The fabled end-of-year push is with us yet again. Along with the excitement of infamous holiday office parties, endless baked goodies, and the promise of time off spent cozied up with loved ones, also comes the near exhaustive dash of summarizing the year's organizational victories and reengaging with donors before everyone scatters for the holidays. 'Tis the season when most nonprofit managers and development staff start bright and early and work well past closing time, stuffing envelopes and pounding the phone pavement to solicit (hopefully major) donations to fund next year's work. But many organizations only spread their cheer with donors who write larger checks, often overlooking their generally broader base of smaller donors. Redefining what gifts are "major" is a big step toward more inclusive and informed fundraising.
A New York Times article, "Charitable Giving" (August 10, 2010), addresses this issue of giving behaviors inconsistent with financial status by shedding light on a critical study done in 2001 by a nonprofit organization focused on charitable giving, which "found that households earning less than $25,000 a year gave away an average of 4.2 percent of their incomes while those with earnings of more than $75,000 gave away only 2.7 percent." Income goes up 300% yet giving goes down 64 percent. The surprise comes when we see those percentages, more or less, remain constant throughout a multitude of studies.
Another poignant example of this inconsistency is Paul K. Piff's experiments to test psychological factors which motivate donating habits across classes. Piff performed "a series of experiments that tested "lower class" and "upper class" subjects (with earnings ranging from around $15,000 to more than $150,000 a year) to see what kind of psychological factors motivated the well-known differences in their giving behaviors." ("Charitable Giving," NYT, 8-10-10) The study was finally published online last year by The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and revealed the rather unexpected result that lower-income people donated more frequently than those with greater levels of wealth. Those of lower-income levels were also were identified through the study as having more altruistic tendencies. So with a smaller income gap came a greater tendency toward compassionate giving. Piff's study, a dense but fascinating portion, is available online.
Most of us in development and non-profit work (or if you pay attention to the news) remember well the moment when Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and 38 others announced that they formed a pact to give at least half their wealth to charity. It was big news. Since giving away high percentages of one's money has yet to become a cultural norm (we aren't giving up!), expanding the conversation into one that is cross-class may help shift exclusive traditions of giving. Changing the fundamentals of the conversation might also help provide space at the table for wealthy people who may identify less along class lines and more around their race, gender, sexual orientation, ability or other markers of difference.
People with little or zero disposable income are still stereotyped as receivers of services-not supporters, donors or contributors. With a few notable exceptions, many organizations dole out the "major" label for an elite minority of their donors. It is time for us to rethink how we look at generosity, and how we engage with small donors. In the midst of the burgeoning Occupy movement, a real US awakening to systemic economic injustice, how can we sustain support for more radical visions for social change?
Funding Exchange (FEX), a social change public foundation originally founded and funded by young people of inherited wealth, is committed to the idea that we all need to be at the table to attain a systemic shift. Donors, activists, organizers, and community members work together. With that in mind, as well as the desire to more deeply connect with a compassionate small-donor base, we recently launched the No Small Change campaign. We based the premise of No Small Change on our belief that any act of giving to social justice causes is a big act in that it causes a paradigm shift. These acts redirect our resources (privately, publicly) to more sustainable and supportive social movements, in effect, re-prioritizing the common good.
No Small Change recognizes that smaller donations are major, too-and that the collective giving across lines of class can have a sizable impact when pooled together for change.We believe that giving by "the masses," grassroots giving, both has the potential to raise substantial dollars, but, more importantly perhaps, engages more people in the work funded. We're trying to advance major change-both in the work we support and in recognizing who supports it. Well beyond this holiday season, let's make it our resolution to acknowledge that all donors matter, big and small; 1% plus the 99% equals 100%. Indeed, there's no small change when we're changing the world, together.
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