Charity revisited

According to the Boston Globe (2009), women may be the driving force in most women's charitable giving. A Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund study (p.r. 2009) found that 92% of men named their wives as the primary influence in their giving choices. This seems to be in conflict with charitable giving findings discussed last fall (2008-09-04), which showed that most couples resolved giving conflicts in favor of the husband's preferences (see Andreoni et al, 2000). However, it could be that most households fail to have conflicts over giving.

The Fidelity study did not find any gender differences in likelihood of researching a charity before giving (89% of men and women do this). High-income (income over $150K) women are less likely to give anonymously than donors in general, according to the survey. One recent anonymous donor has been making news, and is speculated to be a woman: at least 14 woman-led-colleges in the past year have received large, anonymous donations with the condition that the donor not be identified (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2009).

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I have to say that I was surprised and pleased that so many of the respondents research the charities that they give to. This could be a result of the group surveyed: Fidelity only surveyed people who have over $1,000 in a year. I've been making charity a bigger priority this year, because I expected that donations would go down with the economy in the crapper.

On the Mystery Donor: I love rumors. Since I work in Higher Ed, I'd been following the story for a while. I didn't realize it had hit mainstream media, too. A friend who watches Rachel Maddow (I don't, but feel like I should) says that the esteemed commentator considers Oprah the most likely suspect, although news reports say Oprah's denying it. It's fun to speculate about people being secretly good for a change.

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