Over 80 per cent of public donate to charity because they are asked, says survey

12 May 2017 News

Just over 80 per cent of people donate to charity because they are asked to, according to poll carried out by YouGov for Institute of Fundraising.

The Institute of Fundraising has today published the second part of its Insights into charity fundraising: Changes in knowledge, attitude and action as a result of donating report. The data, taken from a YouGov survey conducted in early February, showed that 81 per cent of 2,006 respondents said they had donated to charity because they had been asked.

Respondents were also asked to identify where or in what form they were most asked to donate to a charitable cause. The survey found that the most common form of fundraising ask came “by visiting a charity shop”, with 22 per cent of respondents highlighting that.

The next most common form, on only 9 per cent, was being “prompted by someone collecting through a bucket or box collection”.

Some 59 per cent of respondents who were asked to donate said that they would still have made some form of monetary donation without being prompted, however 30 per cent said they would not have donated at all, while 10 per cent said they would have donated a smaller amount than they did when asked.

Being asked to donate was also found to make the “most considerable” impact on donors, the younger they were, with 19 per cent of respondents aged between 18 and 29 saying they would have made a “smaller donation had they not been asked” to give.

Conversely, over 70 per cent of respondents aged 70-years and above said they would have given the same amount to charity had they been asked to or not.

Nearly 75 per cent described experience of donating ‘good’ or ‘very good’

Nearly three quarters of respondents who had donated to charity in the last three months described their experience of giving as either ‘good’ or ‘very good’, with only 1 per cent of respondents described their experience as bad.

The survey also showed that women are “significantly more likely to feel very positive about their last donation experience” than men, with 39 per cent of female respondents rating their most recent donation experience as “very good”. That was 8 per cent higher than male respondents.

Daniel Fluskey, head of policy and research at the IoF, said: “Money raised through fundraising activities is the single most important source of income for the charity sector. People in the UK are incredibly generous, with levels of giving improving year on year. Today’s report shows that it is the ‘ask’ and engagement through fundraising that translates good intentions into donations.

“Without fundraising, we wouldn’t have charitable giving at the same level, and these findings demonstrate the importance of having a range of opportunities to reach people through fundraising, as well as reminding us that people give because they care about causes and want to do something good.”

 

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