The Ladies’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) on the Indiana College Lilly Household College of Philanthropy launched Ladies Give 2024: 20 Years of Gender & Giving Traits, a complete research exploring how ladies’s philanthropy has developed in response to societal and financial modifications—together with the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas the report highlights ladies’s resilience in giving, it additionally reveals how the pandemic reversed long-standing traits in philanthropy, presenting new challenges for ladies donors and the organizations they assist.
Based mostly on knowledge from the Philanthropy Panel Research—the biggest longitudinal research of philanthropy within the U.S.—Ladies Give 2024 analyzes giving patterns amongst men and women from 2000 to 2020, together with the “declining donors” phenomenon, a gentle lower because the Nice Recession within the share of U.S. households that take part in charitable giving. The Ladies Give 2024 findings underscore the significance of understanding how societal shifts and financial instability influence males’s and ladies’s giving otherwise, offering nonprofit leaders with actionable insights to re-engage donors in a quickly altering panorama.
Key Findings Embrace:
- Resilience in Giving: Whereas the “declining donors” phenomenon is true for each women and men from 2000 to 2020, the decline began later and was much less pronounced for single ladies in comparison with single males.
- Adaptability Throughout Disaster: Whereas the typical greenback quantity given by donor households has been comparatively regular between 2000 and 2020, single ladies’s giving elevated total and to secular causes in the course of the COVID-19 interval, in comparison with single males.
- Pandemic-Period Shifts: Single ladies’s giving participation declined throughout COVID-19, however their common giving quantities elevated. This means that ladies’s giving charges had been extra resilient previous to COVID-19, and that their giving throughout 2020 reversed a protracted development of single ladies’s giving declining at a much less extreme price in comparison with single males.
- Financial Challenges: Ladies who misplaced earnings in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic had been much less possible to offer to charity, showing much less resilient of their giving than single males or married {couples} who misplaced earnings in the course of the pandemic.
A Altering Philanthropic Panorama
The research situates its findings inside the broader context of societal shifts, together with delayed marriage, declining beginning charges, and the rising significance of girls’s incomes to household financial stability. These traits, coupled with the pandemic’s disproportionate influence on ladies, have reshaped how ladies interact in philanthropy.
“Ladies donors display extraordinary resilience and flexibility, even within the face of unprecedented challenges,” mentioned Jacqueline Ackerman, Interim Director of WPI and lead creator of the report. “Ladies’s giving not solely helps speedy wants but additionally addresses systemic points, making them key drivers of the way forward for philanthropy.”
Implications for Nonprofits and Policymakers
The report identifies sensible methods for nonprofits to each strengthen connections and re-engage ladies donors post-pandemic, resembling creating alternatives for significant involvement, emphasizing transparency, and recognizing nontraditional types of giving like mutual support. It additionally underscores the significance of addressing systemic limitations—resembling financial instability and childcare challenges—that stop ladies from totally taking part in philanthropy.
“By finding out ladies’s philanthropy over time, we achieve necessary insights into how financial shifts and exterior pressures can influence giving habits. This information permits organizations to construct deeper relationships with ladies donors,” mentioned Una Osili, Ph.D., affiliate dean for analysis and worldwide applications on the Lilly Household College of Philanthropy.
By understanding and leveraging the distinctive behaviors and preferences of girls donors, nonprofits and different stakeholders can construct a extra inclusive and resilient charitable giving setting.
Increasing the Dialog on Ladies’s Philanthropy
This report is a part of WPI’s ongoing dedication to advancing analysis on ladies’s philanthropy.
Every year, WPI releases the most recent in a collection of Ladies Give reviews, exploring distinctive questions on varied components that form gender-based giving patterns—together with age, faith, earnings, marital standing and extra—so as to enhance understanding about how gender influences philanthropy.
Obtain the “Ladies Give 2024: 20 Years of Gender & Giving Traits” report right here.
Supply: The Lilly Household College of Philanthropy
The previous press launch was offered by an organization unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed inside don’t immediately mirror the ideas or opinions of the workers of NonProfit PRO.
