Helping Hands: Not Necessarily From Above

Consumer spending continued to slide in May – a new Gallup poll shows that even the wealthy are cutting back – but what about charitable giving?

More than a few nonprofit organizations and charitable groups have reacted to the recession by redoubling their fundraising efforts, but on an individual level, donations of cash don't always come from those who have the most to give.

A McClatchy Newspapers story, reporting that the fifth of the American population which earns $19,301 or less is the group that gives the largest percent of its income to charity, observes that "the generosity of America's least wealthy isn't so much rare as rarely noticed."

Virginia Hodgkinson, who has researched charitable giving trends for the nonprofit associations group Independent Sector, tells McClatchy that the lowest-income fifth of the population always gives at more than its capacity. "The next two-fifths," she says, gives "at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give."

The newspaper's analysis, based on a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, reports that the group that gave the biggest chunk of its income is also the least educated segment of the population, the oldest, and the most likely to be students, minorities, women and recent immigrants. .

Those percentages are from 2007, the most recent statistics available, so it's hard to say if things are any different right now. A December Gallup poll, however, found very little change in the percentage who said they gave to charity: 84 percent in 2008 compared to 87 percent in 2005. Gallup didn't ask how much they gave.

Public Agenda's 2005 study, The Charitable Impulse, done in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation and in partnership with Independent Sector, found that donors of small amounts often view local nonprofit organizations as an engine of efforts to improve local civic life.

Donating to charity was also seen as a civic act, similar to voting, a way of acting on one's preferences. Giving is closely linked to personal experiences and emotional connections.

"The money goes more where you want it to go," said one focus group participant in a Boston suburb. "When you give - whether it is your time or your money - to a charity, you are able to make sure that it goes to what you want it to go to."