1998 Virginia A. Hodgkinson Prize awarded by the Research Committee of the Independent Sector “for best research book, paper or essay published in 1996 or 1997 that provides new understanding of issues regarding philanthropy, voluntary action, nonprofit organization and management, fundraising, or civil society.”  Prize awarded for Paul G. Schervish and John J. Havens, “Social Participation and Charitable Giving: A Multivariate Analysis.”  Voluntas:  International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 8, no. 3 (Sept. 1997):  235-260. 

1999 John Grenzebach Research Award for Outstanding Published Scholarship in the area of educational fundraising. Prize awarded by the American Association of Fund Raising Counsel (AAFRC) Trust for Philanthropy, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), and Grenzebach, Glier and Associates, Inc., for Paul G. Schervish and John J. Havens, “Social Participation and Charitable Giving: A Multivariate Analysis.”  Voluntas:  International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 8, no. 3 (Sept. 1997):  235-260.

This paper develops and empirically tests a causal model of the determinants of individual charitable giving.  Although our analysis is in reference to charitable giving, the model also appears directly applicable, at least as a starting point, for research on volunteering. 

Between 1998 and 1993 a series of important national surveys have been completed concerning the philanthropic behavior of individuals (e.g., Giving and Volunteering 1988, 1990, 1992; and Giving and Volunteering Among American Teenagers, 1990, 1992); of their religious congregations (From Belief to Commitment, 1988); and of

philanthropy and wealth (Survey of Consumer Finances, 1986, 1988). Despite this abundance of data, researchers have not analyzed these surveys asking the kinds of theoretical questions and employing the kinds of multivariate statistical techniques that would advance our understanding of the social processes leading to charitable behavior.  

This paper reports on the researchers' continuing efforts to develop and test a multivariate causal model of the social, demographic, economic, and motivational determinants of individual charitable giving. Data for the analysis is drawn from the 1992 national Survey of Giving and Volunteering conducted by the Gallup Organization for the Independent Sector.  

Although in the course of the research we explore the effects of over 100 variables, we pursue the major lines of our analysis from within a theoretical framework. This framework emerged from analysis of intensive interviews with 130 millionaires in conjunction with The Study on Wealth and Philanthropy conducted previously by Schervish.  

In this research we draw on this theoretical model to explore the effect of five sets of variables or mobilizing factors that induce charitable giving as measured by the amount of household contributions as a percent of household income. The five factors are (1) communities of participation; (2) frameworks of consciousness; (3) mediating persons or organizations that directly invite participation in philanthropy; (4) the presence of discretionary resources; and (5) the existence of a person or an experience in one's youth which inspires one's adult engagements. 

Our paper reports the relative strengths of relationship between each set of factors and giving behavior; it also estimates the relative strength of the relationship between giving behavior and the individual variables relating to each factor. These empirical findings indicate that each set of mobilizing factors is significantly related to giving behavior but that the set of variables of community of participation, especially frequency of religious participation, is the most prominent set. For the population as a whole it appears that, community of participation serves as an intervening factor through which the other four sets of factors operate. 

In addition we explore how the theory is manifest in tax-motivated and needs-motivated household segments. The theory appears to be even more fully supported for each segment than it is for the population as a whole. That is, the impact of the mobilizing factors that tend to cancel out for the population as a whole are revealed when eitherof the segments is analyzed separately. 

The major implication of this research is that the level of measured charitable giving, and perhaps of volunteering, depends less than previously thought on issues of generosity. Rather it depends on the factors that generate the individual's and household's communities of participation, namely the density and mix of opportunities and obligations of voluntary association at the local level. To this point, findings about giving and volunteering by race, income, and gender have too often been interpreted in the language of invidious comparisons of generosity. This is problematic for any number of reasons, not least of which is that the analysis of what is going on becomes too moral, too quickly. 

Rather than turning so readily to declarations about generosity, we must take into account the following: (1) The greatest portion of giving and volunteering takes place in one's own community and church, and helps support activities from which the donor directly benefits. (2) The basis for higher measured giving and volunteering may have less to do with generosity than with the density and mix of the network of formal and informal association within a community. (3) This associational network reflects both the willingness of people to get involved and the obligations of involvement connected to certain types of engagements. (4) Therefore, higher or lower levels of measured giving of time and money do not necessarily reflect differences in individual generosity. (5) To understand these differences we must look at the communal analog of what William Julius Wilson and others refer to as resources of social capital available to particular groups. When it comes to measured philanthropy it a matter of both moral capital in the form of generosity and associational capital in the form of social networks of invitation and obligation.  

In order to fill out our understanding of these associational dynamics, the next stage of our research will be to model the causal social processes by which community of participation emerges as the major intervening variable. That is, we will explore the factors that lead individuals into those communities of participation that then induce charitable giving.

  Download the entire article from The Social Welfare Research Institute's web site.