The Commons

How did we come to treat “charitable giving” as one homogenous phenomenon?  And what’s lost when we gloss over the nuances of a sector as large, complex, and vital as ours?

These are important questions in the midst of the largest economic downturn in decades—and they go to the very heart of how well nonprofits will fare in this difficult time.

Some good and detailed analysis is out there, but none of it lends itself to the blurb-happy blogosphere. Take, for example, reports from the respected Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University that since 1956, in inflation-adjusted dollars, giving falls slightly in recession years —by 2.7 percent in years with eight or more recession months, and as much as 5.4 percent in a single very bad year. The same report states that before adjusting for inflation, charitable giving has increased in all years except 1987. Both are true. Pulled out of context, each little statistical nugget makes it easy to misunderstand (or misrepresent) an intricate situation.

When it comes to measuring the scale and quality of giving, we’re touching an elephant, blindfolded: What it seems to be depends mostly on where you’re standing.  A single large bequest can obscure the loss of thousands of significantly sized gifts. A transfer of assets into a foundation counts as “giving” to a nonprofit, though in terms of immediate impact it’s more like moving a wad of cash from your back pocket to your purse. In the meantime, some categories of giving are actually increasing by leaps and bounds.

So, how do we get at the heart of whether the donors we need will step up? I think this is where stories trump statistics. This summer, I was waiting to fly standby out of somewhere stormy and Midwestern. I scanned the crowd’s body language—are people hopeful, are we going to fly?—when an odd couple caught my attention: a soldier in full combat uniform who looked barely 20, and an older woman fully coiffured. She could have been a relative, but they weren’t exactly having the classic emotionally charged airport moment. Yet they were in league with each other somehow, consulting and chatting cordially.

We boarded. The soldier, now seated behind me, buckled in and called home. His flight had been cancelled, yes. But he had a ticket and would be there tonight, not tomorrow, because “this lady in the boarding area” had traded her high-value ticket for two coach seats. He didn’t know her name. I certainly never learned it. She’d used her miles or whatever to quietly give this stranger more time with his family. Her gesture won’t be tracked in any year-end accounting, but she will feel it, and so will the man she helped.

Giving will continue, in smaller and larger increments, because people take pleasure in using what they have to help others, and they’ll get creative to make it work when they know it really matters. Talk to one donor who did give this year. Ask why he or she did it and what it means personally now. Feel that? That’s relevance, and it’s real.

- Colleen O’Grady, Senior Writer

Tags: charitable giving, economic downturn, trends