As Dow Sinks, Charity Traffic Goes Up

There’s probably more than one way to interpret more likely to give a charitable gift as a present this year. Four in five said they’d prefer a charitable gift in their name in lieu of clothing or electronics for themselves.

Optimists’ response: We succeed individually but we suffer together.

Cynic’s response: You’d say the same thing if asked. Doing is something else.

While commenting on the survey, Harris’s SVP of pubic affairs and policy research, Justin Greeves, cites another study from The Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University’s Giving USA Foundation showing that total charitable giving has increased in 39 of the past 40 years—even during times of recession.

Unfortunately for those of us who want to be optimists, Greeves did a bit of data cherry-picking there. If you adjust the total for inflation, the numbers are a bit different, and giving fell an average of one percent in recession years, vastly more in periods of longer recession (9.3 percent from 1973-1975). Between June and December 2008, the Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI), a measure of nonprofit fundraisers’ confidence in the current fundraising climate, plunged by 27 percent, a decline tripling the previous record drop in 2001.

Source for that information: Reiboldt writes:

“The numbers for declines in non-profit revenues are even more dramatic right now due to the Bernie Madoff scandal, which directly impacted investments by a significant amount of the country’s largest and oldest charities.  Large chunks of the $50 billion losses in Madoff’s ponzi scheme came from non-profit organizations and charities for whom Madoff’s firm was managing their investment capital.”

Optimist’s response: Oh dear. Well, We can only go up, right? We’ll make up for it in sweat equity. Volunteer today!

Cynic’s response: Silence, followed by gunfire.


^{*Though the dictionary will likely give you separate definitions for realism and pessimism, they operate in much the same way by dwelling on what is, what is not, and what is probable, the pessimist relying slightly more on Murphy’s Law. So I see little need to separate them from the synonym box. The optimist, on the other hand, is a fool, a Bohemian, and a believer in what is possible. Generally I like him better and let me say that the world has never been changed by a realist, pragmatist, or pessimist. That is, if you acknowledge the world has ever actually changed.}