42% Gave to Social Causes, Survey Says
By Leah Kerkman

Forty-two percent of Americans gave money or time to benefit social causes in 2005, a bigger share than the 35 percent who made such donations in 2004, according to a new Roper Reports Public Pulse survey. The increase was accounted for in part by donations for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the research company said.

When asked about the causes they contributed to last year, donors named disaster relief most often, with 52 percent saying that they had supported rebuilding efforts. Education was the next-most-popular cause, attracting gifts from 31 percent of the donors. Medical-research groups and organizations that combat hunger tied for third place, with 27 percent of donors saying they contributed to those causes in 2005.

The data are based on 1,007 interviews conducted in person in participants' homes, the most recent of which took place in December.

A separate poll in November 2005 by Roper found that one-third of donors increased their giving for the year in response to natural disasters.

'Social' Causes

Several other recent polls have found far more Americans who said they made a charitable donation last year than the Roper survey did. A Harris Interactive poll conducted online in January, for instance, found that nine in 10 Americans said they donated to charity (The Chronicle, May 4).

Roper officials said they believed the reason for the discrepancy is that their survey asked about social causes, while others asked about charitable giving, which could have prompted respondents to include their donations to religious institutions, cultural groups, and other organizations they did not consider to be a "social cause."

The Roper poll asked people not just about their own gifts, but about what they believed corporations should support.

Thirty percent of those polled said companies should give more money to education, and 28 percent would like to see companies donate more to medical research. Hunger charities (25 percent) were the third on the list, while 23 percent of donors thought companies should assist disaster-relief groups more.

According to the poll, many kinds of charities are enjoying a greater degree of trust from donors.

The percentage of donors who trust cultural, educational, health, and religious organizations has increased by 3 to 5 percentage points since 2003.

Thirty percent of those polled said they had "a lot of trust" in religious organizations, while 26 percent trusted education groups to the same degree. Twenty-five percent of donors said they had a high level of trust in cultural institutions, and 22 percent of donors listed health charities in that category.

The Roper Reports Public Pulse survey is available to subscribers to the polling service. For more information, send an e-mail message to info@gfkamerica.com or call (212) 240-5300.