News

Wealthy take 36 days to decide on major donations, research finds

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 3 Feb 2012

High net worth individuals (HNWI) take, on average, 36 days to decide whether to make a major charitable donation and when they do, the gift averages around $14,000.

This finding is contained in the latest Futurewealth report, a global survey of 3,300 high net worth individuals (HNWIs).

The research also found that these individuals take quite a lot longer – 55 days, on average – to make decisions about buying a new watch or piece of jewellery.

Encouragingly for the sector’s major donor fundraisers, the report found that charities outperformed luxury car dealers and even fine art dealers in the quality of service they provide to their customers.

The research compared 15 steps on the customer journey when buying a big-ticket item or making a major gift. It discovered that while “car dealers are hitting many of the right notes as they take the Futurewealthy through a purchase, it is charities that come through strongly in the post-sale phase to capture their hearts and minds for a longer-term relationship”.

In fact, charities led the field for delivering “quality and consistency of customer care”. Their outperformance score was 12.3 per cent, versus the average of 9.9 per cent. “This journey, like all the others, is judged on its own merits and what it tells us is that charities are delivering a standard of donor care that is well beyond expectations,” the report stated.

In particular, when making a charitable gift, HNWIs’ expectations were the most highly exceeded on the quality of independent opinion at the pre-purchase stage, quality of premises at the purchase stage, and hospitality events after the donation has been made.

The Futurewealth report is compiled by Scorpio Partnership, Standard Chartered Private Bank, and SEI Global Wealth Services. This year’s survey also found that in all regions of the world, the respondents were less confident about their ability to make money in the coming year.