More Americans Say Giving Money Is Easier Than Volunteering Time

By Noelle Barton

Americans' perceptions of their ability to help charitable causes has shifted in the past year, with half of those surveyed saying they find it easier to open their wallets than to volunteer their time, according to the results of a national poll released this week.

In the survey, conducted in December by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, in Minneapolis, about half of the people said it was easier to give money than time, an increase of 13 percentage points from 2004. The number of people who said it was easier to volunteer than to give money dropped 10 points, to one in three.

Fourteen percent of those surveyed said the two options were equally easy.

But the survey, conducted by phone with 1,000 adults, also found that people reported volunteering at the same rate in 2005 as those interviewed in 2004. In both years 57 percent of Americans said they volunteered at some point, the survey found.

"The good news is Americans are not necessarily doing the easy thing," Dave Rustad, a spokesman for Thrivent, said. "They're doing the right thing."

In 2005 Thrivent, through its chapters, received 21 million hours in donated time and $400-million in individual and foundation gifts, Mr. Rustad said.

Brad Hewitt, a senior vice president for Thrivent, says he believes in people's views about how to help charities stems in part from the size and scope of recent natural diasters. It was impractical for most people to travel to Southeast Asia and volunteer to help after the tsunamis in late 2004, he says, and many charities initially asked for money after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast last August.

"It was pretty clear that dollars were needed," in both cases he said, citing an 87 percent increase over 2004 Thrivent saw in donations to its disaster programs. "People are pretty good at sorting out whether time or money is needed, and I actually found that pretty encouraging."

Age a Factor

The survey results found that age, income, and geographic location all had an effect on volunteerism levels.

It found, for example, that a person's likelihood of volunteering increased with household income levels. Just one in three respondents who live in households earning less than $25,000 volunteered, compared with half of those with household incomes of $25,000 to $50,000, two-thirds of people in the $50,000-to-$75,000 range, and three out of four people with household income of $75,000 or higher, according to the survey.

Young people (ages 18 to 24) were most likely to volunteer, while "pre-retirees" (55 to 64) were most likely to donate money. But the group that was most likely to have volunteered in the previous 12 months was those people in the 35-to-44 age category.

"For nonprofits, it's important for them to engage their supporters on both fronts, both in terms of giving them opportunities to participate in volunteer work for their organization, as well as giving them opportunities to fund and support their work," Mr. Rustad said.

Geographically, people from states in the West were slightly more likely to have volunteered than in other regions, followed by Midwesterners, Southerners, and people from the Northeast.

But when asked about the ease of giving money verses time, the regional differences were more pronounced. Sixty-four percent of Northeasterners picked money as the easier of the two, followed by 52 percent of Southerners, 46 percent of Midwesterners, and 39 percent of Westerners.

The survey did not ask how much money people donated to charitable causes or hours they spent volunteering in 2005.

For more information about the survey, go to the "newsroom" section of Thrivent's Web site, http://www.thrivent.com.