I’ve said it before; if you want to get big contributions, you have to make big asks. But, for so many of us, our scarcity mindset holds us back. We wonder, can we really make big asks in an economic downturn? Does generosity still exist in America in 2023? Do donors of color give monetarily to the causes they care about?
The numbers say, yes, to all of the above! Data for the win!
Nerd out on numbers with me on today’s podcast as I get Dr. Una Osili’s thoughts on global philanthropy and giving trends in our complex philanthropic ecosystem.
Dr. Una Osili is the Director of Research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University and the Associate Dean for Research and International Programs at the Indiana University, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Listen to the full episode and subscribe for more data-based tips and tricks that will transform your mindset and help you niche down to find large givers and build trust as you can form a community of givers united under a common mission and vision.
“So donors now know that it’s possible to give in an unrestricted way. This is not just a good time to be engaging donors, but it’s also an important time to bring innovative and transformational opportunities to those donors and to ask for those transformational gifts because more donors are aware of the needs.” – Dr. Una Osili
Important Links:
Lilly Family School of Philanthropy – https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/index.html
The General Social Survey – https://gss.norc.org/
Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy – https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/institutes/mays-institute/about/index.html
Global Philanthropy Tracker – https://globalindices.iupui.edu/tracker/index.html
Global Philanthropy Indices – https://globalindices.iupui.edu/tracker/index.html
Global Philanthropy Environment Index – https://globalindices.iupui.edu/environment-index/index.html
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nonprofitlowdown/support
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today we’re talking about philanthropy by the numbers. My guest is the esteemed Dr. Una Osili. She is the Director of Research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, as well as the Associate Dean for Research and International Programs at the Indiana University, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
So we got a doctor in the house. Una, welcome to the show.
UNA 0:36
Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be with all of you. And thank you again for all the work that you do in the sector.
RHEA 0:42
Oh, that’s so kind. I wanna talk about you. So before we get into all the nitty gritty details, ’cause right now it is june 21st. The giving U S A numbers just came out. So we have a lot to talk about. But tell us a little bit about yourself and your own journey in philanthropy.
UNA 0:57
Yes I, was very fortunate to have been raised in a household where philanthropy and generosity were core values that my parents really raised us with.
I am the second of five children. My father is Nigerian and my mother’s American, so we had very different models of philanthropy presented. My father was very much about helping people neighbors, friends, his family. He was the first one to get an education and he made sure that every single member of his family also received a college degree.
My mother introduced us to formal giving and volunteering, and took us at a very early age to all kinds of volunteering opportunities. So I grew up in a household where, This was really part of our family, our values, the way we approach things, and to fast forward the tape. As a graduate student, I worked on a topic that really allowed me to understand the science of philanthropy, how to measure giving, why it’s so important to track the data.
And that led me to a career in philanthropy joining the first of all, the Center on Philanthropy. And now serving as the Associate Dean for research and international programs at the Indiana University, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the Lilly Family School is the world’s first school on philanthropy.
It’s important to note, and we have scholars from all over the world and. Across all disciplines. I’m an economist, but we have colleagues who are in psychology who are social scientists. Some are humanities, historians, linguistics, experts, all united by an interest in better science, better data, better understanding of human generosity.
Long story, and I’ve tried to keep it short.
RHEA 2:41
Oh no, I love it so much because the thing is nobody, at least no one I know. As a little kid was like, you know what? I wanna grow up to be in philanthropy. Like a lot of people don’t even know that it’s a profession.
Let’s talk. Before we get into the giving u s A numbers, let’s take the global philanthropy tracker. I know it’s something that you’re very passionate about with your international work. I know especially as I work with folks around the country, we think a lot about, how are we measuring philanthropy outside of the country, sending money to home countries and so forth.
Can you give us a little bit of a sense of what is the global philanthropy tracker and what does it tell us about international giving?
UNA 3:17
Yes. I’m so glad you mentioned that because at the Lilly Family School, one of the exciting components of the work we do is that we’re measuring and tracking philanthropy, not just in the United States, but around the world.
And this data is housed under a big umbrella called the Global Philanthropy Indices. And what that project is designed to do is really shed light on how much giving takes place around the world, and also how much giving is going across borders. What most people don’t understand is we know about American philanthropy because we’ve tracked it, we’ve measured it so we know what those numbers are, $499 billion this year.
But in many other parts of the world, generosity is present. In fact, in every single country that we study, we see there is a longstanding tradition of philanthropy, of generosity, but the data is not often there. So in this project, the Global Philanthropy Tracker, we actually do the work of putting some numbers around global generosity and how it’s changing.
And what we’ve seen through that work is that in every single country, high income, low income medium income countries, there are strong traditions of philanthropy. And what has often been the distinguishing factor is whether there are institutions that support. That generosity or perhaps inhibit or constrain the generosity as well.
RHEA 4:45
What are the mechanisms that enhance and what are the mechanisms that inhibit.
UNA 4:49
In some parts of the world there are actually barriers to giving. So there are regulations. Governments may restrict giving. In some countries there are what are called foreign agent laws that prevent organizations from receiving donations from across borders, and in some countries you have to get government permission to actually launch a fundraising campaign. So those are the kinds of restrictions or constraints that really limit giving. And then similarly, there are factors and policies that can enhance giving.
And one very prominent example is India. I’m gonna lift that up because the Indian diaspora is present in many parts of the world. But we’ve seen the Indian government in pseudo policy around C S R, corporate social responsibility, encouraging companies to give a certain percentage of their. Pre-tax profits to charitable causes.
And just as policies can inhibit, we can also see policies, enhance giving. And there can be what you could call sort of pure effects and spillover effects. So when one country sees a policy being implemented in one country, it may have that incentive to adopt it. So if you take all this together I’ll say one of the takeaways is that there’s about $70 billion in cross border giving.
That’s giving, that takes place from one nation to the other. And that’s just a small fraction of the data because these are countries that we can track. And when you put that in perspective, it means that With all the rules and laws that we have around cross-border transactions, we’ve seen a lot of resilience in global philanthropy.
During the pandemic, foreign direct investment dried up and official development assistance grew very slowly, but we saw private philanthropy continue even during the pandemic and remittances money that people send to their families abroad continue to grow. So what’s interesting about the data is that two sources of these cross border flows remain resilient during the covid pandemic remittances and private philanthropy.
RHEA 6:59
So interesting. And you know I do a lot of work with fundraisers of color, and I think the notion of philanthropy, capital P philanthropy feels very foreign, but when you talk about it in the context of helping out your family or sending money back home, it’s like, oh, yeah we do that.
So we practice, lowercase p philanthropy, not philanthropy. But it makes me feel like there’s something inherent in human nature that compels us to give? Is that what your data is shaking out from a absolutely ecology perspective?
UNA 7:27
So one of the other projects on global philanthropy, not the Tracker, but another project called the Global Philanthropy Environment Index, or the G P E I, we actually look at the conditions that enable or inhibit philanthropy.
We look at the policies that countries set in place, and we also look at the sociocultural environment and we work with a network of more than 100 experts around the world. What’s fascinating is that the one common data point in every single country is that there’s a thriving sociocultural environment around generosity.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Cultures around the world embrace generosity. That is something that’s part of the human condition. And in fact, during the pandemic, we saw an uptick in pro-social behavior. So around the world, people leaned in to helping their neighbors, helping their friends.
It wasn’t always giving to a 501(c)3 charitable organization, but it was contributing food, giving rides to neighbors. From a research standpoint it was also really inspiring to see those common threads in many parts of the world. So in the United States I’ll just share this story very quickly.
As schools shut down, we saw companies and individual donors step in. To provide laptops for students so they could participate in virtual e-learning. And in other parts of the world, companies in Nigeria for example, also donated radio stations allow teachers to use their platforms to provide their lessons to their students.
So what is also interesting is that, Philanthropy proved very resilient. And generosity was a part of really how communities navigated this unprecedented set of challenges, a global pandemic, a racial and social justice movement, and a point that we also have to underscore and unprecedented set of economic shocks that communities around the world had to grapple with.
RHEA 9:26
And we’re gonna get into that in a second, but just outta curiosity, is there a correlation that you found in your research between the generosity of a country and wellbeing of its citizens?
UNA 9:37
Yes. I’m an economist by training. So my first instinct was that as. Economic conditions improved, we’d see an improved philanthropic environment.
But what we actually saw in the data is that the political variables are also important. In other words, the type of political environment can also influence the, nature of the philanthropic sector. So it’s not just thriving economic conditions. As much as I’d like to believe, it’s all about the economy is important.
People give when they have the financial and economic resources to give. But political conditions can also play a significant role. And when they’re more unstable or repressive political conditions, it leads to a different type of exhibition of philanthropy. And in fact, what we’ve seen in very repressive environments is that donors will simply take their dollars and set up elsewhere..
For example, a lot of Russian philanthropists, their foundations are based not in Russia, but in the UK. So human beings are certainly very innovative and when they face those more restrictive political environments, they make different sets of choices.
RHEA 10:52
Oh, so interesting. I’ve always heard it said, and I wonder what your data says that the US is the most philanthropic country in the world.
Is that true?
UNA 11:01
What we have tried to emphasize is that generosity is present in every part of the world, so we don’t necessarily want to say that one country’s more generous than another. What I will say though is that the US has the most complex, most sophisticated, and probably the most dynamic philanthropic sector.
Why? Because if you look at the amount of money that’s raised here in the United States, $499 billion in 2022, it’s very difficult to find another economy that has the size of the philanthropic sector here in the United States. In addition, when we look at the number of nonprofits, We have close to 1.8 million nonprofits working in so many different sectors, from education to healthcare, to disaster relief, to the environment, to arts and culture.
And in many parts of the world because of the structure of the economy, the role of the government, there isn’t necessarily that complex diversified nonprofit sector. So when you put it all together, it goes back to tocqueville’s assertion that America was unique in the role of voluntary associations in the role that private individuals play in providing public goods.
RHEA 12:16
You talked about the ethos of America. Are there other things that incentivize giving, Specific American context. I’m thinking, federal policies, I’m thinking the bowling alone kind of ethos. I’m thinking about, a slim government. That means that nonprofits have to step into the breach.
What are the variables that we can point to that, that make up the soup of a unique American philanthropic culture.
UNA 12:41
It’s a great question because we spend a lot of time with the US data, but we also spend a lot of time in this global landscape, so we understand the uniqueness of the American sector.
I think a lot of that has to do with the origins of the philanthropic sector here in the United States. The role that the private sector plays in delivering public goods. We have, you might think, a mixed system where the government plays a role, but the private sector plays a role in public good provision.
And by that I mean everything from education to healthcare. We have to disaster relief. And in other countries government plays a much bigger role. But we also have the tax code, the charitable deduction. Is one of the oldest components of the US tax code. For more than a century individuals have been able to deduct their charitable contributions when they file their taxes.
However, that has also changed with tax reform in 2017. Without getting into the weeds there, fewer Americans can benefit from their giving through the tax code. But what it means is that we have norms around private giving as a way of. Making a difference in our communities. We also have a strong tradition of faith-based institutions playing a role in solving problems, not just churches, mosques and synagogues, but also faith-based nonprofits.
Everyone from the Salvation Army. To World Vision where faith religious values have also influenced the sector. So if I had to summarize, I’d say the structure of economy, the structure of our tax system, but also the values and norms that surround philanthropy. One way to think about the American philanthropy tradition is that it was even present before this was a nation.
And when you look at even with our diverse racial and ethnic composition here in the United States, all of our diverse racial ethnic groups have strong traditions of giving from. Native American communities to African American to new immigrants where generosity is baked into the fabric of our D n A here as a nation, but also when we look at individual communities across the United States.
RHEA 14:58
I’m just curious, and forgive me if this question is elementary, as an economist operating on this notion that people are rational and people are maximizers, in a sense, philanthropy doesn’t actually make sense within that model of the pure economic mindset.
So how do we understand philanthropy with a, free market economic system?
UNA 15:22
It’s a great question. One Adam Smith actually has a whole section about how people give not just to support their own needs, but also to support the needs of others.
A way to think about it is that in addition to private goods, they’re goods that we care about that are public goods. So one example may be I care about of course, my own consumption, but I also want clean air. I want to visit a park in my neighborhood. I want to be able to support maybe welfare of others.
Outside of my own family, so it might mean that I care about the consumption of others. And so economics, I think, allows for your wellbeing to depend on a number of things. And there are some you could say goods and services that you consume that are public goods. In other words, you can enjoy them, but someone else can as well.
Public goods have this ability to be, I think economists talk about being non-rival and non-excludable, so I can enjoy them and someone else can enjoy them. I may value a beautiful art museum. And it exists in my community. So I wanna give to that. I want to support that someone else can derive enjoyment from that without diminishing my own satisfaction.
So when we think about why people give, there are complex reasons. Some of it can be for altruism. I want to help others. And economic models can allow you to put some value on someone else’s consumption. But it can also be what you could call enlightened. Self-interest. You are supporting things that you care about.
You are getting some benefit, but someone else can benefit at the same time. So It could be clean air, it could be art, it could be music. And so you support an orchestra. All of those public goods are such that my contribution can help to fund that good and someone else can enjoy it as well. So the, I think good news here is that even very standard you could call them sort of traditional economic models, allow the possibility of altruism.
Placing value on someone else’s wellbeing and that may induce you to give to humanitarian relief or to help the needy in your community, but also to support environmental causes to give to arts and culture, to give to healthcare, and all of the things that can be public goods as well.
RHEA 17:49
I talk to lots of fundraisers all the time, and there often is a story about why their particular cause is harder to raise for. Systems oriented people will say things like we don’t do direct service, and that’s really hard to raise for. And people who are doing direct service will say we’re not, impacting at scale.
So that’s hard to raise for. My question to you is, when we think about all of the different types of nonprofits and the sizes of nonprofits, and some people like to give locally in their backyard, to give internationally, to give, to policy and systems, to give a very small direct service. Is there a thread there or are they substantively different givers with different motivations?
UNA 18:29
I think that one thing to realize is that we have a more dynamic, sophisticated and more complex philanthropic ecosystem than we’ve ever had. That means that we have, of course, nonprofits operating at all different levels, small grassroots organizations, as well as very large, complex organizations.
And similarly, we have diverse donors who care about different things. I think in this. Landscape. It’s really important for fundraisers to connect to donors and to potential donors, and that means that telling their story sharing their mission has become not just vital, but also complicated because of all the different channels that you have. So going back to your question, how should fundraisers approach this very dynamic uh, landscape? Where do they find those donors that are aligned with their cause?
When we look at the data, there are some profiles of donors that sort of align with certain types of causes. Is some very general brush strokes. We do find that younger donors are increasingly drawn to, say, giving internationally or to the environment, and that college educated donors also care about international causes and are more likely to give to certain.
Types of causes that sort of meet with their own interests. So what I would encourage a fundraiser who’s trying to think about where do I find those prospective donors or donors who might be interested in the cause that I’m working on, I’d say start with the data. Fortunately, the Lilly Family School has a.
Tremendous number of resources. One of them is called Generosity for Life, and you can go on that website and you can look specifically at a data set we have called the Philanthropy Panel Study, which really breaks down the demographic data for donors to certain kinds of causes, who gives to healthcare, to the arts, to the environment, and you can see what those characteristics look like.
Having said that, I think that increasingly today’s World donors have high expectations for the nonprofits that they support, and they want to see that those organizations are making a difference. So communication is going to be very important. And then also meeting those donors where they are.
That goes back to understanding what it is that they want, how they want to be engaged, and providing those engagement opportunities for those donors. So I’d say while. It does seem more challenging. The good news here is that there is more data available probably than there’s ever been. So as you try to think about what does the typical donor to my type of organization look like there are a wealth of resources, a broad array that you can draw on as a starting point so that you start to distill what that looks like.
RHEA 21:19
I’m so glad that you said that because what I’ve really been counseling my people about is to really double down on their community and to go deep, not broad, because I think in this fractionalized world, we’re all not sitting down watching friends at 8:00 PM on a Thursday, right? Like we had these, micro communities and we have to be super specific about nurturing those communities.
’cause honestly, to get market share at scale, Takes a tremendous amount of ad spend. Like Coca-Cola has a lot more money than the average nonprofit and they can’t get all of the market share, right? So what chances your little teeny nonprofit have? So I think it’s about, it’s a small I like to call it micro famous strategy.
UNA 22:04
I love that. I just had that question from someone in the media recently and they said, how are nonprofits going to get their message out in this very complex world companies have entire teams devoted to just one product line, and many nonprofits don’t have the staffing or the resources to really invest in their communications infrastructure.
But here’s the good news. For many nonprofits, social media volunteer basis hiring interns. What you realize is that because a lot of your potential donors are on social media, that can be a very effective way to get your message out. And then using peer fundraising ask those donors to share with their networks.
What we learned during the pandemic, I participated in an a live event and Facebook announced that they had raised about $6 billion through. Fundraisers on Facebook. So don’t discount, not just as you said, the micro communication channels, but also the micro philanthropy tools, crowdfunding social media fundraising, and many of the peer-to-peer networks, which have the ability to connect you to new donors, and also for you to learn more about what is actually important to those donors.
RHEA 23:21
Let’s talk about giving u s a. We’ve danced around it enough. You just published, there are lots of interesting insight. Big picture? What are we seeing in 2022 numbers? It differs from what we saw in the previous, say, two years.
UNA 23:34
This year the headline is that giving is at $499 billion but this represents a 3.9% decline. And so the good news here is that during the pandemic, we did see nonprofits raise record levels, but 2022 was a challenging year. In particular, inflation reached a 40 year high. So for many organizations, what this means is that even if they’re raising the same amount of money, those dollars are not going as far.
And so that’s why we did see that decline of 3.9% in addition. We also saw that other economic challenges presented hurdles for nonprofits. In particular, the stock market, which has had a record run until 2022, declined by about 25, 20 6% in real term. So that means year end. Many donors who were thinking about making their commitments to nonprofits faced significant economic and financial uncertainty. So giving u s A this year has a lot of data to celebrate, meaning that. Philanthropy was resilient during the pandemic, and that we saw a number of records being set, but emerging from that pandemic. There have been some challenges that nonprofits are going to have to navigate.
So good news, as well as challenging news.
RHEA 25:00
But is it true that after crises we usually see an uptick in philanthropy that then levels off a year after. So, 9/11 the pandemic, any other natural crises that are happening.
Is that consistent with what we’re seeing across the data?
UNA 25:16
I think some of the explanation is that the pandemic era 2020 and 2021 were indeed record years. So there is some sort of tapering off of that giving. But I think another factor that we have to put on the table, I. Are the specific challenges of 2022?
Not just that we had these record highs and we’re just tapering off. In particular, the stock market, which is an important variable in the giving equation, as well as the 40 year record in inflation, which also cast a bit of a dampening effect on giving. Keep in mind, American households give when they have the resources to give.
Record inflation has meant that many households are seeing increased pressure on their disposable income, food prices, energy prices, all of those things have added more Say significant erosion on the purchasing power of those dollars. So that’s where at the end of the day, giving is still one of those discretionary categories.
So I think if we had to put all the numbers together, part of the explanation is exactly what you referenced, but it’s also this bigger economic context that we have to lean into.
RHEA 26:27
I think when I saw it correct me if I’m wrong, 64% of overall giving were given by individuals. Is that right?
What’s it? 64% and then and 9% were bequest, are we disproportionately looking at a small number of very large givers relative to the pool?
UNA 26:45
Yes. So let me start by just saying one other data point that really stood out to us in this year’s report is that 64% of all giving comes from individuals, which means individuals are still the lion’s share of American philanthropy. But mega donors who are giving $500 million and above are a bigger part of the pie.
In the past two years, it’s been 5%. So when we talk about mega donors, this is $500 million and above. Now, in every organization, large gifts mean something different. For some organizations, a thousand dollars is considered a major donor. What we have seen in the data is that large givers are counting for a bigger and bigger slice of the American pie in philanthropy.
When we look at our data on everyday donors, The other trend that’s worth noting is that fewer households are participating in giving. At the beginning of the 21st century, two thirds of all American households gave, and it was very consistent. It did not change from year to year. Around the time of the Great Recession, we saw that top line numbers start to fall and it never really recovered.
So today we have less than half of American households participating in charitable giving. What it means is that the ones who are giving are increasing their gifts. So major givers tend to be the ones that have remained givers and they’ve continued to give where we are losing ground tend to be among everyday donors and younger donors.
So if I had to issue what should we be doing differently, this is for the fundraisers, philanthropy as a whole. We need to think about how do we reach younger donors. They are the ones that some of them stopped giving during the Great Recession and never returned. Some never started, and everyday households who perhaps faced economic challenges during the Great Recession and also did not come back to charitable giving.
RHEA 28:47
That is so interesting. And the other thing that I just wanted to flag is, and again, this may be anecdotal, but I think that. There is an impulse on the part of the fundraiser to just say the money’s just not there. People just aren’t giving. And yet we see the unprecedented number of DAFs being open and family foundations being open.
So clearly the money is out there. It perhaps is not flowing in the way that we want. What do you attribute that to?
UNA 29:13
Let me just start by saying this is an error where we have to dispel that myth that the money is not out there. The news coming out of giving USA, I just wanna repeat that number.
$499 billion and. For many households during the pandemic, not only did they continue giving, but they stepped up in their generosity and we saw an uptick in pro-social behavior, which means people are actually looking for those opportunities to give. If you put that alongside the fact that DAF giving has also grown during this period, and we also see that DAF giving tends to be countercyclical.
In other words, people give more during economic downturns out of their DAFs. The other data point for fundraisers to keep in mind is that the DAF dollars have already been committed to charity. . Those dollars can be taken back by the donor and they’ve been allocated to charitable causes.
So here we want the data to actually inform people’s thinking. And here, I think if I had to say what would I like fundraisers to take away is that the environment right now certainly is challenging, but donors have shown an extraordinary commitment to philanthropy during these difficult times.
And for many households, they’re actually in a better position to give than they were maybe even prior to the pandemic, because not only have they allocated those resources through their DAFs, some have established family foundations. So those dollars have already been committed. And there’s also an interest in it in innovation.
In particular, we saw. McKinsey Scott as a big example, in 2020, step up with $6 billion in unrestricted giving. So donors now know that’s possible to give in an unrestricted way. So this is not just a good time to be engaging donors, but it’s also an important time to bring innovative and.
Transformational opportunities to those donors and to ask for those transformational gifts because more donors are aware of the needs. You don’t have to necessarily explain what the healthcare or education disparities are anymore that has been documented. And when you talk about needs around climate or healthcare, a lot of donors are much more informed about how their dollars can make a difference.
RHEA 31:41
I wanna talk about the role of trust in these declining numbers because I think as a society, at least from my perspective, like data point of one it seems like there’s been a real erosion in trust in our institutions, in our politicians, in our, systems. And I assume also declining trust in our charities.
And any given day you can open up the newspaper and read this charity you absconded with these funds, et cetera, et cetera. Is that tracking with your data and if it is, what can we as fundraisers do to start to rebuild that trust?
UNA 32:17
Over the past, Three or four decades, a study called the General Social Surveys has tracked trust in institutions. And we’ve seen a declining level of trust across the board in local governments, state government, federal government, and even in institutions that were previously somewhat immune to this like the Supreme Court.
When we look more carefully at the data, who has seen the biggest erosion in trust? Tends to be younger Americans who have the lowest levels of trust. So when you look at the giving data, it does actually mirror this very closely in the sense that we’ve seen a decline in everyday donors. Trust is the glue of the charitable sector.
People give to organizations that they trust and they give to leaders that they trust. Now let’s flip the narrative and shift this a bit and look at where nonprofits fall on the continuum, what we’ve seen in the data. A recent study just conducted by the Lilly Family School and launched just last month publicly shows that Among all the American institutions, nonprofits are trusted the most.
So what this means is that nonprofits not only have a role to play in building community, building a sense of purpose, and rebuilding this shared sense of commitment. To our society. And nonprofit leaders also have a role to play in delivering on their mission because that’s ultimately what helps build a trust.
Transparency, sharing with donors what we do communicating with donors, engaging with donors, and also sharing very transparently how we’re going to achieve the results. And when we don’t achieve those results. Clarifying and communicating and sharing why we did not achieve those goals. So I do think that nonprofits have a unique role to play because of the trust that Americans place in them to start with.
But also as a sector the nonprofit leaders can work to build that shared transparency around their work. And I think there’s a partnership that also has to take place with communities where nonprofits can bring community alongside in their work and center their work on community needs and voices.
RHEA 34:40
What’s interesting is certainly during the pandemic with George Floyd and b l m, there was a move towards trust-based philanthropy, which I think was a reaction to the over-reporting on data and metrics, which, look, I’m all for metrics, but it also felt a bit punitive.
Like I, we don’t trust that you’re actually doing what you say you’re gonna do with the money. Two part question is, is there a happy medium between the two and do you see trust-based philanthropy continuing as a trend or is it a blip on the radar?
UNA 35:10
A complex question. So let’s start with the second part is trust-based philanthropy here to stay? Is it a blip? I think that the pandemic exposed some of the challenges of funder requirements, funder restrictions and regulations. Some of them were onerous and quite difficult and proved that Nonprofits need a great deal of flexibility, especially navigating during these very turbulent times.
Maybe the funding was allocated for an in-person conference and it has to move to virtual that would require a whole reallocation resubmission of the request. And it was very clear that More flexibility really needed to be the case. As we look ahead, I think navigating this very complex world is going to require more flexibility.
Certainly there are elements of the trust-based model that are here to stay because the nonprofit leaders know best how to do the work. They’re well acquainted with the challenges and the funders have to be willing. To engage in deep listening and learning and also giving that flexibility to allow those nonprofits where necessary to shift, to pivot, and to design a new approach.
So I do think there’s a lot that we can take away. Your first question around data, now that is a, I feel like a separate issue because data is important not just for the funding community, but for the nonprofit itself to see where its work is driving impact where challenges. So I think there is A need to continue to innovate on the data front.
It should be part of the organization and its culture to implement learning and data. And data doesn’t always have to be complex spreadsheets and algorithms. It can also be qualitative, it can be storytelling. But the reflection, the learning that comes with that tracking is really important.
The Salvation Army is a very good example of a longstanding charity that many people know about. It’s present in every zip code in America. And since their inception in the 18 hundreds, they have.
Extensive information, all the work that they do, they’ve made that commitment not just to serving people in need, but also to better understanding their work. And you can go and look up all of their data back to the 18 hundreds. So I always point out that Data measurement learning is inherent in improving the quality of your work.
Funders should support that infrastructure, not make it overly onerous, but actually invest in the infrastructure for nonprofits. So as you can see I’m a data person, but it’s not one dimensional. I think it has to be tailored to the organization and built in such a way that it can actually support that organization.
RHEA 38:01
Were you able to disaggregate the data to look at donors of color? Because I think what’s really interesting, especially as I’m talking to fundraisers of color, is to think about how are we as fundraisers able to be out there connecting with donors with the same shared experiences as we have?
And I think there’s maybe a false assumption that donors of color just aren’t out there.
UNA 38:22
At the Lilly Family School we have a significant commitment the Mays Family Institute on diverse philanthropy. And as part of that work, we’re conducting a multi-year project called Everyday Donors of Color, as well as our high net worth studies on philanthropy that over sample high net worth donors of color.
So there are a lot of resources you can draw on and the. Key learning from all of this is that donors of all different backgrounds give and once we control for income, wealth, and education, we actually don’t find statistical differences by race. So the myth here is that we need to dispel, hopefully, 1 cent for all is that donors of color do not give.
In fact, we find that they’re just as likely to give, and not only are they just as likely to give, but they’re very committed donors. What we have learned through that study is that our sector doesn’t always build the platforms that channels the engagement opportunities for those donors. So for those who are fundraisers of color, who are philanthropy professionals of color, I think the good news here is this is a great time to.
Bring this topic to the organization, to the forefront of the organization and share this data with them and emphasize that these are not new and emerging donors. They’ve been giving all along as my colleague Dr. Tyrone Freeman has often said. What the challenge has been is that many organizations have not actively engaged those donors.
But here there is also a lot of momentum and innovation in this space. We have organizations like the National Smithsonian, African American Museum. I. That has raised record dollars from donors of color. And at Indiana University we have a black philanthropy circle that is also raising significant large dollar donations from donors of color.
So I think that’s also helping to change the narrative that communities of color are not giving. In fact, they are giving, and the data supports that.
RHEA 40:29
Una, thank you so much. This has been so enlightening. I’m gonna make sure to put all the information in the show notes along with the resources that you mentioned, but.
Thank you for being here and for those of you listening, if you like more of this, feel free to jump onto my website and click on joining my free weekly newsletter, and you will get more of this kind of information. Una, thank you so much.
UNA 40:48
It was such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Look forward to staying in touch.
RHEA 40:52
All right, same here. Take care. Bye everyone. Bye-bye.
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