e1415997723474In an important shift in patterns, the standard religiosity-giving story does not apply to younger single women who are religiously unaffiliated – the “Nones.” Younger single women who are Nones give roughly two times larger amounts to charitable organizations than women who are affiliated but who infrequently attend religious services.

**********

Nonprofits seeking new and generous donors should look to a seemingly unlikely source: young, single women who are not religious, a new study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy finds.

Conventional wisdom says younger generations – Millennials and Gen Xers – are less generous than their predecessors. And previous research has found that people who are affiliated with a particular religion and who attend services regularly are more likely to give, and to give more, to both religious and non-religious charities than people who do not have a religious affiliation.

The Women Give 2014 report confirms this positive relationship between religiosity and giving for most populations studied, but in an important shift from the standard religiosity-giving story, the study finds key exceptions that counter the conventional wisdom about both age and religiosity. Those exceptions have significant implications for how both religiously identified and non-religiously identified nonprofit organizations appeal to current and potential donors.

Specifically, the study finds that young, single women without a religious affiliation:

  • Give two-and-a-half times more money to charity than middle age and older single women who are religiously unaffiliated.
  • Give twice as much as young, single women who are religiously affiliated but attend services infrequently.
  • Give twice as much as their unaffiliated male peers.
  • Give twice as much to non-religiously identified organizations as they do to religiously identified organizations.

“Gender and age clearly matter and have a substantial influence on giving choices,” said Debra J. Mesch, Ph.D. director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute. “This study shows that different patterns in charitable giving exist between young men and young women. Nonprofit leaders and fundraisers may need to develop new strategies to engage them more effectively.”

The study is the first to examine in a single analysis the combined effects of religiosity, gender, and age on charitable giving. Prior studies have looked at connections between two of the factors but not all three. Women Give 2014 uses a multi-layered analysis to gain deeper understanding of how gender and age affect the traditional religiosity-giving relationship. The study of 762 donors (primarily Protestants and Roman Catholics) looks at their giving to organizations that have a religious identity (e.g., World Vision, Compassion International or Catholic Charities) and to organizations that do the same kind of work but which do not have a religious identity (e.g., CARE, Save the Children or United Way). Giving to congregations is excluded to allow a clearer picture of how the factors examined affect giving to other types of nonprofits.

“Many in the nonprofit sector have expressed concern that recent declines in Americans’ religious affiliation and attendance might foreshadow a decline in charitable giving to both religiously and non-religiously identified nonprofits. This study demonstrates that donors’ religiosity is not a one-size-fits-all predictor of whether, how much and for what they give,” said Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, lead researcher for the study and visiting endowed chair holder of the Eileen Lamb O’Gara Chair in Women’s Philanthropy at the school. “These results underscore that nonprofits should pay attention to the religious and non-religious orientations of their donors and develop tailored strategies to connect with those who share an interest in the charitable purpose they serve.”

Women Give 2014 does not contain Jewish respondents because it is based on data from the National Study of American Religious Giving, the comparison sample to the National Study of American Jewish Giving, which together form the basis for Jumpstart’s Connected to Give series. The Indiana research team initially used the datasets for Connected to Give: Faith Communities, which first reported how donors distinguish between religiously identified charitable organizations and those that are not religiously identified.

Women Give 2014 is the fifth in a series of research reports conducted at the Women’s Philanthropy Institute that focuses on gender differences in giving. Previous Women Give reports have examined differences between adult male-and female-headed households, looking at gender differences in charitable giving across income levels, marital status, age/generation, and types of charitable organizations receiving the giving. These reports, as well as the research literature, find significant gender differences in philanthropic behavior. Women Give 2013 assessed whether the gender differences observed in adult charitable giving begin to emerge at younger age. The 2013 study found that parents who talk to their children about charitable giving significantly increase the likelihood that those children will give to charity.

The full Women Give 2014 report, as well as previous reports in the series, are available here.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: American Philanthropy, In the Media, Research Tagged With: Connected to Give, women's philanthropy

Click here to Email This Post Email This Post to friends or colleagues!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Shawn Landres says

    November 17, 2014 at 6:51 am

    We’re proud that our collaboration with our partners at Indiana has yielded findings – now for the second time – that challenge the conventional wisdom about religion and charitable giving. As Deb, Mark, and their colleagues note, Connected to Give: Faith Communities shows the salience of distinguishing between religiously identified charitable organizations and those that are not religiously identified, and now Women Give 2014 shows how certain non-religiously affiliated people actually give at higher rates than those who are affiliated with a tradition, especially to not religiously identified organizations.

Primary Sidebar

Join The Conversation

What's the best way to follow important issues affecting the Jewish philanthropic world? Our Daily Update keeps you on top of the latest news, trends and opinions shaping the landscape, providing an invaluable source for inspiration and learning.
Sign Up Now
For Email Marketing you can trust.

Continue The Conversation

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Comments

  • Bruce Powell on An Invitation To Transparency: Reflections on an Open Salary Spreadsheet
  • Sara Rigler on Announcement: Catherine Reed named CEO of American Friends of Magen David Adom
  • Donna Burkat on The Blessings in 2020’s Losses
  • swindmueller on Where Do We Go From Here?
    Reflections On 2021
    A Jewish Response to These Uncertain Times
  • Alan Henkin on Where Do We Go From Here?
    Reflections On 2021
    A Jewish Response to These Uncertain Times

Most Read Recent Posts

  • What Title for Henrietta Szold?
  • Jewish Agency Accuses Evangelical Contractors of “Numerous Violations” but Denies They Evangelized New Immigrants
  • An Invitation To Transparency: Reflections on an Open Salary Spreadsheet
  • Why One Zoom Class Has Generated a Following
  • The Blessings in 2020’s Losses

Categories

The Way Back Machine

Footer

What We Do

eJewish Philanthropy highlights news, resources and thought pieces on issues facing our Jewish philanthropic world in order to create dialogue and advance the conversation. Learn more.

Top 40 Philanthropy Blogs, Websites & Influencers in 2020

Copyright © 2021 · eJewish Philanthropy · All Rights Reserved