Is there a moral hierarchy in giving or is all giving equal, asks Martin Brookes.

Every day we make judgements about other people’s charitable donations. It could be looking down on the widow who leaves all her money to a cat sanctuary. Or it could be a belief that people should donate to countries where money is more ‘needed’, rather than western countries. For everyone that applauded the Sainsbury family’s recent gift of £25m to the British library, there will be those who thought it would have been better spent tackling child abuse, poverty, or homelessness. But can we make judgements about where and how people give? And should we?

In the UK, money given by individuals totals less than 1 per cent of income, a percentage that has remained flat over a long period of rising prosperity. There is an argument that making judgements about people’s giving could actually put people off donating, decreasing total giving. Some may argue we should concern ourselves with encouraging more giving, regardless of where it goes.

We already have a negative attitude towards giving by rich people in this country. Whether this contributes to low levels of giving by rich people – who give a smaller proportion of their wealth than poor people – is not clear. But the way some people react to acts of generosity is sometimes striking.

This was illustrated by comments from the esteemed Baroness (Mary) Warnock in the wake of the recent Giving Pledge announcement when more than 40 US billionaires pledged publicly to give away more than 50 per cent of their wealth. Baroness Warnock opened her comments on this in the Observer by saying, “I can’t but applaud this initiative.”

It seems Baroness Warnock wanted not to applaud; she sought to frown and, perhaps, condemn. But, ultimately, she could not. Such a curmudgeonly position on charitable giving is typically British.

We are neither very generous nor very good givers in the UK. The number of people donating to charity has fallen more than 10 per cent over the last decade according to CAF/NCVO – equivalent to around one in eight of us stopping giving anything at all. Charitable giving is essentially only being held up by increased generosity among a smaller number of people.

Yet in these times of low donations, when charities are having to share from a decreasing or at best stagnant pot of money, shouldn’t donors be challenged to put thought into choosing their causes carefully?

Defining the distinctions

The question is how to define which causes are more deserving. It implies some sort of system that defines one charitable act as better than another. Who would decide these definitions, and could it be done?

Even if you could build such a system, it is unclear whether it would change donor’s behaviour. Evidence shows that people simply don’t want more information on charities – in a recent survey of donors by YouGov, less than half said they would be interested in an independent charity rating system. More than two thirds would ignore such a system. Donors are confident in their decisions and think their giving is fine as it is.

Such a lack of donor interest in choosing the right places to give conforms with evidence from the US. Research on donors by Hope Consulting indicates that only 35 per cent spend any time researching charities and two thirds of these simply want to validate their choice of where to give. Only a tiny number of donors are looking to give wisely to the right causes.

The research catalogues donors into six different categories. These include ‘Repayers’ – supporters of charities which have directly helped them – and ‘Casual Givers’ – where there is little planning and thought. One category, the ‘High Impact’ donors, give to causes they think generate most social good. These accounted for just 12 per cent of all donations.

While we should celebrate all giving, one could argue that High Impact donors are acting more morally. They are doing most to help beneficiaries.

I think you can make judgements about whether one act of giving is better than another. But for those still unsure which side of the fence they stand on, let me ask a question. If Bill and Melinda Gates had chosen to donate their billions to an endowment fund at Harvard rather than to eradicate malaria, do you think they would have been as widely applauded? I doubt it.

We all know that giving is good and should be celebrated. We also know that some giving is better than others. How to prove this and encourage the right behaviour is a much tougher question. 

Martin Brookes is chief executive of New Philanthropy Capital