Why Donors Give: Motivations for Their Gifts
The following article is provided courtesy of Robert Russell, President and founder of RR&A.Since 1976, RR&A has provided consulting services in marketing, management, and fundraising to businesses and charitable organizations. RR&A works with organizations to define their challenges and design effective strategies for long-term growth and impact.
Over the past forty years, our business has had the good fortune to conduct more than 200 numerically sampled donor constituency surveys.These constituencies included hundreds of philanthropists who support higher education, home schooling, special education, health care, rehabilitative health care and services, public policy institutions and think tanks, arts centers and academies, libraries, and others.
Each survey probed the constituent’s philanthropic goals and ideals. Relative to the sponsoring organization, we asked the donor’s sense of American institutions generally and the sponsor organization. The surveys also requested demographic information, including age, gender, education levels, marital and family status, community involvement, religion and political preferences, and specific affiliations with the institutions he or she supports.