Get Them to Volunteer and They Will Give

Offering meaningful volunteer opportunities to prospective donors—like serving on your board—may help generate more and larger charitable gifts, according to the latest results of two ongoing research studies. Both studies found a significant increase in volunteering over the past decade—and statistical correlations between volunteer work and charitable giving:

• “In general, high net worth individuals who volunteer tend to give to charity more often than those who do not, and high net worth individuals who volunteer more tend to give more.” —The 2012 Bank of America Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy
• “Those who both volunteer and give ($500+) are dramatically more likely to plan a charitable estate gift.” —American Charitable Bequest Demographics (2012)

Older Americans More Charitable Than Ever
American Charitable Bequest Demographics is 2012 research that extracts charitable giving data from the latest Health and Retirement Study, a massive project sponsored by the National Institute on Aging that has been going on for more than 20 years and involves 26,000 individuals aged 55 and older. The data shows a significant increase in both volunteering and giving by older Americans:

• 37 percent of survey respondents volunteered at least 100 hours in 2010, which is 20 percent more respondents than in 1998.
• 51 percent of survey respondents gave at least $500 to charity in 2010, which is 15 percent more respondents than in 1998.

As more and more baby boomers turn 55, the trends bode well for planned giving. “Charitable engagement (both giving and volunteering) is a positive indicator of the propensity to leave a charitable bequest,” writes study author Russell N. James III, an attorney and Ph.D. who is director of graduate studies in charitable financial planning at Texas Tech University. “This increased propensity, when multiplied by the growing total population in these older age groups, suggests doubly positive trends for bequest giving in future years.”

Wealthy Americans More Engaged
The 2012 Bank of America study is the fourth in a biennial series surveying Americans with income above $200,000 and/or net worth above $1,000,000 (excluding the primary residence). It is researched and written by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, with a sample size of about 700.

An extraordinary 54 percent of survey participants volunteered for more than 100 hours in 2011, with 35 percent giving more than 200 hours of their time. While there is not a direct correlation between the number of volunteer hours and the size of charitable contributions, the study clearly shows that those who volunteer more than 100 hours a year give significantly more than those who volunteer less or not at all:

• In 2011 high net worth donors who volunteered between 101-200 hours gave an average of $96,000 to charity, while those who did no volunteering averaged $50,000.
• An increasing number of high net worth donors—61 percent in 2011—said they give more to the organizations where they volunteer the most.

In terms of planned giving, 43 percent of survey respondents have a will with a charitable provision, 18 percent have an endowment with a nonprofit, and 15.5 percent have a charitable trust or charitable gift annuity.

They want to serve on your board
The Bank of America study found that the most common form of volunteering was serving on the board of a charitable organization, with 61 percent of respondents doing so. About half of the high net worth donors helped with fundraising and with planning events. Forty percent provided professional services to a charity.

While about half of the survey participants sought out volunteer opportunities, 31 percent said that they began volunteering because “I was asked by someone at the organization.”

The bottom line
The message from these studies seems clear: Those who volunteer for your organization for at least a hundred hours a year are very likely to make charitable gifts, some of them planned gifts. So it might be effective to describe volunteer opportunities and the volunteering process on a Web site and in marketing materials, including planned giving publications. And if these volunteers don’t come to you first, as many will, all you have to do is … ask!

Pentera’s marketing experts are available to help design and implement marketing strategies for you.